Tardis:Comics and spoilers

Spoiler policy Official releases → Where spoilers are allowed → Ways you can avoid spoilers → What is not a spoiler → Comics and spoilers

Because comics are published over the course of months, there are special rules that apply to them.

Shortcut:

T:COMIC SPOIL

Comic stories are somewhat of a special case, in that an article may be started before the entirety of such a story is published. We realise that a six-part Doctor Who Magazine story takes six months to publish, and that it would be unreasonable to stop an article being written for that long. So we allow the publication of such a story. After all, there are multi-part televised stories, and we allow each individual episode to have a page before the entire story has been broadcast.

However, extreme care must be taken not to go beyond what has transpired in the story as currently published. Because mutli-issue comic stories frequently have cliffhangers like in serials, you should be aware of the high percentage of times those cliffhangers are used to misdirect the reader. It is often a safer course of action to wait until the story has been completely published before starting articles about the narrative elements. If you choose to start an article about a narrative element before the story is fully published, you should find a way to write about your subject without assuming that the story is telling you the full truth. Phrases like:

• according to Character X…
• in the opinion of Character B…
• at the time that such and such happened, Character C opined…

help to protect against surprises when the next instalment is published.

Taking early parts of a comic story at face value is often a very unwise idea, as comic writers delight in telling lies that will sell issues. You must be very careful. Think about most of the good televised cliffhangers. If this wiki had been going when The Caves of Androzani premiered, we could potentially have written that the Fifth Doctor and Peri got shot by a firing squad — something that never actually happened. This sort of total misdirection happens at the conclusion of almost every instalment of modern comic stories.

For this reason, it's probably best if you do not ascribe any certainty to anything contained in a comic cliffhanger until the story is completely published.