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Wizard World Portland gets the Time Lord treatment in an exclusive variant cover for the upcoming show in February.

With the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) less than a month away, news is coming in fast and furious on con-exclusives. Titan is offering a cornucopia of SDCC only merchandise, with triptych covers featuring the 10th, 11th and 12th Doctors, an SDCC exclusive story line featuring the 12th Doctor and Clara battling a mirror-bound alien threat at the con itself, and two 10th Doctor vinyl figures including a 50th anniversary 10 wearing 11’s Fez! Titan will be at booth #5537. From Titan:

DOCTOR WHO: THE TWELFTH DOCTOR SDCC EXCLUSIVE

When the Twelfth Doctor and Clara turn up at San Diego Comic Con, a quick selfie outside the TARDIS reveals an alien threat among the con-goers and cosplayers! The green-skinned Lady of Neverness can only be viewed through mirrors, photos and quantum snapshots, and has turned up in the background of photos all over the convention! But if enough people view her at the same time, she’ll gain the power to breach into our dimension… to feed on the life-force of the whole planet! Can the Doctor and Clara defeat her and save the day?

Find out in this exclusive new short story, only available at San Diego Comic Con 2015! Plus, go behind the scenes of the comic with writers George Mann and Cavan Scott, and artist Rachael Stott – and get an early in-print glimpse of the Doctor Who 2015 Event – Four Doctors! All under two amazing covers from fan-favorite artist Alice X. Zhang!

When writer Cavan Scott talked to us about taking on the Ninth Doctor back in March, he mentioned he would be adding another Doctor to the long list of Time Lord incarnations he’s written for. This issue is what he was hinting at! Scott has previously written for Doctors: 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and now 12! The issue offers a choice of two gorgeous covers from Zhang, who really lovingly captures the Doctors and now a Companion in her oil-paint portraiture style:

Then there’s that nice series of interlocking covers featuring the three Doctors looking very British in front of the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and the London Eye. The special covers are unique to SDCC, and contain the latest issues in the ongoing series of the Doctors.

Doctor Who: Tenth Doctor #14, which is the penultimate issue of the ongoing series, finds 10 and Gabby separated by an “ancient force from the centre of the galaxy” according to the release from Titan. Can Gabby hold her own alone? Check out our interview with series writer Nick Abadzis to get your 10th Doctor fix before the issue drops.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #14 is part one of a two-part season finale, that teams Al Ewing and Rob Williams up on writing duties for what Titan calls “an unmissable mini-epic.” Will companion Alice “find peace — or be marooned far from Earth? Will Jones fulfill his cosmic rock god destiny — or die among the stars? And who will be left to join the Doctor as we head into Year Two?” Check out our interview with Ewing and Williams and see if the spoiler hints they gave us have come to pass yet…

And finally Doctor Who: Twelfth Doctor #11 finds the Doctor and Clara “Fresh from their adventures in Las Vegas” and apparently  the Doctor and “eager for a change of scenery, but their next destination aboard the TARDIS will prove a SHOCKING change of pace!

 Check out the the neat Triptych effect below of the SDCC exclusive covers below:

But what would a menu of SDCC con-exclusives from Titan be without adorable vinyl figures? Fear not, you’ve got your pick of tiny Tennant’s:

Christopher Eccleston’s portrayal of the Ninth Doctor relaunched the Doctor Who television series in 2005, and many a fanperson has swooned over David Tennant as the show’s  dashing Tenth Doctor. But it was Matt Smith’s portrayal of the Eleventh Doctor that crested the wave of Who-mania that has swept the globe in the last few years. Fans who were left pining for Smith’s incarnation of the time-traveling “madman with a box” will have reason to celebrate the release of Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor Vol. 1 After Life which collects issues 1-5 of the series. I spoke with co-writers Al Ewing and Rob Williams in advance of the March 25 release date (in bookstores and on Amazon.com March 31) about their past collaborations, the Doctor’s newest companion, and even got a few hints at what fans can expect in the forthcoming issues of the Titan Comics series.

Edie Nugent: Did the fact that both of you worked together on 2000 AD help you in co-writing this series? If so, how?

Al Ewing: It probably did – systems evolved during the writing of Judge Dredd: Trifecta, our 2000 AD crossover, that helped with the writing of Who. For example, I’m pretty sure we had at least one Skype conversation during that time, although more often we met in the pub. And Trifecta involved some very intricate plotting, some of which happened on the fly, so it was good practice.

Rob Williams: It helped too that we knew each other and were friends. It’s not as if you’re co-writing with a stranger because who knows how that might go. But yes, as Al said, we’d co-written once together with Si Spurrier on Trifecta, so we knew how to do it, and felt confident we could make such a situation work.

Nugent: The writing on the After Life series is very consistent. How did you work together to find the “voice” of the Doctor and establish continuity of that voice through the series?

Williams: I think his voice is very well established by the series and by Matt Smith’s delivery. It’s easy to hear when writing dialogue for the book. If you feel you’re veering off track you just stick an episode of the show on for 10 minutes. Smith did the verbal patter very well.

Nugent: The audience knows Smith-era patter the moment they read it, but to have such an ear for writing new dialogue without it seeming forced: this just comes naturally to you? 

Ewing: Well, writing any kind of unforced dialogue takes a lot of practice. But essentially, as long as the delivery seems correct, you can get away with a lot – Matt Smith can deliver a lot of different kinds of line and have them all seem part of the same character, so as long as the reader is hearing that voice in their head, it’ll cover a multitude of sins. I’m sure Rob and I both have writing tics that shine through once you’re looking for them. “…” for a pause is one of mine.

Williams: Without wanting to sound arrogant, I think Al and I are both pretty good with dialogue. The dialogue’s really not the hard part. Writing the Doctor he can babble on and you read it back and it’s all good stuff. But comics is a visual medium. So I find I have to cut a lot of my Doctor dialogue or the page would be overcrowded with speech balloons. The hard part with The Doctor is more the plotting, I find.

Nugent: Let’s talk about Alice Obifune. How did you dream her up? She’s got the smarts of Martha and the attitude of Donna (as well as many Classic Who companions like Zoe and Sarah Jane); questioning the Doctor and his motives. You mention in the series that the Doctor finds her wisdom and maturity a comfort, contrasted with his usually younger and greener companions. 

Williams: I think it was a case of trying to do something a bit different. The TV show usually has The Doctor with young girls as assistants. Smith looks so young, we thought it would be a fun dynamic to pair him with someone who seems to be physically older then him. Someone a bit more sure of herself having been through a life.

Ewing:  I forget where she came from at first – it’s a long time ago – but I remember being very keen that she give as good as she get with regard to the Doctor. I’m pretty sure her age relative to other new series companions came up early on as well in connection with that – the idea that the actor playing Alice, if she existed as a TV series character, would be older than Matt Smith and have some natural authority there. Or maybe it was the other way around. I know her Dad dying in the Falklands set her age in stone to an extent, although I don’t know if we’ve gotten around to mentioning that at all.

Williams: It’s mentioned somewhere. I forget where.

Ewing:  We know he died when she was small, and I think there’s a newspaper headline in one of the scenes about the end of the war, but I don’t know if we’ve connected the dots yet. It’ll be a nice tidbit for anyone reading this!

Nugent: There’s another thing that makes Alice so mature, aside from having more years under her belt than the average TV companion: she’s recently orphaned when the first issue opens. Very adult theme, that. Was there any push-back on opening the story line with such an emotionally dark moment: going through the motions and feeling empty following the loss of her mother? 

Ewing: Not at all – I’m pretty sure everyone was up for that from the beginning. Originally, I think we were set to go much darker in terms of the overall plot – this is at the very early stages – but that ended up, rightly I think, being decided against. I think the balance between light and dark stuff we’ve got now is just about perfect.

Williams: Titan and the BBC were very supportive. I liked that opening very much. The subdued grey wasn’t what people were expecting. It’s a theme that continues through the entire series. The first ‘season’ of the comic is really Alice’s journey through her loss. Coming to terms with it, learning to move forward and live again. It’s the emotional spine of the book.

Nugent: So you worked together to co-write the series, even though issue 1 seems to be the only issue that’s co written (Al took issues 2,4 and 5 with Bob penning issue 3). Was it like television writing? Did you both form a ‘writers room’ of sorts at the pub or over Skype, blocking out the story arc and then individually write drafts? 

Williams: We wrote half of #1 each. Al took #2, I did #3. Then Al did a two-parter with #4 & #5, I did #6. The entire 15 issue series is half Al, half me. #14 & #15 we’re writing half of each issue, so they’ll be co-written. The rest of the stories, there’s often little bits from one of us even if the other person is credited as scripting. My #10, for instance, Al made a suggestion there which helped nail down the theme. Lots of that going on. It’s a writer’s room dynamic throughout.

Ewing:  That’s pretty much exactly how it went! For issue 1, we took eleven pages each and then did a lot of rewriting so they fit – after that, it’s been a matter of discussing where the plot’s going and where we want it to go on Skype, and then working out what’ll happen in each individual issue. (Or two-parter, if we’re writing both parts.) Mostly it happens on Skype – once or twice we’ve met up for a pint, but Skype’s probably more productive given the lack of booze.

Nugent: I loved how you wove in these legendary musical figures: Robert Johnson, and the Bowie-like John Jones. It’s nice because so many of the historical figures we meet in Doctor Who stories are Queens or classic authors. What made you decide to highlight musicians and those two in particular?

Ewing:  Both of those are Rob’s doing, really – Jones was the companion Rob brought to the table, although I’ve had a lot of fun with him myself and rediscovered an interest in Bowie’s music.

Williams: That was just an idea born out off Bowie’s similarity to The Doctor in terms of regenerations. There’s always been a sense about Bowie of ‘where did this guy come from?’ Now, I’m sure certain substances were involved in that otherworldness. But what if, instead, he travelled with The Doctor? And that’s how he ended up with all these crazy outfits and looks etc. That seemed a fun idea. There’s a line in #3 which I think is true. If you had a time machine the first best use would be going to see all those classic gigs you’ve only ever read about.

Nugent: Al, Your issue 2 story centers on the idea of corporations ruining the ecology of a place, in this case Rokhandi and it’s natural beauty. The themes of industrial development and brainwashing could easily be transposed to the ecological worries of today. Were you intending to write the story as warning or wake-up call to the youth who will read it?

Ewing:  I’m not sure I’d go as far as to call it a warning or a wake-up call – that sounds like I’ve got a bit more clout in the readers minds than I probably have – but Doctor Who stories should have some thematic links or resonances with what people are worried about in the real world. There was a lot of that during the McCoy era, as I recall – Doctor Who as a critique of Thatcherism. So yes, there’s more than a little in #2 that could be about corporate cronyism in politics or the selling-off of natural resources, but that’s all par for the course with Who.

Nugent: How are you both feeling about the recent news that your comic story line will merge with that of the tenth and twelfth Doctors this fall in a limited series to be written by Hugo-nominated Doctor Who television writer (and longtime Who fanboy) Paul Cornell?

Ewing:  I’m looking forward to it! It should be a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to see what Paul does with our characters. I can’t think of anyone better to attempt a crossover of that nature, and I’ll be avidly reading every issue.

Williams: Paul’s a fine writer and a friend, so I’m sure he’ll do a stellar job and treat the Eleventh Doctor and Alice very well. I’ll look forward to reading it. And then we have ‘Season Two’ of the Eleventh to get up and running. We’ve already got a few fun, surprising things planned.

Nugent: Are there any more teasers you can give Comics Beat readers? Will we find out the identity of the mysterious Time lord that appeared to Eleven? Any other tasty tidbits? 

Williams: You might find out the identity of the mysterious Time Lord in me and Al’s #14-#15 two-parter.

Ewing:  Tasty tidbits…things are going to get very colourful in issue #11, and fans of a certain movie will be pleased with us.

Doctor Who: After Life Vol. 1 is available in stores on March 25.

Actor Matt Smith has been cast in the Pride & Prejudice & Zombies film adaptation. Smith is best known for playing the Eleventh Doctor on the Dr. Who TV series.

The book was originally envisioned by author Seth Grahame-Smith who transformed Jane Austen’s beloved novel into a mash-up story. Quirk Books released the book back in January 2008.

Here’s more from The Hollywood Reporter: “The long-in-the-works, on-and-off again project is finally going before cameras Sept. 24 with a cast that includes Lily James, Sam Riley, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcote, and Douglas Booth. Burr Steers is behind the camera.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you share my jealousy of Peter Capaldi and his new guise as the Doctor, then read on to discover how you could become the next Time Lord with a fondness for Earth. However, be warned: you can’t just pick up Matt Smith’s bow-tie from the floor, don Tom Baker’s scarf, and expect to save planet Earth every Saturday at peak viewing time. You’re going to need training. This is where Oxford’s online products can help you. Think of us as your very own Companion guiding you through the dimensions of time, only with a bit more sass. So jump aboard (yes it’s bigger on the inside), press that button over there, pull that lever thingy, and let’s journey through the five things you need to know to become the Doctor.

(1) Regeneration

Being called two-faced may not initially appeal to you. How about twelve-faced? No wait, don’t leave, come back! Part of the appeal of the Doctor is his ability to regenerate and assume many faces. Perhaps the most striking example of regeneration we have on our planet is the Hydra fish which is able to completely re-grow a severed head. Even more striking is its ability to grow more than one head if a small incision is made on its body. I don’t think it’s likely the BBC will commission a Doctor with two heads though so best to not go down that route. Another example of an animal capable of regeneration is Porifera, the sponges commonly seen on rocks under water. These sponge-type creatures are able to regenerate an entire limb which is certainly impressive but are not quite as attractive as The David Tenants or Matt Smiths of this world.

(2) Fighting aliens

Although alien invasion narratives only crossed over to mainstream fiction after World War II, the Doctor has been fighting off alien invasions since the Dalek War and the subsequent destruction of Gallifrey. Alien invasion narratives are tied together by one salient issue: conquer or be conquered. Whether you are battling Weeping Angels or Cybermen, you must first make sure what you are battling is indeed an alien. Yes, that lady you meet every day at the bus-stop with the strange smell may appear to be from another dimension but it’s always better to be sure before you whip out your sonic screwdriver.

(3) Visiting unknown galaxies

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field telescope captures a patch of sky that represents one thirteen-millionth of the area of the whole sky we see from Earth, and this tiny patch of the Universe contains over 10,000 galaxies. One thirteen-millionth of the sky is the equivalent to holding a grain of sand at arm’s length whilst looking up at the sky. When we look at a galaxy ten billion light years away, we are actually only seeing it by the light that left it ten billion years ago. Therefore, telescopes are akin to time machines.

The sheer vastness and mystery of the universe has baffled us for centuries. Doctor Who acts as a gatekeeper to the unknown, helping us imagine fantastical creatures such as the Daleks, all from the comfort of our living rooms.

(4) Operating the T.A.R.D.I.S.

The majority of time-travel narratives avoid the use of a physical time-machine. However, the Tardis, a blue police telephone box, journeys through time dimensions and is as important to the plot of Doctor Who as upgrades are to Cybermen. Although it looks like a plain old police telephone box, it has been known to withstand meteorite bombardment, shield itself from laser gun fire and traverse the time vortex all in one episode. The Tardis’s most striking characteristic, that it is “much bigger on the inside”, is explained by the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, by using the analogy of the tesseract.

(5) Looking good

It’s all very well saving the Universe every week but what use is that without a signature look? Tom Baker had the scarf, Peter Davison had the pin-stripes, John Hurt even had the brooding frown, so what will your dress-sense say about you? Perhaps you could be the Doctor with a cravat or the time-traveller with a toupee? Whatever your choice, I’m sure you’ll pull it off, you handsome devil you.

Don’t forget a good sense of humour to compliment your dashing visage. When Doctor Who was created by Donald Wilson and C.E. Webber in November 1963, the target audience of the show was eight-to-thirteen-year-olds watching as part of a family group on Saturday afternoons. In 2014, it has a worldwide general audience of all ages, claiming over 77 million viewers in the UK, Australia, and the United States. This is largely due to the Doctor’s quick quips and mix of adult and childish humour.

You’ve done it! You’ve conquered the cybermen, exterminated the daleks, and saved Earth (we’re eternally grateful of course). Why not take the Tardis for another spin and adventure through more of Oxford’s online products?

Image credit: Doctor Who poster, by Doctor Who Spoilers. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

The post An Oxford Companion to being the Doctor appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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By Bruce Lidl

As the on-going explosion of interest in comics and pop culture conventions continues seemingly unabated, companies like Wizard World are rushing to meet the demand. The first ever Wizard World Sacramento took place this last weekend, making it the first big comic convention in California’s capital city, and likely the biggest show of its kind in Northern California since Wonder-Con moved to Anaheim in 2012. Clearly a success attendance-wise, the show was a sellout for 3-day passes and Saturday passes, and was very crowded when I stopped by on Sunday, with a line to enter that wrapped around two full sides of the Sacramento Convention center. According to Jerry Milani of Wizard, they were a bit cautious when planning this inaugural show, only renting out part of the convention center, but they are confident enough now to already book the entire convention center for their return in June 2015.

Obligatory Stormtroopers picture

To this only slightly jaded con-goer, the show was very consistent with the new culture of comic conventions, with both organizers and attendees clearly influenced by all the recent coverage of the San Diego Comic Con. At one point I overheard Wizard staffers have to explain that they were not in fact the same organization that ran the San Diego convention. The crowd was very diverse in age and demographic background, many families and couples, was heavily sprinkled with cosplayers, and seemed attracted to a wide range of media properties, with strong The Walking Dead, Marvel movie series and Game of Thrones presences. The key marker of this new era of conventions to me, however, was the very large and central role of big-name media celebrities there to explicitly make some money. Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead) and William Shatner were featured guests, and they offered all manner of paid opportunities for interaction. VIP fan meetings, paid autographs, paid photo ops, you name it, for a price you could seemingly have any kind of experience with the stars.

Comic books were present, though, with industry legends Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, Chris Golden and Neal Adams appearing. Local comic book vendors were a notable presence on the sales floor, although it must be said, the area set aside for autographs and photo ops with celebrities was probably bigger than the entire area for traditional commerce. There was a small artists alley, with a handful of Big 2 artists and a number of independent and/or specialty artists offering sketches and commissions. I had the opportunity to speak in-depth with Jimmie Robinson of Image (Bomb Queen, Five Weapons) and he thought it had been a “good” show, overall, although not a particularly big money maker for him. (I’ll have more from Robinson in a companion article coming later).

Crowds at Sacramento Wizard World

As The Beat has speculated previously, Wizard World is clearly pushing hard to take advantage of the growing interest in pop culture, comics and celebrities, with a number of first time shows this year in cities like Louisville, Richmond, Tulsa, San Antonio, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Reno, in addition to return shows in St. Louis, Nashville, New Orleans, Portland, Columbus, Austin, Columbus, Philadelphia and Chicago. According to Wizard’s Milani, the key attributes that determine their choice of a city include available venues, a market that makes sense for their offerings and their existing show calendar. He admitted that they do pay attention to avoiding conflicts with other comic book conventions (they don’t have any shows at all in July to avoid San Diego issues, and their new Atlanta show will be three months before the long-established Dragon-Con) but it was clear that they consider their shows to be different from more locally organized efforts.

The key element Milani cited was Wizard’s ability to bring a large number of celebrities of a certain level to regional cities. Matt Smith of Dr. Who fame will be a featured guest at their next show in Louisville, Kentucky, and fans can have a VIP experience with him for $349, a photo op with him for $99 ($195 for a dual photo with co-star Karen Gillan) or an autograph for $99. The seem like pretty high prices to me, but they are not too surprising when appearance fees for big stars like Smith and Hemsworth may be as much as $100,000. Milani told me that Sacramento had courted Wizard aggressively, with a great deal of enthusiasm from Mayor Kevin Johnson’s office, and numbers released by the city after the show claim an economic impact of $2 million dollars for the weekend.

Titan were announced as the new owners of the Doctor Who license last year, spurring many to wonder what their plans with the franchise would be. As it turns out, their plan is to have two books based on the space-travelling Time Lord, both of which have been announced today.

The first book will be Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, featuring David Tennant’s version of the character and with the creative team of Nick Abadzis and Elena Casagrande on the first arc. Interestingly, they have also announced that the second arc will see Robbie Morrison coming in to the series.

The second book will be Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, featuring Matt Smith’s version of the character. This book will have a creative team of Al Ewing, Rob Williams and Simon Fraser. Ewing, Williams and Morrison are all named as ‘series architects’, suggesting they’ll be overseeing the line as a whole.

Rumours also abound that there will be a series called Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, featuring Peter Capaldi’s upcoming take on the character. That book is probably quite a way away, however.

The two covers above are by Alice X. Zhang. Both books will be released on the same time – the 23rd July.

TweetIf you somehow didn’t know it already, then this is breaking news for you: this year marks the 50th anniversary of the longest running science fiction TV show in the world: Doctor Who. Long-running in some cases might mean plodding, but not in this case. The Doctor’s recent incarnation, actor Matt Smith, became the first [...]

Unless you’ve been living on Mars the past few years, you can’t help but have been sucked into the hype surrounding the reboot of the Doctor Who franchise, with Doctors Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant and then moving onto current incarnation Matthew Smith. Even if you have been living on Mars, you can still catch the shows within an hour depending on where we and the red planet are in our respective orbits. The current series restarts tonight in the UK (and very probably in the US too as they’re so much better synchronized nowadays) so today of all days feels appropriate to post on the connections between Johnny Mackintosh and the sole surviving Time Lord from Gallifrey.

I grew up with Dr Who, John Pertwee being my first Doctor but Tom Baker the main and best one from my youth. Although there was a time when the ridiculous TV schedulers put it up against Gerry Anderson’s Space 1999 (Moonbase Alpha won that particular battle for me way back then) I’ve watched Who pretty much all my life when available. The paperback of Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London contains all sorts of time travelling adventures, and my publisher Quercus even referenced Doctor Who on the cover (we’ll swiftly gloss over the mention of Alex Rider).

When I first heard Eccleston was leaving and Tennant was taking over, I was very disappointed – how wrong was I? For me, David Tennant now bestrides the Who universe as the greatest of all Doctors, not least because he so clearly loved the role when it always appeared Eccleston felt a little above it.

For Who trivia fans there’s a great scene in the movie Jude (starring Eccleston as the title character) where the man Jude is drinking in an Oxford bar. He’s slagging off the Oxford scholars and ends up in a slanging match with one such, none other than Tennant himself. While Tennant’s character fits effortlessly into his surroundings, Eccleston’s Jude is deliberately awkward and it’s always reminded me of their respective Doctoral personas.

Perhaps it’s a precursor to Moffat doing one of those Five Doctor specials with everyone returning to save the universe from a particularly thorny problem?

Although Russell T Davies was the man who brought Who back onto the small screen, many people would say it was the writing of Steven Moffatt tha