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Actually, Alan wrote a three-parter called "Invaders from Gantac!" in 1989...

--Grant

Incidentally, there's a wonderful site which archives all the Doctor's comic adventures through DWM #304.  It's in need of a big update to detail the strips from the last four years or so, but everything from "the good old days" is archived here...

--Grant

Link: http://www.strippingdown.co.uk" target="_blank">Doctor Who Stripping Down

Grant Morrison wrote the fanwankiest Doctor Who story ever for DWM in 1986 or 87.  It was called The World Shapers and it had the Sixth Doctor tracking down his old companion Jamie, who was now an old man, because the Doctor heard some weird reference to "Planet 14" and couldn't remember what it meant.  Jamie recalled that the Cyber Controller from "The Invasion" had recognized the two of them from "Planet 14."  So Jamie joins the Doctor, Peri and Frobisher in a trip to Marinus, the planet seen in a 1964 serial "The Keys of Marinus," where the alien Voord turn out to be the organic beings that first turn themselves into Cybermen and rename their planet Mondas.  Somehow or another this is Planet 14 and that's how the Cybermen know Jamie from their history.  Jamie doesn't live through the adventure.  All it's missing to keep it from total absolute fanwank is some Daleks and a team-up between K9 and Kamelion.

John Ridgway pencilled it, but somebody else (Tim Perkins?) inked it and his lines were way too heavy to do the art justice.  Still, it was an interesting approach, and the script was a little more structured than the Alan McKenzie approach from the earliest Sixth Doctor comics, which seemed to be "Take Drugs and Read Mother Goose Before Typing Script."

I can't wait for The Tides of Time collection to show up in American shops.  Those Fifth Doctor comics were fantastic from start to finish.  I mean, "Stockbridge Horror" or anything from season twenty?  Steve Parkhouse wins!

--Grant

The first of the last three DC/2000 AD books finally ships today.  That I won't be able to get to a comic shop for a couple of days is maddening.  It's the complete casefiles of Indigo Prime!

--Grant

Link: http://www.2000ad.org/thrillpower/rebellion.html" target="_blank">Touched by the Hand of Tharg

Isn't that article great?  I'm loathe to contribute a single word again until I see what Nicknack009's going to say next!

--Grant

"Why yes, Batman, that surplus submarine was sold to a Mister P.N. Guinn.  Yes, that's right.  Well, no, as a matter of fact, we don't have an address for Mister Guinn..."

Aw, I can't complain about the news running clips from the old TV show.  This is, actually, the best Batman film to not have Adam West in it!

Ooooh, nice!  Anything Titan can get out between the last DC/Rebellion book in July and the first not-DC/Rebellion book in October, I'll find a home for!

--Grant

Sounds like a great lineup, but whichever droid has the unenviable job of summing up The Avengers in only five pages has my sympathy!

--Grant

Brosnan passed away in early April.  There's a thread about it...

Link: http://www.2000adonline.com/?zone=fan&page=messagethread&choice=13603&Replies=24" target="_blank">Tharg loses a droid

Clive James summed up American TV in the late seventies, paraphrasing, like this: The problem with American TV is that, as bad as what we get it is, it's the best of what happens on American TV at night.  What happens on American TV at night is nothing like what happens during the day.  What happens on American TV during the day is like the end of the world.

The man knew what he was talking about...

--Grant

I don't know whether any of the US networks' made-for-TV movies starring Kellie Martin as a young girl in some kind of unbelievable trouble have made their way to the UK, but they're unmissably awful.  "The Girl on the Milk Carton" is just wild-beyond your-nightmares bad!  Channel-surf onto that and your're stuck.

"A Friend to Die For," "Hidden in Silence," "Her Last Chance," "If Someone Had Known"... she made about ten of these things in the mid-90s between the TV series Life Goes On and ER and I wouldn't miss a one.

--Grant

Read this Sunday morning.  Man, that was worth the wait.  What an amazing book.

--Grant

"Ron Smith appears to give up after the first page of his Rogue Trooper chores."

That would be the immortal splash page of Fr1day jumping away from an explosion while a off-screen word balloon says "Ho, ho!  Whacked 'im!", wouldn't it?

We disagree again, my friend.  Smith surrendered that strip without an argument before he even sharpened his pencil.

--Grant

Lobo suggested "Yeah, Fleisher always seemed to get decent artists - there's some stunning art in Junker, but actually finding it means wading through some truly atrocious script and plotting."

It also means wading through a lot of really subpar art, too.  Some of the "outer space" shots are pretty impressive, but Ridgway took way, way too many shortcuts on this one.  I can't blame the guy; since about a quarter of the panel descriptions must have read "REACTION SHOT: THREE CHARACTERS STAND, MOUTHS AJAR, SURPRISED," I don't know that I'd have bothered drawing anything but their heads either.  Seriously, there are panels with just the characters' heads, no bodies, and a bright red background.

--Grant