Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #6 - Titan Comics

DOCTOR WHO: THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR No. 6, May 2019

Only the two hundred and thirty first best-selling comic in April 2019, at least according to “Diamond Comic Distributors”, this twenty-two page periodical probably still proved a tremendous disappointment to those 5,691 long-suffering fans still purchasing the “Titans Comics” publication, what with its sedentary, dialogue-heavy narrative and perturbingly poor portrayal of the titular character. Indeed, it is arguably hard to imagine that Jody Houser’s interpretation of the Time Lord has anything in common with its television counterpart considering her incarnation of the Gallifreyan merrily departs medieval Netherlands despite knowing there’s still a horde of “bloodthirsty monsters feeding on [its] stricken villages!”

This utter apathy towards a group of “demons hunting the local townsfolk” is made all the more unbelievably bizarre considering that the Doctor falls prey to a Stilean's razor-sharp teeth herself and almost loses her left shoulder as a result; “Not exactly from around here. Like you lot. Only with less biting. Definitely going to leave a mark on the coat, though. I like this coat…” However, rather than defeating the dangerously hostile and hungry aliens, the “best-selling and critically-acclaimed comics writer” instead has the female time-traveller disconcertingly berate her companions for suggesting her attacker is actually evil, and instead has them run straight into a hunting pack of the frightening beasts without any plan of escape whatsoever.

Luckily, sheer circumstance alone, courtesy of Magda deciding to ring the settlement’s town bell, somehow saves the day. Yet despite this reprieve simply scattering the Stilean back into the shadows temporarily, the Thirteenth Doctor incredulously determines that her work combating “the demons of Hasburg” is done and drags her friends back to the TARDIS fatalistically stating that she has no idea whether the crew’s brave young saviour would be “all right” as “actual people get lost in the numbers and the names.”

This inconceivable desertion of Sixteenth Century Europe to its fate at the hands (or rather fangs) of a clearly savage and aggressive planetary invader is debatably made all the worse by Roberta Ingranata’s pencilling which, whilst being pulse-poundingly dynamic during the Time Lord’s frightful flight from the Stilean at the start of the comic, sadly brings little to party once the protagonists are safe and just endlessly talk to one another.

Writer: Jody Houser, Artist: Roberta Ingranata, and Colorist: Enrica Eren Angiolini