Friday, 22 November 2013

1993: DOCTOR WHO: EVENING'S EMPIRE (Marvel UK)

This EVENING'S EMPIRE one-shot, published in the autumn of 1993, was the one-and-only spin-off from MARVEL UK's DOCTOR WHO CLASSIC COMICS and, as far as I know, represents the only outing of the strip to date.

And it's really rather good.

Andrew Cartmel was, of course, the original series last Script Editor and turned his hand to penning some of the Doctor's strip adventures the following decade.  Evening's Empire was originally scheduled for a regular run in the Magazine but only the first instalment appeared before production delays derailed the whole venture.

Ultimately, that proved a blessing as Marvel pushed the boat out with this compilation: a striking new cover and colouring the originally black & white pages for the one-shot.  It repeated the first instalment followed by the hitherto unseen subsequent chapters.

Classic Comics, which I'm yet to cover, was a nineties four-weekly which ran strips from throughout the show's history, in colour for the first time (because WH Smith refused to stock a black & white comic rather than any particular altruism on Marvel's part).  It's such an obvious idea but, surprisingly, no-one else has ever done anything with the pre-Marvel back catalogue.


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