Panto Animals? by Tim Roll-Pickering 9/10/98
Oh dear. After an excellent run of stories with only Doctor Conkeror letting the side down (forgiven as it was produced for The Incredible Hulk Presents), one of the worst ever strips appears. Party Animals was written as an April Fools strip. But that doesn’t excuse it for being utter rubbish.
The whole strip comes accross as a series of sketches, some of them funny like the fifth Doctor's leg kicking some penguins out of his TARDIS who were looking for their friend, and some pointless ones like the fourth Doctor's arrival at the end. A lot of characters from previous strips and TV stories make cameos, such as Shayde, a Wrarth Warrior, Abslom Daak, a Draconian and Daleks, along with characters from other series including Klingons and Ferengi (from that Pathetic Codswallop franchise about big spaceships), Cyclops (from various X-titles) and Bart Simpson (from that wonderful cartoon show). Whilst it's nice to see old faces as a reminder that the comic strip adventures are not isolated individual stories, when they are just used for crowd scenes it diminishes their impact. Only a few characters have any significance, such as Death's Head and Beep the Meep.
Then there's the Doctor's future incarnation and his companion Ria (from a series of fan produced audio adventures, with likenesses of Nicholas Briggs and Heather Barker), whose appearance is the only point of real interest in this story. The idea of the Doctor bumping into a future incarnation has often appeared in fanfiction and the books (to the point where it rivals stories telling of Liz Shaw's departure) but has rarely been employed in either the TV series or the comic strip. Of course, given the nature of things, it seems unlikely this will be the Doctor's definite future, though it would be nice to see if anyone ever tries to explain this one away.
Then there's a fight which is pointless, merely filling in time, and distracting attention away from the Doctors' conversation. Finally, both let their companions in on who's who, resulting in each being unfavourably compared to the other, rather like Who fans comparing something distant to the current output, which is always regarded as total rubbish. The encounter between the two Doctors would have worked better in a separate strip of its own, without the pointlessness of their surroundings.
Mike Collins' artwork is nothing special, and combined with Gary Russell's weak script, this is a classic case of a great idea being buried in dribble. 3/10