Doctor Who A Fairytale Life Issue 1
By Tao Mori
May 5, 2011 - 11:59
IDW Publishing
Writer(s): Matthew Sturges
Penciller(s): Kelly Yates
Inker(s): Steve Bird, Brian Shearer, and Rick Ketcham
Colourist(s): Rachell Rosenberg
Letterer(s): Neil Uyetake
Cover Artist(s): Phil Elliot, Mark Buckingham and Amy Mebberson
$3.99 US
Doctor Who Fairyland tells the adventure of Amy and the Doctor visiting a futuristic fairyland tourist site that has fallen under mysterious circumstances. For those unfamiliar with Doctor Who, it is one of the longest running television series in the world starting in the early 1960s. There was a hiatus in the late-1980s to 2000s, but then the series was picked up again. The Doctor has the Tardis, (the blue box) which allows him to travel through time and space. He tends to collect people to join him and has been played by several different actors, though the series explains this as a process called regeneration, where he takes on a new face, and changes slightly as well. The latest Doctor, is played by Matt Smith and is joined by his companions Amy and her husband Rory. Rory is not in this comic series, but he was in the other one by IDW.
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This is the classic way that Doctor Who adventures go about, it starts off innocently and then we realize that something nasty is going on, which requires the Doctor to save the day. By the end of the issue we don't see what the true crisis is, we only get hints at what it might be. Something to do with this dread tower, which they mention several times and we see it ominously in the distance.
Doctor Who tends to be a show that relies more on science fiction than fantasy and though most people in this comic are wearing armour, capes or dresses, there's still high tech items underneath the surface. For instance there's the magic wand, which is a psychic field inducer and then there's the shrubbery that has a computer in it. I wonder if that was a reference to Monty Python. Well to me all mention of shrubberies are references to Monty Python.
The artwork in the issue is done fairly well. I think that artist really captured the facial expressions of the characters, they look and act quite similar to their real world counterparts from the TV show and that can be a hard thing to do, but the artist here has been very careful to capture the actors well. There aren't many panels that have really fine drawing where the small details are captured well, except for in the Tardis and close up scenes of character's faces. It really is the characters in Doctor Who that pull things along, and there's much more emphasis placed on the drawing of the characters than the world around them.
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All in all, it's a charming comic book, in some ways it's not really a big leap from the kind of thing that Doctor Who normally does. Even if you're unfamiliar with Doctor Who, you would like this comic if you like light hearted humour and if you are not big into violence. The violence in Doctor Who is ever so slight, making it appropriate for most ages.
Rating: 8.5/10
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