Titan Publishing Group — parent company to both Titan Books and Titan Comics — is a book and magazine publishing company which has enjoyed several different BBC Worldwide licenses to publish various DWU tie-in works.
In the 1990s, they published a number of Doctor Who scripts in the Doctor Who: The Scripts series, and thus gave fans their first glimpse at "official" versions of the scripts of some of the show's more popular serials, including the first publication of the unproduced script for The Masters of Luxor. These books were produced for the UK market but also received limited distribution in North America.
Torchwood
From 2008 to 2010, Titan published Torchwood The Official Magazine, featuring behind-the-scenes articles and original comic strips and short stories based on the spinoff. Publications spun-off from the magazine included a graphic novel compiling the story arc COMIC: Rift War and the hardcover publication Torchwood The Official Magazine Yearbook in 2008. As with the script books, the magazine and spin-off publications were primarily produced for the UK market but were imported to North America by speciality retailers.
From the summer of 2010 to early 2011, Titan's American branch published Torchwood: The Official Comic, which ran for six issues and reprinted most of the magazine's comic strips and short stories for North American audiences.[1] The first issue was cover-dated September 2010, but distributed in the summer. This comic was distributed in North America but not in the UK.
In issue #24 of Torchwood Magazine, Titan announced that due to BBC Worldwide realigning its promotions for Torchwood related to the 2011 broadcast of TV: Miracle Day, it was discontinuing publication of the magazine effective with issue #25. The US Torchwood comic was also cancelled before it was able to reprint all of the magazine's comic strips and short stories.
Titan once again began publishing Torchwood material with the advent of Torchwood (2016), a wholly original comic book.
Doctor Who comics
Titan returned to the Doctor Who franchise when it was announced in late 2013 that its American subsidiary had picked up the North American licence to publish original comics based upon Doctor Who after the expiry of IDW Publishing's contract with BBC Worldwide.[2]
Titan Comics then began their Doctor Who run in July of 2014 with the publication of Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor and Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, followed by the launch of Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor in October 2014.[3] Many issues of the second year of Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor featured the War Doctor instead of the Eleventh Doctor as the headlining Doctor. Doctor Who: The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor featured an original story with the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctor and a serialised story with those Doctors, which led into Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor.
All three series have been published concurrently in North American comic book shops, with digital editions available for purchase in Europe and the United States. In the United Kingdom, Doctor Who Comic, which had all three of these ongoing series inside, launched in February 2015. It was companioned by Doctor Who: Tales from the TARDIS, which reprinted miniseries stories, but eventually grew to print main series stories, succeeding Doctor Who Comic.
Titan released a limited-run five-issue series Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor (released April-December 2015) to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Ninth Doctor's first appearance in the episode Rose. A year later, it was renewed as an ongoing series. The Ninth Doctor miniseries was followed by similar five-issue miniseries Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor (released November 2015 - March 2016), Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor (released March-September 2016), Doctor Who: The Third Doctor (released September 2016 - February 2017) and Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor (released June - August 2018).
The ongoing Doctor Who comic books have crossed over in three miniseries events: Four Doctors in August - September 2015, Supremacy of the Cybermen in July - November 2016, and The Lost Dimension in August - October 2017. Titan has also published a few one-shots for special occasions: Free Comic Book Day 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 as well as San Diego Comic-Con specials in 2015, 2016, and 2017. The Twelfth Doctor also re-encountered Grant and Lucy Fletcher in Ghost Stories, a digital (later physical) comic miniseries from 2016 to 2017.
Titan Comics also republished IDW Doctor Who comic stories in The Tenth Doctor Archives, The Eleventh Doctor Archives, and Doctor Who Archives: Prisoners of Time.
List of series
Ongoing
- Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor (23 July 2014 - 7 March 2018)
- Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor (23 July 2014 - 10 January 2018)
- Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor (15 October 2014 - 14 March 2018)
- Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor (13 April 2016 - 9 August 2017)
- Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor (26 September 2018 - 20 May 2020)
- Doctor Who Comic (18 November 2020 - present)
Miniseries
- Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor (1 April - 2 December 2015)
- Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor (4 November 2015 - 16 March 2016)
- Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor (23 March - 28 September 2016)
- Doctor Who: The Third Doctor (14 September 2016 - 27 February 2017)
- Ghost Stories (26 December 2016 - 22 May 2017)
- Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor (6 June - 1 August 2018)
- Doctor Who: The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor (11 July - 12 September 2018)
- Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Holiday Special (13 November - 18 December 2019)
- Time Lord Victorious (2 September - 7 October 2020)
Summer events
- Four Doctors (19 August - 23 September 2015)
- Supremacy of the Cybermen (6 July - 16 November 2016)
- The Lost Dimension (30 August - 1 November 2017)