Forum:Who's 60? and WHOAH! (revisted)

Index → The Panopticon → Who's 60? and WHOAH! (revisted)

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Opening

A little less bigger on the inside

The first subject of our thread today is Who's 60?, a book published in early 2023 by Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett via Viking Press Comics. As the back cover advertises, for Doctor Who's 60th Anniversary, Quinn and Howett return to the wacky parallel universe of the old Doctor Who? gag strips to take a look at the new Doctors and share some of their favourite old strips.

The book is a bit meh, with its claim of "looking at the new Doctors" bordering on straight-up false advertising, but let's focus on the question at hand:

Is this thing licensed?

Looking at the copyright page yields no mention of the BBC, but it does credit the rights to Quinn and Howett (in accordance the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988). Whether or not this makes the book coverable to us is not something I can be confident in knowing.

WHOAH there, buddy!

Discussing this issue behind the scenes with Scrooge got me thinking back on another, similar book that I handled the coverage of a few years back: Whoah! - a compilation book of Jamie Lenman's gag series, Doctor Whoah!

Not only was I able to use the book as a reference for every past strip already published in DWM, but I also fully covered the previously-unpublished strips that were in there as a neat extra.

However, my current doubt the of the DW? book got me wondering whether or not this book was ever eligible for coverage to begin with for the same reasons.

The contents of this book are credited to Lenman and Panini Publishing. It goes on to thank Doctor Who Magazine and Panini themselves for helping in the creation of the book. Does that make it licensed collection? WaltK ☎ 23:39, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

Whoah! is a Miwk product which we've historically considered a trusted publisher as far as coverage goes. They've done a few behind-the-scenes focused Who books but most notably they published It's Even Bigger on the Inside, the (main) collection of Quinn & Howett's DWM stuff. Both books feature specific credits to Panini and Doctor Who Magazine. I'm very confident we can consider these "safe" for full coverage.

Who's 60?, on the other hand, absolutely screams unlicensed to me, at least for the new material. There's a reason I never touched it while going through Doctor Who? for the wiki. It's from a publisher we don't cover anything else by and there are no credits to DWM or Panini but the obvious thing to mention is its content. It features a non-parodic short story which sees Susan attempting to avert John Lennon's death (to no avail) in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination as well as a one-page strip which would be the comic debut of the Fifteenth Doctor which sees Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse join him as companions after Disney takes over. --Borisashton ☎ 21:37, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure Dr Who meeting characters from other IPs means much since it happened at least a few times in official DWM strips. The serious short story does seem bizarre... I have the book somewhere, I'd look through to give my proper opinions, but I can't seem to find it. Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 21:50, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Although, if there's a serious story in it, wouldn't that need a license to be released commercially? I don't know much about copyright, but that doesn't seem like it'd be protected by being a parody if it... isn't a parody. Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 21:52, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I only mentioned the Mickey/Donald detail as a bit of context for the story's content. We'd cover the story even if they weren't licensed (they weren't). Its huge red flag is the presence of 15 in light of the lack of BBC/DWM credits.--Borisashton ☎ 22:24, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Arguably the premise of "the sweet teen-girl character from a 60s family drama tries to prevent the murder of John Lennon" may constitute parody in the legally-relevant sense, as an edgy deconstruction type of thing, even if it's not conventionally "funny" (or Rule 4-failing). Certainly Q&H and their publisher may have thought so. Overall I agree we shouldn't touch Who's 60 but that the Whoah book seems fine. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 16:36, 27 November 2024 (UTC)