The next Doctor Who comic is Empire of the Wolf, a miniseries launching in November that teams up the Eleventh and Eighth Doctors with Rose Tyler. In a New York Comic Con panel moderated by Andrew Sumner, Executive Vice President at Titan Publishing, writer Jody Houser, late-joining colorist Warnia K. Sahadewa, and editor Jake Devine discussed the upcoming comic.
The Eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith, was the one who broke big in the US, while the Eighth, played by Paul McGann, starred in a TV movie 25 years ago that was supposed to launch the property in America. According to Devine, the two Doctors have never met in the comics before (but he continued, “Someone correct me if I’m wrong.”).
Houser, observing that it was “hard to talk about without spoiling too much”, stated that the “name gives away a little bit” and plugged “the return of Rose Tyler, maybe even more than one Rose Tyler.” In the previous crossover, also written by Houser and illustrated by Roberta Ingranata, the Tenth and Thirteenth Doctors visited an alternate earth taken over by Sea Devils, where a version of Rose was a resistance fighter. Houser noted that in a way, this is the story of what happened to that Rose Tyler.
She also pointed out that the Empire of the Wolf Doctors are “the Doctor from before [Rose] came along, and the Doctor after she left.” (She did point out that that ignores the War Doctor.) To Houser, Rose Tyler is iconic “because she helped introduce a new era of Doctor Who… more than companions usually are, she was an audience surrogate.”
About halfway through the panel, colorist Sahadewa joined the panel from Indonesia. She talked about her approach to coloring and some of her influences.
There’s only so long you can talk about an upcoming comic you don’t want to spoil, and so conversation turned to which character the two would like to work on. Houser chose River Song, who had a cameo in Doctor Who: Missy, and Donna, who was probably her favorite companion. Devine chose the Ninth Doctor, the first Doctor he watched. Devine also noted that it was great to have a “huge universe, with so many characters and Doctors to play with” and that the BBC were great to work with.
Additional discussion of which time period the creators would like to visit and some general notes about working in comics wrapped up the 35-minute panel.
Doctor Who: Empire of the Wolf #1 (of 4) arrives in stores in November.
Miss any of our other NYCC ’21 coverage? Click here to check it out!
