The Long Con

"It's not always a contest to see who gets to the fighting the fastest!"

Writer: AJ
Format: Comic Strip
Released: 15th December 2016
Printed in: DWC: Tales from the TARDIS 14

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor, Eleventh Doctor, Alice, Tenth Doctor, Gabby, Cindy

Synopsis

The Twelfth Doctor is back at a convention and he is not best pleased. What has brought him here? And what is the connection with past adventures featuring his two immediate past selves? Words will soon reveal everything, and it won't be as bad as things first seem...

Verdict

The Long Con was another terrific little bonus comic strip in what is still the Christmas issue of Doctor Who Comic! I can't quite believe that it's taken me two months to the day to finish this issue but I guess that it is better late than never! Time really is flying by and with a busy university schedule there really are only so many hours in a day. I'm not quite sure how I managed the daily blogging to the extent that I did in 2016 but I am quite proud of it, and I already believe it is impossible for me to match my tally of last year in 2017. That's absolutely okay and I'm just glad that it is not long now until the brand new series. This bonus comic strip was another of the San Diego Comic-Con exclusives and I liked how we had an intertwined adventure featuring the latest three incarnations of the Doctor. I was quite impressed that considering we only had half the space of a usual comic strip from DWC there was still a detailed story told and it was pretty much three back-to-back original stories. I believe it is chronologically placed a little ahead of where we're at with DWC at the minute but other than the presence of some characters, there were no spoilers so Titan Comics were fine to include it as a Christmas bonus. The trio of the Tenth Doctor, Gabby and Cindy is excellent and I really liked them again here. The characterisation of David Tennant's Tenth Doctor was very good and I also thought that the Zoroniss was one weird creature. It almost looked to be an amalgamation of the Morbius Creature and a Titravore with the speech of an Ice Warrior! The way the Doctor challenged it was good and I liked how the Doctor was quite annoyed by it wanting destruction and death in similar ways to so many monsters before it. There were only a few pages featuring this trio before we headed to the rare pairing of just the Eleventh Doctor and Alice. With everything that has gone on with the Eleventh Doctor stories of DWC, it has been quite a rarity to have a story featuring just these two main characters so even if it was only just a few pages long, the brief showing was nice to say. I liked their conversation and the Doctor wanting to experience and admire history was fantastic. I really did like that and he was failing to understand why Alice didn't quite feel the same way about where they were. We then switched gears quickly to the Twelfth Doctor who was companionless, which probably helped for this story. I loved the reference to Selfie and he was rather disappointed to be back at another convention. It obviously wasn't a place he felt at home which is again rather ironic. The Doctor is perfect for comic-con and I did like the mention of the sonic screwdriver just being a fancy pen for his autographs. In this incarnation, I can't imagine the Doctor ever wanting to be seen getting an autograph. The Word-Rider that had been trapped inside him for over two regenerations was intriguing and I liked how it went some way to explaining the change in punctuation for the Doctor that we had seen in the previous pages of the story. It was just looking for a ride home and the Doctor was of course now able to provide that. It looked quite aggressive but that was not the case and we managed to have a happy ending which made a little change. Overall, a terrific little bonus comic adventure!

Rating: 9/10