200711011216IDW is going back to the vaults for some early work by Dave Gibbons, in the form of old DR Who comics. The imageon the left is an earlier reprint of tis work, not the IDW version.

When Doctor Who’s TARDIS lands in U.S. comic book stores in December, the stories will be classic, and the scarf will be color: rescuing a catalogue of beloved tales from the timestream, IDW Publishing will release Doctor Who Classics, printing in all-new color the black-and-white adventures that originally appeared only in Great Britain as part of Doctor Who Magazine in 1979 and 1980.

The stories feature the incarnation of the character very familiar to American audiences, Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor, with new state-of-the-art colors over art by Dave Gibbons, who drew the British magazine’s main comic strip for most of the issues, from #1 until #69, before going on to co-create the industry-shaping graphic novel Watchmen.

Writing the stories are celebrated authors Pat Mills, nicknamed “the godfather of British comics,” and Scotland-based John Wagner, both of whom are given credit for revitalizing British boys’ comics in the 1970s. The new, modern colors will be handled by Charlie Kirchoff, with new covers recreating old scenes provided by Joe Corroney, the fan-favorite artist from IDW’s Star Trek books.


“This series is appealing to fans because it’s rare for these stories to have been available to readers in the United States,” says Chris Ryall, IDW editor-in-chief and publisher. “A lot of people have never seen these comics at all, let alone in the full, vibrant colors that Gibbons’ art deserves.”

IDW will follow the launch of its classics reprints a month later with all-new monthly adventures of the latest Doctor, the Tenth version of the character portrayed by David Tennant in the BBC revamp of the show that drew raves from British critics and fans when it debuted in 2005.

“We’re giving fans the best of the old and the best of the new,” says Ryall. “The first series looks back at most popular Doctor of the past, and the upcoming series focuses on the best of the present.”

Doctor Who Classics #1 will be released in December. Diamond order code OCT07 3579.

1 COMMENT

  1. As a hardcore DOCTOR WHO fan, I’m all over IDW’s new DOCTOR WHO CLASSICS series and hopefully, they’ll eventually get to Grant Morrison’s stories for the Sixth and Seventh Doctors.

    I’m surprised, though, that there isn’t more coverage of IDW’s new DOCTOR WHO series featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones, which will be written by Gary Russell. This is, I believe, the first original DOCTOR WHO comic series released through an American publisher.

  2. I have a few of the original Marvel back issues. It’s great fun. The stories are like classic Doctor Who but without the budgetary constraints. Gibbons’ take on alien worlds is actually quite gorgeous at times. The back issues also had fun little essays by Jo Duffy explaining Doctor Who to Americans but I suppose these reprints won’t include those.

  3. I learned to draw from copying Gibbons, Steve Dillon and David Lloyds work from Dr Who Weekly. The stories were excellent too, some of Mills and Wagners most fun stuff…even some early Alan Moore in there.

  4. Tim, Morrison wrote three stories after Alan McKenzie wrapped up his run and they started rotating stories between a small team that included him, Simon Furman and John Freeman in 1986-87. His last story was a one-parter illustrated by Bryan Hitch – one of his first pro jobs – and the others were by John Ridgway.

    Heidi’s illustration is of one of Panini’s very wonderful collections of the series, oversized and on very nice paper. There are seven books so far, with the eighth (covering the first half of the Sixth Doctor stories) due next month sometime. They are very highly recommended!!