Doctor Who and the Iron Legion by: Pat Mills and John Wagner with art by: Dave Gibbons

Doctor Who and the Iron Legion is written by Pat Mills and John Wagner with art by Dave Gibbons.  It was released in Doctor Who Weekly issues 1-8 (October-December 1979) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: The Iron Legion by Panini Books.

Doctor Who in comics began in November 1964 in issue number 674 of TV Comic with a story called The Klepton Parasites featuring the First Doctor and comic exclusive companions John and Gillian and was a regular feature of the strip until July 1978 in issue 1385 with the final episode of The Image Makers with the Fourth Doctor.  These were comics primarily aimed at young children who watched the program on television yet as a strip much of this run has remained in the grey.  There really isn’t much known about who wrote and drew these strips and the license was only taken away once Marvel UK, yes that Marvel, was given the license to produce Doctor Who Weekly, a magazine which would go on to become Doctor Who Monthly and then Doctor Who Magazine.  It still runs to this day under that title and has run 536 issues with no signs of stopping.  The comic strip has become an integral feature and since 2004 has been reprinted in original form by Panini Books in Graphic Novel form with the exception of comics featuring in issues 228 to 243 and 531 onward as of April 2019.

Doctor Who and the Iron Legion is the first comic story in Doctor Who Weekly and as such it establishes much.  Writing the strip is the team effort of Pat Mills and John Wagner with artwork being provided by the legendary Dave Gibbons, and the Doctor featured was of course the then current, Fourth Doctor.  Mills, Wagner, and Gibbons establish the strip in these eight issues as a chance to tell Doctor Who stories with a wider imagination for visual imagery, only confined by the ability of Gibbons to draw.  The first page of the story is a gorgeous black and white illustration showing an English village ravaged by a Roman Legion consisting of robots and tanks which immediately grabs the attention of the reader and doesn’t let go until the end of the eighth issue.  Mills and Wagner drew upon script commissions to the television show for the basis of their run on Doctor Who Weekly, and while The Iron Legion was never made due to budget, Doctor Who and the Iron Legion gives a chance to see just what the team has in them to offer readers.  The tone of the plot closely matches the types of stories Doctor Who was doing on television at the time, with plenty of humor injected into the characters and a story that takes the form of a grand adventure.  Mills and Wagner establish the alternate dimension of a Rome that failed to fall due to influence from malevolent aliens without making it feel like there was anything too over the top about the situation.  The first issue has an added element of horror as the Doctor arrives in a village to stock up on jelly babies before seeing a man shot dead in front of him.

By the end of the first issue, the Doctor has made it into the alternate dimension and much of the middle strip is attempting to solve the mystery of what exactly is controlling this version of the Roman Empire.  This is finally revealed to be the mother of the current Caesar, who is the powerful alien Magog in disguise as a simple woman.  Along the way he has the help of two robots, the ugly yet kind Morris and the nervous yet intelligent Vesuvius.  Vesuvius is perhaps the weakest aspect of Doctor Who and the Iron Legion: he’s your standard comic relief character with the issue that his humor just is not well executed.  That’s a shame as much of the subtler humor of the comic strip is incredibly effective, from Roman Numerals being used to quite a few stealth puns, the authors obviously have a sense of humor.  As an introduction to the Fourth Doctor in the comics Gibbons captures the dynamic movements of Tom Baker on television while still creating art in a style closer to animation than reality.  The writing from Mills and Wagner assists this by creating a Fourth Doctor similar enough to the portrayal on television.  The story itself introduces the comics as a parallel to the television series at the time: a mostly unconnected series of stories following the adventures of the time which makes Doctor Who and the Iron Legion stick in the mind of the reader due to the sheer imagination of the world it creates and the fun of the story it tells.  8/10.