DWM colourised comic reprints
Doctor Who Magazine comic stories were published in black and white from 1979 to 2001. Since then, multiple publications have published colourised reprints up to the early Seventh Doctor comic stories.
Overview[[edit] | [edit source]]
The earliest endeavour to colourise DWM comic stories was in 1980 with Marvel Premiere, a US publication by Marvel Comics. With the first two stories covered in Marvel Premiere, Doctor Who (1984) continued publishing Fourth Doctor DWM stories in the United States. Cancelled in 1986, the series ended two stories short of completing the Fifth Doctor run.
That same year, Marvel to produce Doctor Who Marvel Adventure Comic as a free gift in multi-packs of Golden Wonder crisps. These Sixth Doctor stories were colourised but edited down in page count and some panels were altered to remove Peri Brown. A more complete attempt by Marvel to colourise Sixth Doctor stories came with Voyager, a 1989 graphic novel coving his early stories.
In 1992, Marvel UK set out to reprint Doctor Who comics from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s for a British audience. This publication included select stories by Polystyle Publications, Ltd. and DWM up to 1994. The first part of Evening's Empire was published in 1991 but faced delays and was not finished in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine. Two years later, the full story was colourised and published in DWCC Autumn Holiday Special.
Three select Seventh Doctor stories were colourised for The Incomplete Death's Head, a 1993 reprint publication of Death's Head stories including these pertinent Doctor Who crossovers.
In 1993, Virgin Books became the first publisher other than Marvel to print colourised DWM comics with The Mark of Mandragora, their only graphic novel release.
Interest in classic DWM stories would not return until 2005 with the BBC Wales era of the show. IDW Publishing licensed reprints of DWM stories for Doctor Who Classics which ran from 2007 until 2013, when IDW lost the Doctor Who license. Also from IDW was Grant Morrison's Doctor Who, a two-issue publication covering three DWM stories by Grant Morrison. IDW published these colourised reprints in nine volumes and two omnibi. This was the most ambitious reprint project, colorizing all DWM stories from the Fourth Doctor until the early Seventh Doctor.
The end result of these overlapping publications was some comics being colourised twice or even three times, leading to inconsistencies in the colour used for certain characters like Beep the Meep.
Stories colourised three times include: Doctor Who and the Star Beast, Timeslip, Spider-God, The Neutron Knights, The Tides of Time, Stars Fell on Stockbridge, The Stockbridge Horror, The Shape Shifter, Voyager (parts 4-5), Once Upon a Time Lord, and Revelation! / Genesis!.
