Dr. Who's Time Tales (comic series)

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Dr. Who's Time Tales was a regular feature of early editions of Doctor Who Weekly from issue 30 to 43, excluding issue 38. Each comic featured the Fourth Doctor telling, introducing, and concluding a time tale, in reality a reformatted version of a comic strip that was created for other US Marvel Comics titles. In addition to the addition of an opening narration by the Doctor, multiple other alterations were often made to the text of the stories, changing character names or settings.

Like Tales from the TARDIS, which Time Tales replaced, this was used by editor Dez Skinn as cheaply-produced filler material for the magazines. In contrast to Tales from the TARDIS, however, the Time Tales were short, one-part stories rather than serialised. The titles of the original American stories were additionally not retained, either on the title page or in the table of contents.

While the Tales from the TARDIS were adaptations of classic works of science-fiction literature, the Marvel stories selected to be refitted into Time Tales were generally original short narratives. In many cases, they appeared to be selected due to gaining newfound resonance if considered as events in the Doctor Who universe: for example, the first featured a sarcophagus used as a portal between eras, echoing the one used a few years prior on television in Pyramids of Mars, while the fourth ended with an ambiguous force (easily reinterpreted as the Time Lords) destroying a hubristic human time-traveller's time machine and erasing his memory of his adventures in time, coincidentally echoing The War Games.

Original print details[[edit] | [edit source]]

# Story[1] Story pagecount Original version's release DWM issue
1 (Man in the Mummy Case!) 5 pages Amazing Fantasy #15 DWM 30
2 (Those Who Change) 5 pages Amazing Adult Fantasy #10 DWM 31
3 (The Frightened Man!) 6 pages Tales to Astonish #33 DWM 32
4 (I Saw the End of the World) 5 pages Strange Tales #73 DWM 33
5 (I Dared to Defy Merlin's Black Magic) 5 pages Strange Tales #71 DWM 34
6 (Put Another Nickel In!!!) 7 pages Chamber of Darkness #6 DWM 35
7 (Always Leave 'Em Laughing!) 7 pages Chamber of Darkness #1 DWM 36
8 (Gundar!) 5 pages Tales of Suspense #39 DWM 37
9 (A Thousand Years Later...) 6 pages Strange Tales #90 DWM 39
10 (I Took A Journey Into Fear!) 5 pages Journey into Mystery #63 DWM 40
11 (Forever is a Long Long Time!!) 5 pages Journey into Mystery #74 DWM 41
12 (I Must Enter the Tomb of Tut-Am-Tut) 6 pages Tales of Suspense #35 DWM 42
13 (When the Switch is Pulled...) 5 pages Journey Into Mystery #89 DWM 43

Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  1. Placeholder titles derived from the original Marvel releases.