Project;TIME-STALKERS, INC: July 2012

Charlton Comics might've been considered the "last resort" for many comics pros and fans, but they also helped launch some pretty stellar careers. Steve Ditko. Dick Giordano. Steve Skeates. Denny O'Neil. Jim Aparo. Pat Boyette. Joe Staton. Don Newton. Mike Zeck. And of course, John Byrne. Byrne had proven himself a passionate, talented, and dependable artist on his Rog2000 back-ups in E-Man and on the second issue ofWheelie and the Chopper Bunch. His hard work and dedication was rewarded by Charlton's head writer Joe Gill (a supremely-talented writer who deserves a lot of time here --and will be getting it, just you wait!) tapping Byrne for the art chores on Doomsday +1.No one liked charlton Comics and you can see why?I first,discovered John Byrne and this Charlton winner,not at any comic stand,but heapped in a pile of poorly selling CharltoN publications.All their booked smelled funny.Perfumy.Later,I'd find why.Charlton printed their books nightly,on the same printing presses used to print coloring books.I told my brother,I discovered this new comic artist,John Byrne,doing one of those shitty Charlton Books.I brother thought,maybe he'll improve the book or move on to better things.I wasn't surprised Doomsday Plus One bombed and John Byrne went onto Marvel.Too bad Doomsday isn't get the energy and thought,the X-Men got later on.

Sci-fi was enjoying with a bit of success in the mid-70s, with post-apocalyptic sci-fi being the favorite flavor (Planet of the Apes' influence was only eclipsed by Star Wars back in the Groovy Age), so it was only a matter of time before Charlton unleashed their own end-of-the-world mag. Gill originally intended for Joe Staton to draw the first issue, then hand the artistic reins over to the newcomer from Canada. Realizing the idea was really kinda jive, he changed his mind and let Byrne draw the debut ish,Infact,the only thing really remarkable about this series,is that John Byrne drew the dammed series.Not always a fan of Mister Byrnes writting,but surely whatever,he might have come up with would have 99%,better than anything this Nick Cuti could have done.The first issue,had the kind of junky writting most hacks come up with,trying to quickly move along a series of bad plot points and Doomsday Plus One,Doomsday Squade as it was later called in reprints by Fantagraphics
John Byrne dosen't look foundly on this silly,written comic.No wonder,one thing,you can tell about Nick Cuti,he wasn't one of comics giant talents.The books was full of bad plot points,to move the series along until,thankfully,it ended.The series,should be called Doomsday plus,no sales.

.The comic was very silly and do not think John Byrne looks on anything more than an early comic job.
Byrne really earned his $50 a page (for pencils, inks, and letters) on DD+1, even going so far as to rewrite (with Gill's permission) every issue from #2 on. Charlton had a minor hit, as well as a new super-star artist, on their hands. They managed to squeeze out six sensational issues (April 1975-February, 1976) before Marvel and Iron Fist came calling, allowing Byrne's legendary career taking off to heights few have (or perhaps ever will) reach. In fact, when Byrne's career took off into the stratosphere while he was drawing the X-Men for Marvel, Charlton reprinted all six issues of DD+1 (March, 1978-February, 1979).

I'm sure Byrne, himself, would cringe looking back at his early work on the strip (don't we all kinda flake out when we look back on some of our old days?), but you can sure see a solid, if still raw, talent at work. Some pages (like the outer space shot on page 7, the charge/death of the woolly mammoth on pages 13-14, and the Boyd/Kuno battle on page 16) are so outta sight they still take Ol' Groove's breath away. Here it is! Doomsday +1 #1 by Gill and Byrne! Get ready to rock(-et) Groove-ophiles!

~mavericstud9

Doctor Who?
Exactly.

You fans forget,there was a time,when the Doctor was really known as Doctor Who and not simply the Doctor.Check the Peter Cunning movies and credits of the early series,and you'll see him listed as such.I think the series made the mistake way back not going with this.It set up allot of silly writting from then on.The Doctor should have been a character with a past,a name and other members of the "Who Family''.
I'VE watched nearly ever episode,plus the two Peter Cunning movies-some do not feel is cannon.Being that,nothing really matter,but Doctor Who and his Tardis,nothing in the intire series is cannon-so why include the movies as well

As played by Hartnell, The Doctor was a crotchety old man who'd been stranded in 1963 while trying to repair his time machine, the TARDIS. Susan, his granddaughter, was attending school, and two of her teachers became curious about her extensive knowledge of some subjects and her total ignorance of others. They followed her one evening and found her "home" was a police telephone call box sitting in a junkyard, a police box which was bigger inside than out. They were further alarmed when The Doctor, fearing that they'd tell their friends about the amazing things they'd seen, decided they could not be allowed to leave, and set his TARDIS in motion.

Beyond,we learn nothing really about him until the end of the William Hartnell eras successor.

When schoolteachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright meet the grandfather of student Susan Foreman, they see him as a crotchety old man with secrets to hide. While they gradually learn more about The Doctor, neither he nor Susan tells them the truth of their origins, and on occasion.

The Doctor actually misleads them into believing that he's human (The Keys of Marinus, The Sensorites). At this stage The Doctor seems concerned with getting home (primarily for Susan's sake, since he rarely mentions it after she leaves).Actually,despite some fans will tell you,at this point,if also watch the movies,Doctor Who,infact might have thought of by the shows then producers,as a human character.P

Well, twelve if we count the great Peter Cushing, whose portrayal of the character in two movies is a footnote in the history of Who.

The movies, Dr. Who and the Daleks in 1965 and the awkwardly titled seque lDaleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. in 1966, are brushed off as not part of the television series continuity because they stray from the established canon. It was based on the second season of the British television series, and as is often the case when films adapt content from other sources, changes were made. In the films, the nameless alien Time Lord is actually a human being, born on Earth, whose last name happens to really be "Who." The relationship to his companion becomes a familial connection, and the TARDIS time machine becomes an invention that Dr. Who created. (The killer Dalek robots are as menacing as ever in all their cheesy goodness.).This was actually,my introduction to the character.When the Pertwee version,aired on Satureday morning for a time in the 1970's,I thought that he was just an extention of these movie.I had no knowledge of William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton.Tom Baker,although perhaps played the UK.but not here.I surprised to find out the Doctor was from another planet.Watching the movies,was long before the American explosion of Tom Bakers Doctor.If you were ignorant to Doctor Who,as I was,you'd the Doctor was just another fictional character,portrayed other actors,like Tarzan or James Bond.

Watching the films, I can understand that they do not fit with the established premise of the television series, but I side with those who still accept the Cushing portrayal as a possible "alternate universe" version of the good Doctor, rather than just pretending that it never happened. It's Peter Cushing after all!

The Doctor never completely loses the arrogance that he initially displays to his new companions, but as their adventures continue his attitude gradually mellows as he learns what Susan already knows, that even ordinary humans have admirable qualities. He learns to respect and admire both teachers, and they come to consider him a friend.

Many of their early adventures are the result of The Doctor's desire for knowledge, and it's only later, as he is influenced by his human companions, that he begins to act for more compassionate reasons.

Susan Foreman,no one knows is really the Doctors real granddaughter or just someone he adopted and called her such.If she really was the Doctor's Grandaughter,then somebody,his possibly married somebody with the last name of Foreman .Or was it just a name the Doctor listed off the junkyard wall.We are never told anything for sure.

After Susan leaves, he welcomes the orphaned Vicki warmly, and treats her as a surrogate granddaughter. When Barbara and Ian finally find a way home he's reluctant to let them leave, and attempts to hide his feelings, but though he realizes that he'll miss them, he's happy that they return safely. More companions join and leave The Doctor through the rest of this incarnation, and he treats them all with this same mixture of bluster and compassion.

Two companions die during an attempted Dalek conquest, and for a time he seems reluctant to interfere further in the course of history, but events convince him that he cannot stand by when there is evil to be defeated. After this his resolve seems firm again, even when the actions he takes against the Cybermen exhaust him, and force him to regenerate for the first time.

But perhaps most surprising element in this first age of Doctor Who, is that Susan is his grand daughter. Now over the years, some have wondered whether Susan was actually one of his biological family, mainly as we have got so used to the Doctor appearing as an asexual figure for most of his fictional life. But she clearly is as it is Susan and not the Doctor that gives us our first description of their home world with it’s orange skies and silver trees. And when she is time scooped to the Death Zone on Gallifrey in the multi-Doctor team up story The Five Doctors, she clearly knows exactly where she is.

However it should also be noted that throughout these early years, neither their home planet or their race are ever named. At first it is not even clear if they are aliens, the Doctor describes themselves as ‘exiles’ and ‘wanderers in the fourth dimension’. The serials hint at a back-story but never reveal anything substantial other than the fact that the Doctor and Susan are not from Earth. Although production notes and other behind-the-scenes apocrypha mention that the original background for the characters was that they were forced to flee their home world due to a terrible galactic war, none of these elements made it into the finished scripts. However, before you continuity junkies leap to connect this background with the more recent tales of the Time War, it must be noted that later stories sketched in a different genesis for the Doctor’s travels, but more on that later…

Plus there’s no mention of Time Lords possessing two hearts and the Doctor is frequently mistaken for human by alien scanners. Now this has lead to a school of thought, developed in the various ranges of Who novels, that Time Lords only gain a second heart after their first regeneration. However whether the Hartnell Doctor is actually the first incarnation is a matter of some debate which we will also be getting to later.

Now although this pair of movies have entertained generations of children through their countless TV reruns - they are as much a regular fixture of holiday television in the UK as Ray Harryhausen flicks - they are not considered to be part of the Doctor Who universe proper. (Although there are many fan theories to link them into the canon.) However the Cushing Doctor definitely counts for both our questions.

Obviously Cushing counts as another actor in the role but he also counts as an extra incarnation. As his Doctor is human rather Time Lord, the Cushing version isn’t just another actor in the role as the First Doctor. Although he is appearing an adaptation of a First Doctor story, strictly speaking Cushing can only be The Doctor - as he is human he cannot regenerate and hence there will be no Second Doctor. So logically he should be considered a parallel universe incarnation rather than an alternate performance.

However, just to confuse matters further, the First Doctor was played by another actor other than William Hartnell…

THE FIRST DOCTOR - SLIGHT RETURN

For the show’s twentieth anniversary in 1983, it was decided that a feature length special would be made. And taking their lead from the 10th anniversary story The Three Doctors, it was decided to do another multi-Doctor adventure. However there were a couple of problems - for a start, Fourth Doctor Tom Baker wasn’t keen on returning to a role so soon after leaving, and more importantly William Hartnell had passed away.

The first problem was easily fixed with using some unused footage from the unfinished story Shada and conveniently trapping the Fourth Doctor and Romano in a time loop for most of the story. As for the second missing Time Lord, by chance producer Jon Nathan Turner ran into actor Richard Hurndall, and was struck by his similarity to Hartnell. And so it was decided to include the First Doctor in the story with Hurndall taking over the role.

Now as for Mr Hurndall’s resemblance to Hartnell, some people see it while others think it a similar situation as Ed Wood seeing Lugosi in his chiropractor. Yes,and perhaps the BBC could answer the idiotic members of Doctor Who fandom,by creating resurrection technology to bring back William Hartnell.to play Doctor Who once again.Infact,why not just build a real Tardis and have the eternal William Hartnell play the Doctor until the end of time.And although it’s fair to say that Hurndall only superficially resembles Hartnell in appearance, in terms of his performance he is his double. He has the First Doctor’s mannerisms and intonation down pat, and indeed several of the guest stars who had worked with Hartnell praised his performance, with Carole Ann Ford (Susan) describing it the experience as positively uncanny.

Even though they witnessed his regeneration, Polly and Ben have trouble believing that the scruffy-looking stranger who's now in charge of the TARDIS is really The Doctor. Like his predecessor, The Second Doctor has an insatiable curiosity and a wide range of knowledge, but it often seems as if that's all they have in common. This Doctor usually hides his wisdom behind a comical veneer and is content to have people underestimate him. He rarely volunteers information without being asked, and when he does it often seems to bear no relation to the problem at hand, at least at first glance. While he has great affection for his companions, he is not above manipulating them if it suits his purposes. He has very little patience with, or respect for, authority and is certainly the most anarchistic of all the incarnations. The Second Doctor rarely engages in violence, preferring to let his male companions handle the action. He seems more certain than any incarnation except The Seventh Doctor that it is both his duty and his right to interfere, and he takes great pleasure in doing so. Like all of his incarnations he is a tireless champion of good, battling a wide variety of menaces. He's responsible for the end, at least temporarily, of the evils of the Daleks and the Cybermen. This Doctor spends little time in the past, and rarely mentions encounters with historical figures. He spends much of this incarnation protecting humanity, either on Earth itself, as in his battles against the Great Intelligence and the Cybermen, or on other worlds, where he protects Earth's people as they voyage out into the universe. This is never more apparent than in his last adventure, in which he must save thousands of human soldiers from an evil fathered by one of his own people. When it becomes obvious that he must call on the Time Lords for help, he does not hesitate to do so, and he then makes a passionate defense for the actions he's taken during his wanderings. His punishment for his transgressions is an enforced change of appearance, and exile among the very people he's spent so much time protecting.

To pave the way for this change in the show's format, The Invasion introduced the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, a paramilitary group commanded by Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, which had been formed to combat alien menaces. In Troughton's final story, The War Games, the audience learned that The Doctor was a fugitive from his own people, the Time Lords, who had left his home planet, in part because he wanted to take an active role in a universe which the other Time Lords were content merely to observe. As punishment for his interference in the affairs of others, the Time Lords exiled The Doctor to Earth in the latter half of the 20th century, and caused him to change his appearance again.

The Third Doctor ,played Jon Pertwee spent much of his time helping UNIT battle a variety of menaces, including the Silurians, the Sea Devils, the Autons, the Sontarans, and most importantly, another renegade Time Lord known as The Master, a former friend of The Doctor who would become his greatest single adversary. In contrast to his predecessors, The Third Doctor was a man of action, a characterization which reflected Pertwee's own interests. This Doctor was as likely to defeat his enemies with exotic martial arts or swordplay as he was to outwit them. He dressed in a flamboyant style, and was fond of fast vehicles and fine food and drink. He also suffered fools even less gladly than the previous Doctors.Far as I'm concerned,Pertwee's Doctor was infact the first,true Doctor.He's the one,who arrived fully as a reginade Time Lord.Despite,what you will read elsewhere,with the series format the Doctor wasn't really a Time Lord until the end of Troughton's Era.Hartnell never portrey the Doctor was anything but an old,scientist-possibly an old,Victorian era scientist,with a time machine,that looked like a blue Police Box.His Doctor was infact refered in the credits as Doctor Who and used such as an onrunning joke.I'm the Doctor,he'd say.Someone would respond ''Doctor.Doctor Who ?And he'd say exactly-as inside joke,we all knew who he was,just by reading the series title

Perhaps as a way of reassuring himself that his exile wouldn't last forever, he delighted in mentioning historical figures and events he'd been involved with. Following The Three Doctors, an adventure in which he and his earlier incarnations preserved the power of the Time Lords, The Doctor's sentence of exile was rescinded. Although he enjoyed his new freedom, The Doctor continued to work with UNIT on a regular basis until the end of Pertwee's run in 1974.

My point here is that we learn bits and pieces about him,but nothing concrere.Despite knowing where and came from and a few actor gimmicks,added to incarnation,we know about as much about Who Doctor Who really is in the very first episode.We hear bit about some family member or something,but nothing concrete.No father.No mother,who might be an earth woman.No brother or sister.No real grandaughter or grandson.For that matter,no real son or daughter.A clone derived his cells dosin't count.Over its lifespan there we're multiple Doctors in a similar way to there being multiple 007s, its more a title than an actual person.It's not a fully drawn out character-not like James Bond,was as presented by Ian Flemming.Dr Who is one fo my favorite shows of all time.

It's a British show though, so it's more about humor and wit than action and special effects.The humor,often overides the poor or limitted special effects-although the new series,seems to gone away with limitted magic cam budget.Sometimes,the humor saves us having to get through a bad story.The Doctor always has a human assistant or two who he has to explain everything to, and they're usually female in nature-keeping with tend started with Susan,way in the beginning). The doctors vary in personality, but are usually witty or whimsical, the latest both sarcasticly humourous.

So in the end,as a complete character-fully realized we nothing about Doctor Who.Apsolutely nothing.Except Doctor Who was nothing more than the BBC's version of George Pal's 1961 version of H.G.Wells novel the Time Machine.Too bad.No way with the limitted knowledge of the character,could someone piece together a fictional biography like is done for James Bond,Tarzan,Doc Savage and othrers.

So much for hats,flutes,yo-yo's and scarffs.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Byrne-ing to Read: Doomsday +1 #1

Doomsday +1 #3 - John Byrne art & cover

Doomsday +1 #3 - John Byrne art & cover

Doomsday +1 #3 - John Byrne art & cover

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Doomsday +1 #3 - John Byrne art & cover

Doomsday +1 #2 - John Byrne art & cover

Doomsday +1 #2 - John Byrne art & cover

Monday, July 16, 2012

TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2009

Time Tunnel

1 comment:

Sunday, July 1, 2012

So who the hell really is Doctor Who ?

Project;TIME-STALKERS, INC

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