Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week - beginning with two Award postings, followed closely by the past week’s Best.

With Matt Smith’s farewell so fresh in the folds of my memory, I prepared myself to say good-bye once more in the pages of IDW’s closing Doctor Who Special. For well over five years, the publisher has been telling some stellar stories using the comic book medium as a conduit, a grand tradition that has been with the show since shortly after it’s inception and through it’s lengthy hiatus before the new series voorped into existence once more. This special marks an end to the current license, and with no American publisher yet announced for further stories, we’re facing a long break in content until the show returns, or a new license is granted to another comic book publisher. I don’t like it, but as they say, all good things…

Cover by Jimmy Broxton

This special is written by Paul Cornell who is teaming once more with artist Jimmy Broxton to bring a poignant end to this run of comics. As the story goes, the Doctor comes to our reality where The Doctor is currently an actor by the name of Matt Smith, and his adventures are fiction. In a short span of time, he meets with a new companion - a fan who has been experiencing a bit of bullying for the depth of her Who fandom - and confronts the problem with trying to find a way back to his dimension. It’s a neat concept that is expertly kneaded by Cornell and Broxton, who deliver yet another fond farewell wrapped in a near perfect tale of what The Doctor stands for, and what it means to be a fan.

This farewell is punctuated by the Doctor revealing something important: in this world of fiction, it’s important to know that, given multiple parallel universes, there’s one where he is, in fact, real. Where he exists, where he matters. I’ve always had a fondness for stories where fiction is just a conduit for something real - it speaks to the power that words have, that creating has. Somewhere, for someone, a fiction can feel as real as anything else that exists - and who is to say it doesn’t?

I’ve talked about it on the site before, but Doctor Who has been quite important in my life. My discovery of it through the instance of my best friend James (yes, that James) led me to find and fall for my girlfriend - and it has remained a very important part of our relationship. For now, we say good-bye - but we know it will be back with Peter Capaldi at the helm, sending the series into another 50 years of amazing stories. I can’t wait. But I guess I will. For now.

“Raggedy man… good-bye.”