The Cornucopia Caper

"Genius is a burden. Genius forces a man to accept challenges ordinary people would never consider."

Writer: Scott Gray 

Format: Comic Strip

Released: June - August 2012

Printed in: DWM 448-450

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Amy, Rory 

Synopsis 

The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in Cornucopia, a city ruled by crime. In the midsts of a robbery, the mystery of the ziggurat above the city will soon become clear...

Verdict 

The Cornucopia Caper was an excellent comic strip adventure to conclude my reading of The Chains of Olympus graphic novel! This was certainly the quickest graphic novel I've read to date and to be honest I'm rather glad that I didn't buy it and instead borrowed the gem (in terms of it being where it was) from my college library. I think it's a bit cheeky if I'm honest to comprise a graphic novel of just three stories totalling just nine parts. Surely this should have been combined with Hunters of the Burning Stone where the story arc of "what is buried in man?" concludes with The Broken Man. But anyway, it was three stories I haven't read and once I return this to the library and replace it with The Blood of Azrael, my reading of the comic strip era of the Eleventh Doctor will be complete, albeit in a somewhat jumbled order! But hey ho, I know what happens and what order it came in. Anyway, to the story at hand and I thought it was excellent. A very well played out story that was actually the beginning of some quite important plot threads concerning Hunters of the Burning Stone and The Blood of Azrael with the excellent characters of Horatio Lynk and Miss Ghost. I liked the latter's relationship with the Doctor and the tease about her true identity and the past she's had with the Doctor. I also liked the former's relationship with Amy who, for what seems like the very first time since her comic strip debut in Supernature, actually seemed to be characterised somewhat correctly! The dialogue actually felt like I could imagine it coming from Karen Gillan herself which is something I always look for. Rory's characterisation hasn't been brilliant in his short comic strip stint but he's just about going unnoticed in terms of criticism. I loved the setting of Cornucopia and the idea of a crime based enterprise for a society was phenomenal! Some of the terms used for what would appear to be the law were magnificent! Just when the Doctor thought he'd talked himself out of trouble again, now with a police cover story to account for their supposed break in, he discovers that police are illegal in Cornucopia! He again failed to take his companions to Rio and even by the Doctor's standards, landing on a planet some distance from Earth is quite the achievement. The fact that K'roxx was a Mobox was a big surprise to me and a nice little throwback to Ophidius and Uroborus. I thought Granny Solasta was a good villain and her mind being crazed about fortune was brilliant. Her reaction upon arrival to the Bank of Heavens was superb and captured everything about her character in an instant. The Doctor agreeing to taking Granny and her associates to the bank in the TARDIS under duress was somewhat a surprise but nothing like what we saw in the cliffhanger to part two! That was amazing with the Doctor punching Rory to prevent him from laying his hands on the echo universe, whatever that may be. Part one's was pretty good too! I really liked the climax to what turned out to be a superb comic strip adventure! 

Rating: 9/10