“Stairway
to Heaven” is written by: John Freeman
and Paul Cornell with art by: Gerry Dolan and Rex Ward. It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issue 152-155
(December 1989) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: Nemesis of the Daleks by Panini
Books.
“Stairway to Heaven” is a
one and done comic story all about modern art.
Okay, the modern art in question is basically the miniscope from Carnival
of Monsters because this is the first commission for Doctor Who fan
and now legend Paul Cornell, with editor John Freeman getting co-writing credit
in the end. You can certainly tell that
a Doctor Who fan wrote this story, outside of the general idea of an art
instillation having its own living society being allowed to evolve on its
own. The goal of the instillation is for
the inhabitants to climb out of the instillation to meet their maker, genetic
artist Garg Ardoniquist. Honestly, the
idea here is great, the underlying satire of a society that uses people as spectacle,
only giving them delusions of grandeur that they might rise above their station
is one of those things that screams Cornell and perfectly in line with what Doctor
Who was doing on television at this time, this being the first story of the
wilderness years. Doctor Who is
gone from television and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip is making a
story read as explicitly anti-capitalist.
Or at least it would be
if it wasn’t for the sense that Cornell, or possibly Freeman, fell into the
trap of portraying contemporary art as inherently highbrow and representative
of capitalism. Ardoniquist as a
character is lauded by society, even in his death he is praised for getting involved
in his own art. It’s this weird, almost
out of touch segment of the story. “Stairway
to Heaven” does at least characterize the Seventh Doctor’s anger quite well, even
if this is still on his solo travels wandering into these situations. Cornell is a writer who has so many ideas
that like Grant Morrison’s “Culture Shock!” before it does not have enough time
to really explore the ideas. The ending
of the strip is still quite effective at conveying the cycles of history,
Cornell clearly wishing to play with the idea that even as technology advances
society may not catch up, there just isn’t enough time to really get to the bottom
of the ideas. This is also the only
strip drawn by Gerry Dolan and Rex Ward which is a shame because their work is
quite good at feeling like a sophisticated piece of science fiction. They’re particularly good at adapting
Sylvester McCoy’s face into the strip, it’s very expressive but not enough to
be a complete clown.
Overall, “Stairway to
Heaven” struggles because there is not enough time to tell the story it wants
to tell. At the very least it does have
something to say even if the deeper implications are actively contradictory to
the surface satire being done with yet another short comic strip. 6/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment