Hotel Historia [COMIC/2008.4.3]

★★★☆☆

  With colours popping off the comic strip, we've got here a Tenth Doctor comic full of leisurely (fitting a description, given the premise) fun and edge-from-death excitement at the same time. Nothing here is deep in any sense of the word, but Hotel Historia is still a very fun ride about time-travelling hotel residents and the Doctor's everlasting fight with despotic alien warmongers. I really must commend Dan McDaid for his illustrations; it's very much geared towards comic-book efficiency rather than realism, but that's why I enjoy it so. His Darwyn Cooke influences are apparent, and I love that fact so much. I wish more Doctor Who comics would take this approach to drawing its characters.

  So have fun with Hotel Historia! It's short, imaginative, and its art style is filled with love for the source material and for the artform itself. The Tenth Doctor gets to have one of his ice-cold resolutions as well -- trapping the baddies in the flux between times so that they can observe and never interact (a clever use of the central catch of the titular space-time-observing hotel) for the rest of their existence. Majenta Pryce is an immediately charming character, a villain this time around before she becomes a fully-fledged companion, and thanks to her this comic becomes an essential step if one's willing to go down the Ten-Pryce rabbithole. Good fun, overall!