As we brace ourselves for the new Doctor Who specials, the return of Sarah Jane Adventures, and Matt Smith’s first season, here’s a little gasoline to pour on the fan-fire – my take on the six top moments on Doctor Who.

6.
Quiet Time

There’s a great moment in the Doctor Who teevee movie, one
that we had rarely seen (if ever) in the original series: the Doctor, in this
case Doctor Seven, quietly sitting in the TARDIS in his comphy chair, reading a
book. Of course, drama being what it is he quickly gets, well, killed. Fatally.
And then begins a difficult regeneration into Doctor Eight. That wasn’t the
worst thing that confronted him: he had to face Eric Roberts as the Master. He,
and his series of proposed telemovies, was doomed.

5.
The Ears Have It

There’s this great moment in Rose, the first of Doctor
Nine’s shows where Christopher Eccleston stops the action when he crosses a
mirror in the TARDIS. He peers into the mirror, thinks he’s kind of good
looking, but he’s not too sure about those ears. In one stroke, Russell T.
Davies established the Doctor had just reincarnated and, therefore, the fight
that destroyed the other Time Lords had “just” happened (however one defines
“just” in time travel) while, at the same time, revealing quite a lot about this
new Doctor’s personality. Nice moment.

4.
The One and Phony Master

Stephen Moffat is the current Doctor Who showrunner and,
along with Davies, the most significant writer of the new series. But between
this series and the original, the BBC aired a wonderful “Doctor Who” episode
called The Curse of Fatal Death. It was a charity fundraiser ten years ago, a
brilliant parody, and the Who debut of writer Moffat. It featured no less than
five new Doctors – played, sequentially, by Rowan Atkinson, Richard E. Grant,
Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumley – and one stellar Master: the
gifted stage and film performer, Jonathan Pryce. Had one of those movie
projects ever gotten off the ground, he would have been perfect in the role and
might have given Delgado a run for his money. It isn’t easy being menacing in
such a broad parody, and it is to the credit of both Pryce and Moffat that it
comes off. (more…)

Christie’s auction house in London will be auctioning the 22-inch, well, action figure of King Kong used in the filming of the movie of the same name. In specific, the little guy was used in the Empire State Building scene at the end of the movie.

“Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes.”

Only the metal part (see right) survives; the cotton/rubber/latex/rabbit’s fur “clothing” rotted off years ago. The auction will happen around Thanksgiving; I’ll bet lots of well-heeled Hollywood moguls have aliases bidding on the trophy.

Congratulations, Mister President.

(No, before you ask, this is a mock up cover. Marvel is not going back to press with another variant cover. Yet.)

Jules Feiffer is known for his work as a graphic novelist, a cartoonist, a screenwriter, a novelist, and a playwright  – although among comics fans he is perhaps best known as Will Eisner’s long-time assistant on, and oft-time writer of, The Spirit. But in the outside world, he might very well be best known as the illustrator of Norton Juster’s children’s classic, The Phantom Tollbooth.

Now that a half century has passed, Feiffer and Juster are finishing up their second project together. Titled The Odious Ogre, it is scheduled to be released by Scholastic Books next year at this time.

Feiffer told Publisher’s Weekly he’s had a blast. “The one thing I will say is that, in relation to the
other characters, he is possibly the biggest ogre in captivity,”
Feiffer said. “He was great fun to draw, though—more fun for me than
for the ogre.” He did the illustrations in pen and ink
brush with colored markers, gouache “and anything else I could think
of. It’s my new way of working, which I love.”

Feiffer and Juster are planning their third collaboration for release in 2060.

The long-awaited graphic novel Hammer Of The Gods: Mortal Enemy
by Mike (Powers) Oeming and Mark Wheatley will be debuting at this week’s Baltimore Comic-Con. All three will be available at the Insight Studios booth, #1911.

Furthermore, the remaining 70 copies of the Lone Justice ashcan edition will also be available. Serialized here on ComicMix, Lone Justice will begin its ten-part run from IDW/ComicMix in December.

The Baltimore Comic-Con will be this Saturday and Sunday at the mammoth Baltimore Convention Center along the waterfront.

“We’ve received tremendous fan feedback from the online incarnation of Lone Justice: Crash, and I really enjoy the immediacy of it,” Wheatley said. “This ashcan is the first time any of this material will see print, and that brings an excitement all its own.” TInnell will also be at the Comic-Con, joining Oeming and Wheatley at the Insight Comics booth.

Lone Justice: Crash! is the second time Wheatley and Tinnell have teamed up for a ComicMix serialization. Their first effort, EZ Street, the tale of two creative brothers, was nominated for a Harvey Award. It also contained a comic-within-a-comic aspect, as it featured Lone Justice as one creation of its central characters. Despite the obvious connection between the tales, however, both graphic novels can be enjoyed entirely independently from the other.

Being a superhero isn’t just dangerous work, it’s also very expensive. Imagine a recession-era Batman without Bruce Wayne’s fortune or Iron Man without Tony’s Stark’s billions. Their respective crime-fighting enterprises would be very different – or perhaps all together grind to a halt – if their money was to simply disappear. Just like many Americans in the past year, that’s exactly what has happened to Lone Justice, the pulp-style action-adventure hero created by Wheatley (Breathtaker, Mars) and writer Robert Tinnell (Feast of the Seven Fishes, Sight Unseen). Our hero experienced the devastating financial loss of the Great Depression, but he didn’t lose his drive to keep fighting crime…regardless of the consequences.

“Given our title, Lone Justice: Crash!, it was difficult to resist calling this the Lone Justice: Crashcan, but life is confusing enough as it is,” Wheatley laughed. “So, c’mon by the booth and pick up of the Lone Justice: Crash! Ashcan!”