Doctor Who and the Time Witch [COMIC/1980.6.5 ~ 6.26]

★★★★☆

  Nothing screams more late-1970s comicbook than Doctor Who and the Time Witch. From main villain Brimo's design to the almost reckless sense of boundless imagination to be witnessed on the panels, there's no part of this comic that I don't enjoy. An incredibly powerful villain who's trapped for eternity ends up in a blank dimension which allows her to create her own empire out of her imagination, only to have her dream empire disrupted by the one person with a greater capacity for imagination than her... the Doctor, of course. You're only going to hear it here, but I'm rather convinced that the Fourth Doctor -- particularly the Graham Williams era variation -- has benefitted the most from getting a wealth of comic adventures from Doctor Who Magazine's infancy. That interminable sense of fun, almost like a new comics company finding its feet and testing out its limits, is the optimal playground for the jovial and commanding Four, and writers of the time always had such a good grasp on this incarnation of Tom Baker's. He's funny without even trying, always receptive of the strangest of things, always prone to make mistakes and equally adept at improvising ways to save the day. It's the quintessential Doctor protagonist for a comic series, really. At this point, Sharon's a permanent fixture and is a great companion to have, if even for a minimal role like the one she has here.

  I know there's no chance in hell that Brimo is ever going to return in any capacity, but it's a nice little idea that I sometimes get because of how good The Time Witch is. It's short, it's as imaginative as it can be, and it's a great utilisation of the Fourth Doctor's sense of humour and wit. Its first few panels are ripe with a sense of melancholy which caught me off guard. Its panels are filled with the uniquely comicbook sense of imagination, courtesy of the magnificent efforts of Dave Gibbons (no wonder those aforementioned melancholic scenes of Brimo watching as time passes before her reminiscent of Doctor Manhattan's panels in Watchmen), and yet again, a concept which would've been near impossible (not totally so, mind you; after all, at the time of publishing, The Mind Robber had already been aired eleven years ago) is more than done justice in the comic medium. I love it to bits, this adventure. The early days of Doctor Who Magazine had all the sauce, it seems.