Doctor Who and the Vampire Inversion

Here's a treat: Paul Hanley, who you may recall provided the original art for Forgotten Lives, as well as a whole host of other Doctor Who, cult film and original art, has teamed up with Bret Herholz, another excellent artist and graphic storyteller with a penchant for all things Who, to create The Vampire Inversion, a completely free new comic featuring the Shalka Doctor (as played by Mr. Richard E. Grant back in 2003, and fleetingly appearing onscreen again in 2024).

For this adventure, Paul has written the script and Bret has provided the art, and his scratchy blac-and-white style really works for this gaunt and foreboding Doctor. The Vampire Inversion is a postmodern adventure into vampire cinema, which also explores the hidden corners of Doctor Who's own mythology. As the cover page teases: "Two Doctors, vampires and... Andy Warhol?!" When you've enjoyed the comic itself, you can also read Paul's original script.

Paul and Bret have provided this comic for free, but do suggest that you might like to make a donation to one of the charities they've chosen to support: 

The Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT)

TRACTION (Trans Community Action)

Queertopia

The Central Florida Emergency Trans Care Fund

So, go on. Have a bite.

WHO REVIEW: Doctor Who: Origins

Prior to Big Finish getting Jo Martin on their expanding roster of Doctors, the only significant appearance of the Fugitive Doctor outside the TV series was this, a 2022 miniseries by Titan Comics. Titan's main Who writer, Jody Houser, scripted the story; she's a steady pair of hands with a good grasp of different Doctors, and her Thirteenth Doctor range was pretty solidly good. Her regular collaborator Roberta Ingranata provides the artwork, with Warnia Sahadewa providing some excellent colours.

The trade edition collects the four issues, plus the nameless strip that was given out for Free Comicbook Day 2022. This is a fun way to start the collection, pitting the Fugitive Doctor against a small-scale but entertaining threat and saving a bunch of kids in the process. It ties in nicely to the real and fictional history of Doctor Who; the Doctor arrives in 1962, implied to be one of her first visits to Earth (at least, that she remembers), predating the series itself. It's a brief mission, but she finds herself starting to like humans and the Earth. There's a fun coda, in which the First Doctor arrives a year later, having decided this is where he wants to hide out with Susan. He might not remember being the Fugitive, but the link is in there somewhere.

The main story deals with another mission for the Division, and while it's made clear that the Doctor is sent on plenty of diplomatic and rescue missions, there are plenty of more underhand assignments, and she isn't given the full story on all of them. The Doctor is assigned a temporary assistant named Taslo (because there's got to be a companion), new and naive but holding her own secrets. They're sent to take out a cult formed from various aliens who are allegedly threatening Gallifrey, by any means necessary.

There's more to it, of course, and it's no surprise when we find out the Division has being lying to the Doctor's face, but their motives are interesting. In spite of being very directly involved in the outside universe, these early Time Lords are just as rulebound and inflexible as those of the TV series' era, terrified of change and of anything that they view against true Time Lord life. It's clear the Doctor is becoming disenchanted with her role as an agent, but this is the mission that finally makes her decide to go on the run (I guess that's a spoiler, but it's hardly a surprise). 

It's a strong story, and the comics medium suits the bold, brash and colourful Fugitive Doctor. While it looks like audio will be her main home for the foreseeable, I'd love to see some more graphic adventures for her, either as Division agent or Fugitive.

REVIEW: Something Strange 3 by Richard Crypt

 

Something Strange is, quite simply, the finest Ghostbusters fanfic available. Richard Crypt, who turns out art at an astonishing rate and does commissions too, has the knack for creating work that just feels like genuine GB material.

I'd highly recommend his Patreon, where you get access to sneak previews and exclusive images for as little as a $1/£1 a month. If you really can't stretch to that, at least follow him on Instagra, where you'll get glimpses of his incredible work.

The part we look forward to, though, is Something Strange, a fully-realised print comicbook that is published only occasionally, but my god, it's a great piece of work. It's remarkably professional for a fan-produced item, and each issue features a collection of strips of various lengths telling stories of the 'busters and characters caught up in their world.

We're on the third issue, and this time round it's a direct follow-up to Ghostbusters II, examining the public image of the Ghostbusters following the bizarre occurances in New York in 1984 and '89. We see events from the Ghostbusters' point of view, revisit major characters from the film, and get a glimpse of what both the media and the average New Yorker think about these things. 

Richard's artwork is absolutely spot-on. His ghosts fit right in with the films, but also have a feel of The Real Ghostbusters, upscaled and enhanced to the highest quality. RGB HD. He has the Ghostbusters' likenesses down pat, but it's his skill at recreating other actors in a few lines of black on grey that really impresses. I'm not going to post whole images or pages here - you'll have to support Richard for that - but just look at this one panel.

It's just a sketch of the lower half of his face, and you can immediately see that's Harris Yulin, and know we're going to see how the events of the Ghostbusters' trial and the return of the Scolari Brothers affected Judge Wexler. It's immaculately done. It's not only GB actors who are rendered with skill; characters are frequently cast as recognisable faces, and it's a lot of fun spotting who's guest starring in a strip. (I was pleased, but not at all surprised, to see that Richard is clearly also a fan of the 1993 classic Super Mario Bros.)

You can buy the latest issue on Richard's Etsy site, as well as the previous two, and I'd recommend going straight over there and buying them all. Well-written and exceptionally well illustrated, these comics are a must for the Ghostbusters fan. Plus, if you're a patron, you get your name hidden on the cover, something which never fails to make me smile like a fool (although I don't think anything will beat issue one's "Tessier Slimed Again" newspaper headline).

Subscribe to Richard Crypt's art here, and buy his work here.

WHO REVIEW: A Little Help from My Friends/Alternating Current (Houser, Ingranata, Angiolini)

With the new series, Doctor Who: Flux, just a week away, it seemed a good time to review these two lovely trades from Titan Comics. The first goes by the full long-winded title of Doctor Who: A Tale of Two Time Lords - A Little Help from My Friends, and comprised the entire Thirteenth Doctor: Year Two run in the States, published in Doctor Who: Tales from the TARDIS in the UK. This was followed by Alternating Current, the first story in Doctor Who Comic as the series was renamed. This leads directly into Time Lord Victorious: Defender of the Daleks, which was supposed to be published after but ended up being published some months earlier due to various delays. But that's the COVID era for you. These things happen. One oddity that has arisen from the changes is that both these books are labelled as volume one, which is one of those silly little nothings that will annoy me every time I see them on the shelf.

Both stories are written by Jody Houser, illustrated by Roberta Ingranata and coloured by Enrica Eren Angiolini. These ladies are pretty much the DW comics dream team by now, and Houser really has the Thirteenth Doctor down to a tee. In fact, I don't think there's a writer out there who portrays her as well as Houser. Admittedly, we're dealing with comics, which are a totally different skill to TV script or prose writing, but still. 

The big draw, though, is that these stories team up the Thirteenth Doctor with the Tenth, bringing back a host of popular characters and monsters while they're at it. It's easy to be cynical about this; recent sales of Doctor Who material have been flagging a little, and Ten remains one of the most popular Doctors ever. It's a transparent attempt to get fans buying material with Thirteen in that ties into the current programme. But so what? This is not a new idea. We also have Doctor Who: Edge of Reality just out, a video game that features both Whittaker and Tennant providing voices for the Doctor. You have to wonder why they don't go the whole hog and have Tennant turn up in the TV series. (That's assuming they haven't done that anyway. We'll know for sure in no more than seven weeks.)

It's fanwank to the highest degree, but if you can't do this sort of thing in the comics, where can you do it? The comics can legitimately use any character from any era in any setting, unbridled by budgetary constraints (excepting certain copyrights) and without having to worry about actors growing old, disinterested, or dead. Plus, Ten and Thirteen work well together. Whittaker's performance is clearly influenced by Tennant's, and they both have that exuberant energy hiding loss and loneliness, but Thirteen lacks the self-absorbed moping of Ten and seems more self-aware (and, as she points out here, is older and wiser). 

A Little Help from my Friends is the better of the two, taking advantage of a specific period in Ten's life when he was stranded in one location and then dropping Thirteen and the fam on him. The TARDIS is diverted to London in 1969, when Ten and Martha had been zapped back to by the Weeping Angels in "Blink." Not only do the current team have to try to investigate why they were sent back without accidentally nobbling the Doctor's personal history, they have to contend with a cadre of Angels and, for extra fun, Autons. The pick-and-mix approach to the revived series' monsters makes for a visual party, with the Nestene Consciousness appearing much as it did in "Rose," and of course the Autons and Angels are both very visually-based monsters. They're a good fit for the medium. 

The strength of the story is in its character interactions though. The Doctor tracks down Martha while Yaz leads the rest on a mission to keep tabs on Ten. Laying low and keeping things secret doesn't last very long, and while Ten and Thirteen get on pretty well by multiple Doctors' standards, the differences in their outlooks come to the fore. Thirteen, being newly female, much more experienced and with the benefit of hindsight, is baffled by how Ten could have missed how Martha felt about him, and finds herself apologising to her friends and repeatedly cutting Ten off when he's about to go all nostalgic over adventures with Rose. 

It's a fun, pacey story, ending on an effective cliffhanger as Thirteen takes her team home by jumping forward to 2020, only to find London in ruins. This leads nicely into Alternating Current, revealing that all that crossing time streams has led to a timeline shift, with humanity being conquered centuries before as a ripple effect on the Doctor's timeline. It's probably too complex an idea to run with very often, but the TV series could play with this idea to great effect. Changing history is a hazard in Doctor Who all the time, but what's rarely considered is the cumulative effect of the Doctor's actions on each other as they constantly cross their own history.

Again, there's a grab-bag approach to continuity on display here, with the divergence occurring in "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror," which in this version of reality didn't involve the Doctor at all. Result: Tesla was abducted by the Skithra, who built their technological powerbase, accidentally woke up a Sea Devil colony and teamed up with them to conquer the Earth. In this reality, Rose leads a resistance group, with Pete and Jackie Tyler both alive, well and married. The fanwank perhaps goes a bit overboard here, but you know, why not? Having Ten team up with a different version of Rose, one who's never met the Doctor before, offers some interesting interactions, but we're robbed of "our" Rose being reunited with the Doctor in a new incarnation, which would have been fun. Then again, every time we return to Rose on Pete's World it robs a little impact from that story, so perhaps this new version is best. The standout character, though, is a sympathetic Skithra Queen who allies with Thirteen to help right the timelines. It's another fun story, not quite the level of the previous one, but it works. It also leaves some interesting scope for future stories to follow up some of the characters and ends with a great hook for the next serial.

PLACEMENT: For the Thirteenth Doctor, this must be after Spyfall, since everyone is fully au fait with the idea that she used to be a man. For the Tenth Doctor, the first story takes place during "Blink," but the second story must be sometime later since he has his TARDIS back and is seemingly travelling alone. It apparently leads into Defender of the Daleks which is part of the Time Lord Victorious arc, so the best place is probably between "The Waters of Mars" and The End of Time.

WHO REVIEW ROUND-UP: New Adventures for the Eighth Doctor (Mann, Vieceli, Hi-Fi)

 

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

Written by George Mann, art by Emma Vieceli, colours by Hi-Fi

Titan Comics' 2016 miniseries featuring the Eighth Doctor, collected here under the umbrella title A Matter of Life and Death, is a punchy five-part run of short adventures that make up a single overarching quest. The Doctor pops to one of his various properties on Earth, this one seemingly the cottage he used in the TV Action comic strips from the 70s, absorbing a fragment of these almost-certainly apocryphal stories into the modern day ongoing franchise. As questionable as some of the earlier Doctor Who comics were, it's wonderful to think that there's been a pretty much continuous run of strips since 1964 across multiple publishers. 

Entering his cottage he discovers that a young woman has taken up residence there. This is the beautiful blue-haired Josie Day, an artist who somehow knows to paint alien beings like Krotons and Cybermen and seems reluctant to answer questions. "The Pictures of Josephine Day" is a fun beginning for the series, with living paintings besieging a sleepy village, while setting up a central mystery. Josie clearly knows more than she's letting on, but it's subtly written and illustrated and only becomes truly evident rereading once the story is fully played out. 

The second issue, "Music of the Spherions" is my least favourite story of the run, with a pretty hokey central story about infectious sentient crystals, but it has a strong and noble central message and shows just how good a companion Josie is, saving the day through impassioned speeches and a willing to sacrifice herself if necessary. Josie's fun and arty but deep and serious at the same time. The story shows off Vieceli's artwork at its best, though, with some impressive alien vistas. Her Eighth Doctor is neither a realistic depiction of McGann nor a caricature, rather an impression of the character, always recognisable as this passionate, flighty regeneration.

"The Silvering" riffs on "The Unquiet dead" and The Talons of Weng-Chiang with a trip back to the 19th century and a night out at the theatre, where some very spooky going-ons are going on. Featuring mirrors that act as portals into a nightmarish parallel universe, it's not exactly original but it's atmospheric and exciting. The best moments involve mirror-soldiers, created from glimpses and part-reflections, horrible, tragic fractured beings. Lovely stuff.

"Briarwood" sees the Doctor and Josie attend a marvellous party at a fancy house in 1932, where there's a touch of Christie-style mystery and some sinister plant elementals to deal with. Oddly Mann names these the Nixi, whereas the folkloric nixies were water spirits, not tree spirits like the dryads. It's a solid adventure with a more meaningful resolution than I'd have expected.

The series finishes with "A Matter of Life and Death" itself (not to be confused with the Eighth Doctor comic story "A Life of Matter and Death," from DWM). Again, this seems to be riffing on existing Doctor Who stories, but with a new twist that answers the questions of the series and the Doctor's shopping list of missions in an "Ah, of course, how obvious!" way. It's all painted out for us to see throughout and yet it's so wonderfully easy to miss. And the revelation of the ultimate mastermind of the story is rather fun as well.

Placement: By the Doctor's appearance, this is clearly the Time War era, which is to say the modern iteration of the Eighth Doctor who seems to be the default version since 2013. More pertinently, the Doctor's dialogue reveals someone utterly exhausted by the constant shadow of war, but he still remains the recognisably enthusiastic, occasionally bouncy Number Eight. So this is likely early on in the Time War, before things have really started to threaten everything.

Highlight for a spoiler: for the Twelfth Doctor and Clara, likely between series eight and nine.

WHO REVIEW ROUND-UP: 13th Doctor - Time Out of Mind (Houser, Sposito, Ingranata)

 

TIME OUT OF MIND - written by Jody Houser, art by Giorgia Sposito, Roberta Ingranata and Valeria Favoccia, colours by Enrica Angiolini

Catching up with the Thirteenth Doctor comics from Titan (now the only place to enjoy an ongoig graphic adventure for the current incarnation, since DWM sadly stopped their regular strip feature) brings us to this interim volume, which collects the 2109 Free Comic Book Day release (which I missed) and the two-issue Holiday Special from the same year. As with the whole run, it's all written by Jodie Houser, who ansolutely nails the character of the Thirteenth Doctor and makes the fam work with a real light touch.

The FCBD issue (apparently titled “Meet the Fam!”) is a fun little side trip, bringing the TARDIS to an alien amusement park where Graham manages to get himself abducted by losing a game of space coconuts. It's silly, fun, and a bit throwaway, with some lovely artwork (including a double-page spread by a guest artist), but ends on a sinister. Each of the time travellers remembers a different version of events at the theme park, and can't even recall what planet it was on. Actually reading on release there would have been months between this cliffhanger and finding out the resolution, but as it is, we can steamroller on ahead the the Holiday Special.

It was a canny move releasing this as a Christmas story, given that the Thirteenth Doctor still hasn't had one on TV and that 2019 was especically bereft of screen adventures for the Doctor. This sees the Doctor and her gang follow a brief trail to a frozen world where it seems that Father Christmas is causing trouble – except his name is actually not Santa, but Mr. Henderson, who seems to be some kind of evil anti-Santa, with a platoon of toy soldiers to do his bidding.

You can see where this is going, right? Mr. Henderson is in fact the Krampus (or at least, a Krampus – there have been several takes on the Yuletide monster since in Doctor Who comic and audios since he became popular in the English-speaking world). Also, this Krampus is a she, and why not indeed? As well as answering who's been messing with Team TARDIS' memories, this is very fun festive adventure that ties in playfully with other takes on the Father Christmas idea seen on the TV series. To begin with there are tiny elf-like aliens, before an honest-to-goodness elf named Baxter turns up, very much like the ones seen on “Last Christmas.” The Doctor never gives a definitive answer as to whether Santa is real (just as in that episode), and both she and Baxter refer to him as Jeff, the very name the Eleventh Doctor claimed to know him as in “A Christmas Carol.”

There are no big revelations in this slim trade collection, no world-shattering events, no crossovers. Just a couple of solidly enjoyable imaginative stories, and that's exactly what it needs to be.

Placement: The Doctor wears her fez, so it's after Kerblam! but more notably, Ryan mentions the Corsair, so it's after Old Friends. There's nothing to suggest this entire run of comics doesn't take place in the gap between Resolution and Spyfall.

REVIEW: WandaVision

 There's no way to review this one without considerable SPOILERS. Go away and watch it, if you're in any way inclined but somehow haven't done so yet. I recommend it.

WHO REVIEW CATCH-UP: Emperor of the Daleks

The Seventh Doctor comics aren't the greatest era of Doctor Who Magazine's strips, but they definitely improved during the New Adventures period, when Benny Summerfield joined the TARDIS crew in the strips as well as the novel line. The strips collected in this volume appeared in issues 193 from late 1992 to 211 in early '94, plus one special and one strip cribbed from issue 227.

It must have been a bit of a surprise for readers when Benny suddenly popped up in the strip without introduction, but then, the DWM strips always reflected developments in the TV series even when it made little to no sense within the confines of the comic itself. The strip was often at its strongest when there was no series to line up with and it was able to go in its own direction, but the decision to stick with the template of the NAs meant there was a clear direction for Doctor Who at the time (compare to the Eighth Doctor era, when there were three competing media with their own continuities, causing no end of debate but also resulting in easily the best run of strips in the magazine's history). 

The first story in the collection is "Pureblood," by the now prolific Dan Abnett, who's written prose and comics for everything from Star Trek to Warhammer. Although completely at odds with The First Sontarans (proposed earlier but produced much later), "Pureblood" proposes a fascinating origin for the Sontarans, showing that their early warrior culture developed into the Sontarans we see today through a reductive process of genetic engineering. Abnett puts this across in an action-packed interstellar war serial, ably realised by Colin Andrew. Abnett''s script makes the Sontarans far more three-dimensional than they'd see in mainstream Doctor Who for decades. I also agree with Abentt's commentary - the Pureblood Sontarans do look like they're related to the Ogrons...

Next up is the one-shot from the 1992 Winter Special, from the normally reliable Scott Gray. It's not great, but to be fair, it was speed-written to fill a gap in the scheduling. A flimsy story that sees the Seventh Doctor and Ace run a holo-program of the First Doctor's time on Gallifrey - back when he was going by "Thete," as per Drax's stylings - there's not much to it. The main talking point is wondering whether the mustachio'd Magnus is really the Master, or the War Chief, or both, but really, it's such a throwaway story it seems hard to care.

Next up is the big title story, "Emperor of the Daleks!" itself. It's a co-op between the magazine's editor John Freeman and much lauded writer Paul Cornell. Cornell is one of the best writers in the franchise, and at this point had made his name as basically the bet writer on the New Adventures. Plus he created Benny, so you'd expect he'd give us something special with this strip. However, the story is hamstrung by trying to do way to much at once. It's a follow-up and retcon of the previous Dalek strip, "Nemesis of the Daleks," plus a linking story between the last two Dalek TV serials, Revelation and Remembrance of the Daleks. It also provides an unexpected sequel to Planet of the Daleks and introduces Cornell's pet project of setting up a weird semi-antagonistic relationship between the Sixth and Seventh Doctors. As such, it opens with a Sixth Doctor strip that sees him rescue Davros from the Daleks at the end of Revelation, and ends with a follow-up, the rather good "Up Above the Gods!" which sees them conversing in the TARDIS (this one from #227, almost two years later).

The rest of the six-part story is a rollicking adventure yarn with more Daleks than you can shake a stick at, but the insistence of doing yet another Abslom Daak story is really a problem. Frankly I don't think Daak become a usable character until Titan Comics brought him back in 2015, when they were able to appropriately take the piss out of him. For all that he's a pastiche, he's still taken far too seriously in "Emperor" and the dickish machismo of the character drags everyone else down, resulting in some of the worst character dialogue Cornell ever put to paper. It's still better than half of what was in the strips in this period but it's a pity to see Cornell put out something so shallow.

Warwick (later Scott) Gray gives us "Final Genesis," a solid four-parter that sees the Doctor take Benny and "New" Ace to a parallel Earth where the events of Doctor Who and the Silurians turned out rather differently. As Gray points out in his commentary, this clashed with the NA Blood Heat, but since they both involve parallel universes they could both be valid. As such Gray posits the events of The Silurians are a nexus point branching into many realities. This one is the one where the Doctor actually won the day and ushered in a new era of peace between humanity and the reptile people, but it's now in jeopardy. Anyone expecting a two Doctors team-up will be disappointed, as both the alt-Doctor and alt-Brigadier have recently been killed.

It's a decent story, let down by some scruffy artwork by Colin Andrew that doesn't suit the tone at all. The monsters of the story, hybrids of human and Silurian, don't look remotely like either and look pretty rubbish. The writing's solid though, raising interesting questions about the Doctor's motivation in visiting a parallel world.

"Time & Time Again" is a silly but fun one-off. Like the third part of "Emperor," which landed in the 200th issue, this one is in colour to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary, and like the earlier one, it's looks like it's by someone who's not used to working in colour. It's a daft story which sees the Doctor and co. assigned by the White Guardian to undo the Black's interference in time, which has left the universe in peril due to the Doctor staying on Gallifrey and becoming president. Now that everyone in the universe has invaded Earth, they've got to put reality right by collecting the six segments of the Key to Time again. The first time round this required a 26-episode season, but this time they manage it in ten pages. It's really just an excuse for a whistle-stop tour of classic stories with cameos by all the previous Doctors. Cornell manages to include a tense Sixth-Seventh Doctor scene, which is the highlight of the strip.

"Cuckoo" is of a highlight of the collection. Another one by Abnett, this three-parter sees the Doctor and his two no-nonsense female companions go back to the 19th century and face that sexist society head-on. Subtle as a brick but really not bad at all, it also features some lovely palaeontology at the hands of a transparent Mary Anning-pastiche. Quite why Abnett bottled it at the last minute and decided not to use real figures and instead use fictionalised versions I'm not sure. When James Quick and I wrote a similar story we used Anning herself and focused on details of her remarkable life. Big Finish are now going to feature her in a story as well. Given how much Abnett is clearly into this in his commentary, I wonder why he didn't just go all the way with it. (He talks about the Mantell's finding the first Iguanodon fossil - that was in my town of birth, Cuckfield, but unlike his native Maidstone, they don't have one on their coat of arms. I have suggested it.)

"Cuckoo" features an excellently realised monster by Jo Ridgway, and a clever contrast between the Doctor's priorities in this story and those of Benny and Ace. It's easily the best story in the collection for me. Finally there's Gray's one-shot, "Uninvited Guest," which sees the Doctor crash a party of Eternals and mete out his own brand of inhuman justice. It's here that I feel we see the real Doctor of the New Adventures, the one who worked to his own morality and was echoed in the television adaptation of perhaps the greatest NA, Cornell's Human Nature. We're reminded that this silly little man is someone you never want to be on the wrong side of. And with that, just when they seemed to get the hang of him, DWM dropped the Seventh Doctor and the NA links and went with a rotating series of past Doctor adventures.

Placement: The strips begin shortly after Love and War and continue up to around the time of Legacy. The Sixth Doctor strips take place at some point not long after Revelation of the Daleks.

WHO REVIEW: Time Lord Victorious comics

The massive, multimedia crossover event Time Lord Victorious is already a bit of an overstretch for most of us fans. I'm torn between the excitement and intrigue of such an expansive storyline, and the money-grabbing enormity of it all. I never like the huge crossover events that Marvel an DC periodically do, where you have to buy three dozen comics to understand what's going on and it costs you a fortune. On the other hand, this is new ground for Doctor Who and it is my number one fandom, so the excitement is there. So I'm going to pick and choose and and where I can.

Some people are questioning why they're focusing on the Tenth Doctor and an event from his era of the series, and apart from the obvious popularity of the incarnation, there's the fact that the BBC can't make it appear, intentionally or otherwise, that any purchase is necessary to follow one of their broadcasts. So tying into the current series with the Thirteenth Doctor is a no-go. Even then, she's not entirely absent from the proceedings.

 DEFENDER OF THE DALEKS (Titan Comics: Time Lord Victorious)

The first of two comic strips opening the event is this, Titan's latest miniseries, released as two monthly issues. In it, the Tenth Doctor is pulled into a divergent timestream whereupon he is forced to aid the Daleks in their fight against a terrible power from the dawn of time. 

This is Jody Houser's story, following on from her work on the Thirteenth Doctor comics, where last we saw the Tenth Doctor involved in his own future (but I've not read that one yet). It's well-written enough, but for all the shouting about it, it's not all that much of an event. The Doctor reluctantly teaming up with the Daleks has been done before, and better, although at least the Dalek Prime Strategist, a new character, adds an air of sophistication. The Golden Emperor appears as well, harking back to the early "Dalek Chronicles" days of the tie-in comics. He's had a bit of an updated design but he's still iconic, and this sets up the Daleks! animated series nicely.

My main problem is the villains, the Hond. Although there's an interesting concept behind them - the sort of metaphysical idea that used to show up in the New Adventures days - design-wise they're just mud monsters, and that's really not all that interesting. Also, while I understand this crossover is designed to be expansive, we're already expecting another terrible threat from the Dark Times, the Kotturuh to threaten the universe. Do we need to introduce another? Still, there is a similarity with the Ancestor Cell, from the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel lie, which suggests the Hond as another potential identity of the Enemy. With Faction Paradox suddenly being mentioned in other prose stories lately, this might not be entirely trivial. 

Altogether, the adventure is fine, but underwhelming. Nice artwork by Roberta Ingranata.

MONSTROUS BEAUTY (DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE #556-558)

Doctor Who Magazine jumps in on Time Lord Victorious with a three-part comic story featuring the Ninth Doctor. DWM has skipped the comic strip for a few months to save money - the impact of COVID on sales - and makes an event out of bringing it back. We haven't had a past Doctor comic in DWM since the nineties, I believe, and while it's back to business with the Thirteenth Doctor next month, this does make it rather stand out. Like Defender of the Daleks, this features a threat from the Dark Times, but this is something we know and expect. Nine and Rose find themselves back at the dawn of time in the middle of the Eternal Wars, when the Time Lords fought the Vampires. 

It's a clever way of having the Ninth Doctor meet the Time Lords - although according to this, it's so early in their history that it's before they were time travellers. They're the Space Lords of Gallifrey, led by an angry female general who we learn is an early incarnation of Rassilon. It seems that every Time Lord must have a new regeneration with a different ethnicity or gender these days - and I'm all for it. Better than all those endless old white blokes in big hats.

I'd had an idea to write about a Vampire ship years, ago, and never used it, but in my mind it was something organic and far more like a perverted form of TARDIS. I love what Scott Gray and John Ross have done though - flying castles and crypts! The vampires themselves are disappointingly traditional, with only a brief appearance of a Great Vampire storming through the black, but it works pretty well. I particularly like the use of Cucurbites - blood-drinking space weapons - that first appeared back in the Eighth Doctor comic "Tooth and Claw." (The story also reference the episode "Tooth and Claw," just to mix things up.)

It's a pretty solid adventure with some vampire tropes being exercised, but it's the glimpse of the ancient Gallifreyans that's the most interesting. 

WHO REVIEW: 13th Doctor - Old Friends (Houser, Ingranata, Stott, Angiolini, Bailey)

Catching up with my Doctor Who reviews, beginning with some comicbook releases featuring two very different Doctors. Titan has been publishing Doctor Who releases for a good few years now, with some of the best comicbook material for the Doctor in years. Their releases have included both ongoing and limited series for new and classic series Doctors. Lately I've picked up the third volume of the collected Thirteenth Doctor series and the collected Third Doctor miniseries.

OLD FRIENDS - written by Jodie Houser, art by R Ingranata, R. Stott, colours by E. Angiolini, T. Bailey

The Thirteenth Doctor comics have been running for a little while, and I've dipped in from time to time, but it's this third collection, which was released in trade at the very end of 2019, that caught my fancy. Arriving on the planet Devivian with the fam, the Doctor is immediately arrested for crimes committed by another two-hearted, time travelling woman. Probing for a few more details, the Doctor discovers that a dark-haired Time Lady has stolen a powerful relic from Devivian. (Is that a reference to The Vivienne, or was I just watching Ru Paul's Drag Race UK too much while reading this?)

Naturally, she assumes this is Missy ("And she was doing so much better,") but when she gets on the trail of the thief, it turns out to be none other than the Corsair, making their first ever appearance in an actual Doctor Who story, rather than as a bit of background colour. In this incarnation, the Corsair is a beautiful, wild woman, an unrestrained swashbuckler. She and the Doctor have a brilliant dynamic; very clearly friends for years, with a hint of mutual attraction, even though the Doctor doesn't quite approve of the Corsair's methods.

Jodie Houser nails the dialogue of the Thirteenth Doctor and her companions (for better or worse - the occasional clunkiness feels deliberate here), but she's clearly having the most fun writing for the Corsair. It's surprising that it's taken so long for the character to make a full-fledged appearance. "The Doctor's Wife" was back in 2011, and aside from Neil Gaiman's own potted history of the character in The Brilliant Book, the character has failed to materialise in anything official. The Corsair is much like the Doctor without the rough edges worn off, the Doctor who upped and stole a TARDIS and didn't care about the consequences. It's tremendous fun watching them share an adventure, even as there's an underpinning of sadness, as the Doctor knows that it can't be long in her friend's future that they die. (Going by the reproduced material about the Corsair in the appendix, this is probably the seventh incarnation of the Corsair, while the one who met his end by the House was the ninth. Please excuse the jumping between pronouns, by the way.)

Roberta Ingranata provides the artwork for the first three issues, with Enrica Angiolini supplying incredibly rich colours, and together they make the various planets visited absolutely beautiful. Rachel Stott takes over, with Tracy Bailey, for the closing issue, with a greater focus on strong, characterful line work that really captures the regulars. Altogether, it's a rather gorgeous book. I'd definitely be up for meetings between the Doctor and the Corsair, especially since the gender roles could be mixed up in a number of ways between the various incarnations. And the Corsair's TARDIS is disguised as a galleon, which is both impractical and awesome.


Placement: Between Resolution and Spyfall.

Tomorrow: Paul Cornell's Third Doctor adventure, Heralds of Destruction

REVIEW: Crisis on Infinite Earths

It took the Marvel Cinematic Universe eleven years to bring us their over-the-top, self-indulgent and thoroughly enjoyable time-travelling crossover. So for the CW's Arrowverse to get there in just eight years is pretty swift. Although I've never been the biggest fan of Arrow itself, it's a testament to the huge franchise of DC superhero shows that it has spawned that, in its final season, it would be part of a five-part crossover with all of its sister shows involved. Although that's not the half of it; this is as much an event for Supergirl , and particularly, The Flash, which has been counting down to this Crisis since its first season, with glimpses of the inevitable future marking Barry's time.

Plus it's a much-needed boost for Batwoman (a show I'm behind on, but still, from the evidence of early episodes, one that needs an injection of fun) and a celebration of the ridiculousness of Legends of Tomorrow. Even that doesn't cover it, though. By taking the idea of Infinite Earths to its logical extreme, Berlanti and the CW team realised they could put everything in there, if they could get the right people involved. And they got away with it; Crisis on Infinite Earths is an absurd celebration of the entirety of DC's live-action screen history, and a fair bit of the animated universe too. It's amazing that they got so many actors from DC productions past to get involved, even if some of them were just fleeting cameos.

It's nicely balanced on that front, too, with the regular cast still carrying the bulk of the story. The only alternative version of a character to get a big cut of the action is the Earth-96 Superman, and he, of course, is played by Legends regular Brandon Routh. It's particularly lovely how the reuse of actors isn't glossed over, but commented on by the characters. Superman productions in particular have a tradition of reusing actors in new roles, so there are a lot of characters who look like other versions of people they know. It's ridiculous, but as always, the Arrowverse embraces that ridiculousness.

There's also a nice balance to how they manage the repercussions of the Crisis. The original comics events used it as a way of tidying up continuity, starting a tradition of periodic DC universe makeovers that only ever made things more complicated. This was more straightforward – it got the main Arrowverse series, Arrow, The Flash, Batwoman and Legends, into the same reality as those acquired later, Supergirl and Black Lightning. But really, this just seems like an excuse to have fun. Yet it still left us with a multiverse, so there's no disjoint between the joy of seeing your favourite version of a character make a cameo and realising they've been killed along with everyone in their universe. It's all still out there, so we can still enjoy the infinite versions of this nonsense.

Part One: Supergirl

It starts beautifully, with a knowingly daft and over-the-top voiceover from the Monitor that leads into a multiversal montage of multiple Earths. It's a damned shame Adam West is gone, because I'm certain he would have jumped at the chance to appear alongside Burt Ward on Earth-66. Then we're into the action, with the universe of Earth-38 – the “Superverse” - under threat from the antimatter wave. One thing that this crossover managed very well was keeping each episode feeling part of its parent series, with this episode focusing on Supergirl and her friends and their reaction to the devastation. And it's pretty full on – Kara loses her entire world, and Argo, bar the lucky few survivors. Rightly, Superman and Lois are part of the team, not just because they're setting up their own series, but because they're pretty bloody important. But Supergirl herself is bloody impressive here, saving millions by working with the DEO and sundry aliens to evacuate people from their Earth. It's a shame we couldn't actually see much of this, but I guess a planetary evacuation is a rather expensive thing to put on screen. Still, it really makes it clear that this is a big event, with repurcussions. Supergirl's Earth is gone, and billions are dead. We know they'll find a way to put things right, somehow, but nothing's going to be the same after that.

It works very well as part one of the overall story, as well. It sets up the new Arrow spin-off by focusing a section on Oliver's relationship with his daughter and bringing in Laurel, and rightfully having Oliver lead the battle against the wraiths that precede the coming of the Anti-Monitor. It's the best battle of the serial, because it's relatively small scale, and features characters who fight without superpowers. It ends with Oliver's death, which is very poignant, even though we can already sense that he's going to be back before the end.

Other bits I loved:

• Sara and Ray just chilling at a pub quiz, with no idea that the Crisis is coming.
• The respective Batman themes on Earth-89 (the Keaton movies) and Earth-66 (the West series and movie).
• Titans is included as Earth-9 – there's too much comicbook TV to watch right now, and I've just started this, but I loved seeing it included. It's another Berlanti one, although not one that's getting folded into the main universe.
• Harrison Wells in a brilliantly comicky Pariah costume.
• Wil Wheaton's cameo.

Part Two: Batwoman

While this one does put a lot of emphasis on Kate Kane, her friendship with Kara, and her complex relationship with Bruce Wayne and his memory, there's a huge focus on the Suerman mythology. However, for that reason this is my favourite of the episodes, as I just love the interaction between multiple Supermen. The visit to Smallville's Earth was a special treat; we'd all heard it was coming, but there was a spectacular frisson seeing Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch meet Tom Welling. It's a pity we didn't get any interaction between them and Erica Durance's Lois, though. It's perfect that this version of the character gave up his powers to live an ordinary farmboy life. Plus, Lex became president on that Earth, just as was foretold. It's slightly odd having Iris along for the ride, but Candace Patton is pretty great here, and after all, they're all journalists, right?

Jon Cryer might be the best Lex Luthor ever (still a huge surprise), and seeing him travel to multiple Earths to do what their Luthors couldn't and take down Superman repeatedly is wonderfully villainous. Of course, he uses magic, always Superman's other weakness. Could the Book of Destiny be a hint of some Sandman elements being incorporated somewhere down the line? Even more wonderful than Smallville is Earth-96, both the universe of Superman, Superman II and Superman Returns, but also the live action version of Kingdom Come. It's great that Routh finally gets to play Superman again, even playing him alongside himself as Ray. Wonderfully daft.

Both the biggest treat and the most aggravating decision, though, is Bruce Wayne. Kevin Conroy is my favourite Batman, but this is clearly not the Bruce Wayne of the 90s animated series and/or Batman Beyond. No, Earth-99 is more like The Dark Knight Returns and the grim Frank Miller canon, with a bit of Kingdom Come and even a touch of the DCEU movies. It's wonderful to have Conroy appear in the flesh at last, but did they have to make him such a miserable version of the character?

Back to the plot, and Oliver is back already, but not quite himself. Love that they got Constantine involved for this, as is all right and proper. There's a distinct lack of Legends in the crossover so far, even as we get a version of Mick Rory providing a Waverider to act as a base of operations. Still, there are a lot of characters and you can't fit everyone in. The Paragons idea is very daffy, but very comicbook and it's a nice way to get a core team together.

Other bits I loved:

• There are a lot of nods to the Superman movies, but the best was giving Bruce a Lex Luthor line just to show how villainous he's become.
• Plus he refers to Superman as “a strange visitor from another planet, with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men,” which is straight from the really old Superman material – on TV and radio.
• I love how Routh's Superman references fighting himself before, ala Superman III, but that film isn't in continuity with Superman Returns.
• Gideon with the voice of Leonard Snart. This crossover has a dissapointing lack of Snarts so I'm glad he's in there somewhere.
• Mick Rory is good with babies!

Part Three: The Flash

This one really feels like an episode of The Flash, which is quite right. The Flash was always headed here, destined as Barry was to sacrifice himself to save the multiverse from the Crisis. At least, in the comics, things work out rather differently here. Was anyone really surprised when the Barry who sacrificed himself turned out to be the one from Earth-90? A cop out, perhaps, but not an unwelcome one, and it gave John Wesley Shipp the final send-off that he deserved. He's been wonderful all through this series as Henry Allen, Barry Allen and Jay Garrick, giving them all distinct characters, and it's a rather beautiful goodbye for him.

There are some very nice character moments for Team Flash, which is important, since while Grant Gustin's Barry doesn't die, he instead loses everyone. Indeed, everyone does. The episode ends with the destruction of the multiverse. I mean, we all know it'll be sorted out, but wow, that's a cliffhanger-and-a-half. Even so, the strongest moments of this episode were the character interactions, between Barry and his friends, between Kara and Kate, between Barry-90 and everyone who'd listen. It's a bit harsh on Hoechlin that Routh gets to be the “main” Superman, but it's not like he lasts long as a Paragon. The switch of Lex Luthor to take over his role is fantastic – ad the clear reason that the Monitor brought it back. You can't save everything just with heroes, you need a bit of villain in there as well.

There are some fluffs, though. Bringing in Ryan Choi (destined to become the new Atom when Routh leaves Legends later in 2020) is nice, and making the ordinary guy the Paragon of Humanity is a great touch. (I say ordinary, he's still a super-genius.) But his inclusion is underwhelming and feels undeserved (that said, he's much better in the following episodes). The introduction of Cress Williams over from Black Lightning is handled poorly. I'm miles behind on that show, so haven't seen its tie-in episode, but the guy has just lost his family and entire world, and he just has to shrug it off and get on with things. And after all that, he's fairly pointless, just a lightning zap here and there that could have been provided any number of ways. Also, after practically vanishing from events in Part Two, J'onn J'onnz is suddenly back as a Paragon. Not that he shouldn't be there, but the writing was sloppy there.

Other bits I loved:

• Wow, Birds of Prey. I'd practically forgotten that one.
• Ralph Dibney gets a few nice moments, particularly “Holy All-Star Squadron!”
• Look, I really don't like Lucifer, it gets the comics and character so completely wrong, but it was still a nice moment having Constantine meet him.
• Looks like Earth-73 is Black Lightning Earth, but it's not spelled out. Going with that one though. Still pleased they incorporated the series even if they did fluff it.
• Jim Corrigan shows up! Now that's a development. It's a pity they didn't get Emmett Scanlan back from Constantine, but Stephen Lobo's suitably grim.

Part Four: Arrow

God, they make us wait, don't they? More than a month without an episode, then two on the same night. I love how that month has passed in the show too, with the Paragons being stuck in the Vanishing Point all this time. There's an interesting universal set-up here: the multiverse has been destroyed, yet it would seem only in the present. So time travel is still possible, and timeless realms such as the Vanishing Point, Purgatory and the Speed Force continue to exist. Thus, we go back to the very beginnings of the multiverse to set things right, and get a time-travelling greatest hits parade to boot.

Yes, it's very Avengers: Endgame, but hell, these guys have earned it too. This is Arrow's show this time round, and Oliver Queen gets to shoulder the burden. Making Oliver the Spectre is an amazing move, one that's over-the-top but that seems right given the huge stakes here. Given that his character and series have evolved from vigilante-versus-assassins and criminals, to superhero-versus-metahumans and magicians, it follows that he ends up with powers of his own. And not just powers, he's an ultra-powered ghost! Somehow, even with something this silly, even though we've just done the same thing, Oliver's death is poignant. It's a hell of a move, killing off the star of Arrow halfway through his final season. It's a pity that Stephen Amell spends so much time with his voice so heavily modulated.

The final battle is a little underwhelming, if only because fisticuffs seem like a daft way to save the totality of existence. The build-up is more enjoyable, with Choi and Lex making a bizarrely effective team. Cryer's obviously having a fantastic time and is one of the best things about this crossover. Good to see that Supergirl doesn't deal well with working with him. She can be too saccharine at times, it's good to see her pissed off.

And then: the multiverse is restored, with tweaks.

Other bits I love:

• LaMonica Garrett is awesome when he's playing Mar Novu before he becomes the Monitor.
• “You have failed this universe.” So cheesy. I love it.
• Amell does get a really great final scene.
• That cameo. Ezra Miller drops by as another Barry Allen, bringing the DCEU into the great DC screen multiverse. It really feels complete, now that the current cinema version is included. I like that they pointed out that his inclusion, at this stage in the story, made no sense, but it was the only way to get him in there, since he could only be squeezed in after most the filming was completed. Then again, the Speed Force is outside of time.
• DCEU Flash gets the idea for the name from CW Flash.
• The Spectre fighting the Monitor while reality reforms around them is straight from the comics, although this time we have a different Spectre.

Things I didn't love:

• I know Emily Bett Rickards has left Arrow, but where the hell was Felicity? This is the biggest crossover ever and Oliver just died. She should be here.

Part Five: Legends of Tomorrow

And rightly so, the Legends episode is the silliest of all. I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't get more Legends in there, but we got some great stuff from Sara, Ray and Mick, even if the rest of the team was either absent or reduced to cameos. Again, though, with so many characters to include, it's understandable (presumably why the Legends were left out of the last crossover).

So, now we have Earth Prime, the combined elements of Earth-One, Earth-38 and Earth-73-or-whatever. Possibly the old Earth-Two as well, given that it seems to have been replaced. It's a weird place, with Oliver having used his infinite powers at the moment of his death to reboot the universe and do some tinkering while he did so. Questions abound. Why is Lex suddenly in position of trust and power? That can't have been Oliver's choice. An effect of the Book of Destiny, perhaps? We'll see the fallout of the Crisis on all six series, but things can't ever be the same after this. On one hand, it threatens to invalidate everything we've already experienced on the shows so far. On the other, characters can interact with each other more easily, and it looks like they're pulling out all the stops when it comes to comicbook daffiness.

The final battle against the Anti-Monitor manages to somehow be more absurd than the confrontation with Beebo, but it works, mainly because the various heroes feel like a real team, all bringing their own elements to it. There are still strange omissions and inclusions – J'onn is mainly included as a Paragon so he can infodump people psychically in the new universe – but on the whole it works.

If nothing else, it's worth it for that final big scene. After all this time, we finally have a live-action TV Justice League. The Flash, Superman, Supergirl, Batwoman, the Martian Manhunter, Black Lightning, White Canary, and whoever's going to take over as the Green Arrow. It's been a wild, eventful, ridiculous ride.

Other bits I love:

• The multiverse continues. There's a new Earth-Two, it seems, which will include the upcoming Stargirl series. So even though they've gone to all this trouble to bring the shows together, they're keeping some in their own continuities.
• Heavy set up for a Green Lantern show.
• Best cameo of the crossover: Marv Wolfman himself. If you don't know, that's the modern DC equivalent of all those Stan Lee cameos.
• Diggle gets to have both his son and his daughter in the same reality. One got switched with the other due to Barry's Flashpoint foolishness.
• Good to see Mick's literary career is going strong.

Superhero Shows Round-Up: Supergirl Season Four

Supergirl Season Four

Supergirl, however, keeps getting better.

The wonderful thing about this series is that it's about diversity and tolerance, and moreover, fighting for tolerance. In today's world, particularly today's America, this is the most important message. This is as broad as it could be, but the core targets for its focus are feminism and immigration, two things bound to make a lot of white guys very angry and send them to the internet spouting rage-fueled bile. The feminist aspect was a given, of course, given that this is a series focusing on a female superhero, but the immigration angle has been as important since the start, with the showrunners remembering that Supergirl and Superman are the story of All-American Heroes who came to the States as refugees.

For a while now, the universe of Supergirl (Earth-38, as it happens) has been a rather more utopian one than our own, where the President is a woman who very clearly beat Trump (or his Elseworlds analogue) and leads an America that welcomes extraterrestrial immigrants. While there have been anti-alien elements throughout, the series has been broadly consistent in portraying a world that accepts aliens. Two things have forced this to change. Firstly, real life politics can't be pushed aside forever; it's impossible to really comment on the state of the US today by going, “Wouldn't it be nice if the world were more like this?” Eventually, Supergirl's America had to begin to reflect the real world equivalent. Secondly, the alien acceptance angle sits awkwardly with the fact that the bulk of the villains on this series are alien criminals or invaders. It's hard to imagine Joe Public squaring this with a view of alien acceptance, so it's something that had to be addressed.

To this end, season four introduced a new character, Ben Lockwood, played with superb conviction and charisma by Sam Witwer. The TV version of Agent Liberty, Lockwood's story is powerful and chilling because it is so plausible. Indeed, it's the sort of thing we see in reality all the time, and his fall from grace is so upsetting because there are points where the viewer comes very close to agreeing with him. Lockwood never had a problem with aliens, but his father was a backwoods, anti-alien kind of guy. Only slowly, after catastrophe after catastrophe, does Lockwood turn from a tolerant, accepting man to a mouthpiece for the Far Right and subsumed by his hatred for alien beings. The major turning points are the Daxamite invasion of Earth and the attempted terraforming by Reign, the cataclysmic events that rounded off the previous two seasons respectively, which lost his his home and then his father.

This would have been convincing enough if that had been all that pushed him over the edge, but it's the little things that make it so much more effective. It's easy to see the parallel between the alien invasion driving people to hate alien civilians, just as Islamist terror attacks have led to a huge increase in hate crimes on ordinary Muslim citizens. It's the smaller things that slowly chip away at Lockwood, though, such as his father's steel business being pushed out by alien alternatives, and alien workers proving better at jobs than humans. It's not subtle, but this sort of thing isn't asking for subtlety. It's all the more effective for an American audience, I'm sure, in a country where “alien” - a terribly dehumanising word – is still the preferred term for a foreign national.

The anti-alien sentiment is given a huge boost when the existing President (Lynda Carter) is revealed as an alien herself, the sort of Republican wet dream that ran through the Obama administration when the opposition were desperately trying to come up with some evidence to support their claims that the POTUS wasn't legally American. It leads to a right-wing populist President, who happily uses Lockwood as his mouthpiece. Given that the core characters work as reporters and magazine editors in their day jobs, the line between the press' commitment to unbiased reporting and the moral commitment to fight for the right cause becomes a major sentiment.

However, there are more aspects to the series and its agenda of outspoken diversity. Most notable are the two new hero characters on the regular cast, Jesse Rath as Brainiac-5 (pushed up to main cast at the end of last season) and Nicole Maines as Nia Nal, aka Dreamer. I don't think there can be any question that Rath is playing Brainy as if he's autistic; although this isn't something that can necessarily be said to apply to the character, being an alien android and all, his delivery of lines, tendency to not focus on the other cast's eyeline and the writing of the character as struggling to navigate emotional relationships and everyday conversation can only be read this way. Is it right to characterise a robot like this? One of the worst things that autistic people hear is that they're perceived as “robotic” because of their way of communicating and expressing themselves. Nonetheless, Rath's performance is beautifully understated, utterly charming and very funny without the humour ever being at his expense, so personally I'm in favour of the approach.

Nicole Maines, on the other hand, truly breaks ground as the first transgender actor to portray a transgender character in this genre. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a trans superhero onscreen, and it's very rare to see it in comics. Gratifyingly, while her gender identity is very important to Nia and a significant aspect of her character, it's not all there is to her. She gets to be a new hero on the show, the precognitive Dreamer, and is also an alien settler. At first I wondered if this was really necessary, making her trans and an alien, but there's no reason that a character needs one defining characteristic as the “other.” People are complex and varied and can differ from the assumed “normal” in many ways. Maines gives a strong yet vulnerable performance as a character who is still finding her place in life, and she shares amazing chemistry with Rath. Take away the extraterrestrial topcoat, and you've got a story about two immigrants, one trans, one autistic, who slowly learn how to tell each other about their feelings. It's beautiful and it's bloody brilliant that we have genre TV willing to try these things.

Among the sterling work done with the new characters there's almost no room to praise the continued development of the relationships between Kara, Alex, J'onn and even boring old James. Although every relationship gets its moment, the core of Kara's story this year is her complex friendship with Lena Luthor (Kate McGrath). While it really stretches credulity at some points to believe that this genius can't work out that Kara is Supergirl (the phrase “galactically stupid” comes to mind), the edge it lends to their friendship is palpable. Into this the writers drop Lex Luthor, who was bound to show up eventually, but they wisely kept him aside until his presence was required to push things over the edge. While I love the tradition was of recasting actors from various Superman productions in new roles, I was absolutely ready to throw out the idea of Jon Cryer, formerly Lenny Luthor in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, as the new Lex. And I like that film, even if nobody else does! However, Cryer absolutely knocks it out the park, playing Lex with a huge chip on his shoulder and a desperate need for validation that propels his fight for power. It's a dead-on characterisation and his antagonistic relationship with Lena works well.

Of course, there's no point bringing in Lex if you're not going to have him mastermind some ridiculously complicated scheme. Adapting the classic Red Son storyline, albeit liberally, the season see a parallel plot with Kara's clone, the Russian-born Red Daughter, set up as her dark mirror. As well as giving Melissa Benoist the chance to show how flexible she can be in performance, it ties in nicely to the anti-alien storyline, a sentiment that Lex naturally would want to stoke. The season ties together with panache, accepting the odd slow-burner episode that could have been trimmed, and the finale packs a real punch. Plus we get Lex in his green-and-purple battle suit, and they even call the finale “The Quest for Peace.” That takes some guts.

Best episode of the season: “Man of Steel” - Lockwood's story.

Most pointless addition: Otis and Mercy Graves – Luthor's annoying henches.

Best monster moment: Menagerie as a knock-off Venom.

Superhero Shows Round-Up: The Flash season five

With the new season of the Arrowverse iminent, it's about time I did my round-up on the last runs of the superhero TV metaverse. I still don't bother with Arrow, excepting crossover events, but here's the round-up of The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl as they lead up to the multiverse-shattering events of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

The Flash Season Five

After four years revolving around Barry, his dead parent issues and his slightly incestuous wooing of Iris, season five gets to see him settle down with his new wife and deal with parenthood issues instead. It's a bit of an odd one, though, given that their child is a grown woman. Jessica Parker Kennedy's character, having made a series of cameos during season four, revealed her identity in the season finale as their daughter Nora, having travelled back from the year 2049. Understandably, Barry and Iris weren't exactly expecting this development, even if 99% of the audience had guessed it was her (there was a slim chance it would turn out to be Cecille's kid, of course, which would also have been fun).

The bulk of this season's effectiveness is down to JPK's performance as Nora. Given that the character deforms the narrative of the season completely, had she not been likeable and engaging it would have fallen flat. Fortunately, JPK is absolutely adorable, and Nora remains sympathetic throughout the season, even if she is a brat sometimes. That's forgiveable, though, since she's basically written as a kid; although her actual age is a bit foggy, she can't be any older than 25 and probably more like nineteen. Amusingly, JPK is older than either Grant Gustin or Candic Patton.

(As an aside, it's a bit strange that both The Flash and Legends involve time-twisting narratives concerning women called Nora who happen to be the daughters of major characters. Although as a nice touch, it's made clear early on this season that Nora's name is after Barry's mother, something that has only happened because Eobard Thawne killed her and changed history. She was supposed to be called Dawn, like in the comics.)

The ongoing mystery of Nora's character stops being her identity – which would have worn thin if they'd kept it going another year – and becomes her allegiances. It turns out that she's in league with Thawne, aka the Reverse-Flash, returning to become the major villain of the series at last. Thankfully, if somewhat inexplicably, he's once again played by Tom Cavanaugh, having reverted to stolen form of Harrison Wells. This doesn't make any sense that I can make out, but Cavanaugh is so much better in the role than Matt Letscher I don't care. In any case, Thawne is now imprisoned in Iron Heights in 2049 – the past, from his perspective – awaiting execution. Given how impossible to kill this character has turned out to be, this would seem to be wishful thinking on the part of the authorities.

Of course, Nora's actions come from good intentions, and for all his manipulations of her, Thawne genuinely seems to care about Nora. To be fair, he doesn't seem to be much worse a parental figure than either Barry or Iris, neither of whom will be winning Parent of the Year awards anytime between now and 2049. Barry in particular is an absolute arse this season. It's an interesting arc for his character to take, given how likeable he was at the beginning, but as the series has gone on and the pressure has mounted on him, he's become more and more unlikeable, arrogant and hypocritical. His treatment of Nora, in particular, is appalling, once he discovers she working with Thawne. OK, Thawne is his arch-nemesis and the murderer of his mother, and it's pretty clear he's going to be manipulating her, but rather than try to help her he kicks her out of his family and forcibly dumps her back in the future. Guy's a prick.

Before we set it out with Thawne, though, Team Flash have to face down Cicada, a terribly dull villain who drags the season down. The odd naff baddie isn't a big deal, but when it's ostensibly the Big Bad of the season and hangs around for the bulk of the episodes, this is a problem. All good for making the bad guy something other than another speedster, but last year's Thinker was only a qualified success and Cicada has far less going for them. I say them because we did have a fun twist in the second half of the season when the first Cicada was replaced by his own vengeance-driven niece, but Sarah Carter sneering her way through scenes isn't much more entertaining than Chris Klien growling through them.

This is all tied in with a metahuman cure storyline which runs like a watered-down X-Men storyline, only without the punch since, rather than being natural traits, the metahuman abilities were all granted by catastrophic disasters. Moreover, Team Flash really do have a responsibility to provide a cure for those who want one, since all of them events were their fault (OK, Thawne engineered the first one, but still). This includes the climactic events of the previous season, which ties into Thawne's captivity in the future in a pretty clever way, albeit one that doesn't actually make sense. Still, I've long stopped hoping for the time travel in this series to make sense.

All the characters get their own running storyline; if there's one thing this series excels at, it's juggling a large ensemble cast. My personal favourites this season are Frank Dibny (Hartley Sawyer) and Sherloque Wells (one of four roles for Cavanaugh this year, along with “Harry” Wells, Wolfgang Wells and Thawne). Having a new main Harrison Wells character each year is one of the sillier but most fun aspects of this series. I certainly can't think of another series that does something like this. Making this year's version a French-speaking, Sherlock Holmes-esque detective is just brilliant, and Cavanaugh is absolutely brilliant in the role. His buddy-rival relationship with “Baby Giraffe” Dibny is one of the highlights of the season.

On the other hand, Cisco gets a fairly dreary storyline this year, which necessitates him behaving far stupider than his character should ever be allowed to. And the less we hear from boring Caitlyn and her boring family and their boring icy escapades, the better. Her storyline is the single most pointless aspect of the season and far too much time was spent on it.

On the whole, The Flash is still a lot of fun when at its best, and a real heartache when it ramps up the emotions. Still, it's hard to argue that the series is matching the heights of its first couple of years. There's more filler than before, I fear, and I wonder if the best future for this series would be shorter seasons and tighter story arcs.

Best episode of the season: “Godspeed” - the story of Nora and Thawne

Best secondary villain: Weather Witch – Reina Hardesty is the cutest.

Best episode title: “The Flash and the Furious,” although “King Shark vs. Gorilla Grodd” takes some beating.