DWM backup comic stories

In the early days of Doctor Who Magazine, short backup comic stories appeared in addition to the issue's main story. These strips typically did not include the Doctor other than as a "presenter", and tended to focus on other characters within the wider Doctor Who universe. Most backup comic stories were published prior to 1982, and so were printed in issues that otherwise featured the Fourth Doctor.

The term "DWM backup comic story" does not actually designate a formalised series. There was never a masthead featuring the term, and there was no particular consensus as to which strips could be considered "backups".

On this wiki, the term means any strip appearing in any issue of DWM or its predecessors which:

• is set in the DWU
• doesn't feature the Doctor, or at least doesn't use him as the main protagonist
• isn't clearly a part of the main strip's narrative
• has no other series name
• is original to the pages of DWM

Therefore, strips under the Tales from the TARDIS or The Cybermen banners, or Dalek Chronicles reprints are not covered by this article. Also not considered here are the occasional stories which are integral to the main strip's narrative, like Darkness, Falling, Me and My Shadow and Unnatural Born Killers.

Early history

Because the format of Doctor Who Weekly originally included a greater concentration of comic strips, the magazine's comic staff was initially comprised of two creative teams. One group — Dave Gibbons, Pat Mills and John Wagner — was assigned to the "main" strip. This was the strip that was often featured on early covers and involved the Fourth Doctor.

It then fell to another team — initially Alan Moore, Steve Moore and David Lloyd — to make strips that didn't involve the Doctor. These tended to feature well-known villains, such as the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans and others. During this period, the Doctor often served as "host" of the stories, appearing in the opening and closing frames as a kind of narrator. Though many of the individual characters slipped into obscurity, the series did produce at least a couple of stand-outs. Both Abslom Daak and Kroton originated in the backups, but went on to be used in the main strip.

Appearing regularly through issue 59, the strip was initially absent in DWM #60, and was effectively cancelled after The Fires Down Below in DWM #64. Secondary stories that appeared thereafter were not original, but rather reprints from TV Century 21 or, more rarely, TV Comic.

Latter day "backups"

Disregarding "special issues" of DWM, non-Doctor stories were incredibly rare after 1982. In fact, the next time a non-Doctor story appeared in a regular issue of DWM was in issue 183's Conflict of Interests —with the next occasion over a hundred issues after that.

These latter-day stories generally didn't fit the mould of a "backup story", however, in that they were the only comic story in the issue. Thus, they weren't so much "backups" as the main story of the issue. Nevertheless, because there are so few of this kind of story, this wiki has simply elected to consider them the thematic heirs of the early 1980s stories.

List

DWM	Title	Featuring	Collected In
1-4	The Return of the Daleks	Daleks
5-7	Throwback: The Soul of a Cyberman	Cybermen, Kroton
8	The Final Quest	Sontarans
9-11	The Stolen TARDIS	Gallifreyans
12	K9's Finest Hour	K9
13-14	Warlord of the Ogrons	Ogrons
15-16	Deathworld	Ice Warriors, Cybermen
17-20	Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer	Abslom Daak, Daleks
21-22	Twilight of the Silurians	Silurians
23-24	Ship of Fools	Kroton
25-26	The Outsider	Sontarans
27-30, 44-46	Star Tigers	Abslom Daak, Daleks
31-34	Yonder... The Yeti	Robot Yeti
35-38	Black Legacy	Cybermen
40-43	Business as Usual	Autons
47	Star Death	Rassilon, Time Lords
48	Touchdown on Deneb-7	K9

• 49: Voyage to the Edge of the Universe

Azal

• 50: Crisis on Kaldor

Sandminer robots

• 51: 4-D War

Time Lords

• 56: The Greatest Gamble

The Celestial Toymaker

• 57: Black Sun Rising

Time Lords

• 58: DWMS Winter 1981: Skywatch-7

A Zygon

• 59: The Gods Walk Among Us

A Sontaran

• DWMS Winter 1981: Tales of the Time Lords: Minatorius

Time Lords

• 61: Devil of the Deep

A Sea Devil

• 64: The Fires Down Below

UNIT, Dominators and Quarks

• DWMS Summer 1982: The Fabulous Idiot

Ivan Asimoff

• DWMS Summer 1982: A Ship Called Sudden Death

The Freefall Warriors

• DWMS Holiday 1992: City of Devils

Sarah Jane Smith, K9 and the Silurians

• 183: Conflict of Interests

Foreign Hazard Duty and Sontarans

• 249-254: Return of the Elders

A continuation of The Dalek Chronicles

• 311: Character Assassin

The Master in the Land of Fiction

• 475-476: The Crystal Throne

The Paternoster Gang