Looking back in my files, my first WHO piece for IDW is timestamped February 11th, 2009, so it's been four years working off and on with a character that has loomed large in my life since the first time I watched Doctor Who in 1977.
Anyone who knows me knows that there's a part of my brain that is always thinking about Doctor Who. Both as a fan and as a comic book creator. The show is one of the biggest influences on my creative interests and my creative approach. It's a key piece of my creative DNA and informs everything I've done as an artist and as a writer.
I've told the story of how I squealed like a little girl who got a pony for Christmas on the phone when Denton Tipton from IDW called and asked if I'd be interested in drawing an arc in their new Doctor Who ongoing title. It was in part because of the first WHO piece I did for them, an inventory cover that led the BBC's art approval person to say, "Too bad it's just a cover."
Four years later, and I've drawn more Doctor Who than I could have imagined. More than other American. And I've even gotten to write some WHO comic book stories of my own, including a special 50th Anniversary comic that the BBC included in their big Blu Ray collection of the first seven series.
It wasn't always a smooth road, and there were times I'm sure Denton wanted to throttle me for being too precious with my work, too slow, too opinionated about WHO stories, too... well, too much of a WHO fan and not enough of a professional. There was even a time I decided to step away from WHO to focus on my own projects and develop my writing career.
That didn't last long. It was only a matter of time before Denton found the right carrot to bring me back in the IDW WHO fold, a series of covers featuring one of my favorite classic Doctors, Sylvester McCoy.
And once he had me back in the fold, Denton kept me on the hook with things like the anniversary story for the BBC boxset until handing me my last assignment, the 11th Doctor issue of their year long 50th Anniversary maxi-series, Prisoners of Time.
It's been an amazing run, and I'm sorry to see come to an end. I've always thought IDW handled WHO well. They gave it the respect and effort that few licensed comics receive from publishers. And I'm thrilled I got to be a part of it.
I don't know where the WHO license will go next. So far, all we have are rumors. But if I never get a chance to write or draw Doctor Who again, I can learn to live with the stack of work I got to do for IDW. As a little kid sitting watching Doctor Who with my older brother, I would never have believed I would grow up to draw and write the character. It's been a dream come true.
Thanks as always to Ted Adams, Chris Ryall and Denton Tipton at IDW for helping make it happen, and to my many collaborators on WHO over the years, including Tony Lee, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Len Wein, Mitch Gerads, Charlie Kirchoff, Horacio Domingues, Rubén González and Phil Elliott.
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