The Woman Who Sold the World

"Call me old-fashioned if you like, but I just can't ignore a cry for help!"

Writer: Rob Davis

Format: Comic Strip

Released: May - August 2007

Printed in: DWM 381-384

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Martha

Synopsis 

The Doctor and Martha go to Loam and find the people are going to be killed thanks to a woman who sold the world...

Verdict 

The Woman Who Sold the World was a very good comic strip adventure! I believe this is my first ever Tenth Doctor and Martha comic strip from the pages of Doctor Who Magazine but thankfully it was very good. Reading this in the collected Tenth Doctor comic strips DWM Special Edition, thanks to the magnificent website that is Scribd. It houses a significant amount of Doctor Who and any Classic Doctor Who Annuals stories (excluding the 1980 one of course which I am lucky enough to own a copy of) I have blogged have all come from that. It was brilliant enough to provide me with The Other Doctor which for some reason Doctor Who Comic seems to be skipping in order to catch up with USA running order, something which I think is very sad. It's also allowed me to blog stories such as Pay the Piper thanks to them having numerous editions of Doctor Who Magazine and also the wonderful and rare Dalek Annual which I blogged some time ago. It must have been a good year now since I discovered the collected Ninth Doctor comic strips special edition of DWM on there and quickly got all those stories blogged but it's taken me a long time to get to this collection of Tenth Doctor stories. I'm not sure why I've put it off for so long but now being at university I'm glad I did! I need quick stories if I'm going to continue blogging relatively often and comic strips are perfect for that. Although this obviously isn't the length of a graphic novel, it still gives me some adventures with a TARDIS pairing that I really like, and have recently loved in the novels. In that format, the characterisation has been superb and here I thought Martha was portrayed excellently, especially with this being her first comic strip adventure. Her likeness was captured very well though I thought the artwork could have been improved a bit. That goes for the Tenth Doctor as well, in some parts it didn't look like David Tennant very much at all. That being said, the artwork isn't absolutely crucial that it's perfect as long as the characterisation is somewhere close which for the most part it was here. Released alongside series three, it definitely had a feel of the early episodes in that series which was a very good thing. I enjoyed the plot and the title really caught my eye before reading and I liked how it was brought to realisation. Sugarpea and Sweetleaf, both very intriguingly named, were wonderful characters and I liked the ambiguity on whether they were together or not. The talk of who was responsible for the planet being bombarded by the Goliax was actually quite emotional. I found the format in this collected edition very intriguing with the cliffhangers being taken out. I say that, I mean it wasn't specified where one part ended and another began, though it wasn't too difficult to guess. Kingfish was a very good character and I liked how the Doctor didn't get on with him at all. That relationship got off to a bad start and there was no hint of an improvement - especially when the Doctor was thrown into that infuriating queue. He'd have to be patient, which is not one of his best virtues. Brassneck and Kipe were good characters too and although I thought the resolution could have done with a tad more explanation, I enjoyed it. The Doctor and Martha reuniting at just the right moment was fantastic and I liked the little sparks of banter between the pair. That's always good to see between Doctor and companion. Overall, a decent story and a very good start to both Martha's comic strip adventures and thus little collection of stories. 

Rating: 8/10