Tony Black reviews Torchwood #1…
Torchwood is Back, in an all-new ongoing comics series written by Captain Jack himself, John Barrowman! Captain Jack Harkness is back in Cardiff, and there’s only one person he can turn to, the last person who expected to see him, Gwen Cooper! On the road, on the run, and under fire, can the pair put aside their differences and rebuild the heart of Torchwood, before its flame is stamped out forever? Even better, the new comics series is in continuity with the amazing new Torchwood audio dramas from Big Finish; join us both for the official continuation of the Torchwood saga!
SEE ALSO: Check out a preview of Torchwood #1
It’s quite rare to have a comic book series follow on from a novel tie-in, but let’s face it this is Torchwood – when has it ever turned up as you’d expect? A long and tumultuous history exists where the BBC’s first Doctor Who spin-off series is concerned, a show that began as ‘This Life meets The X-Files‘ with lots of swearing and bums in Cardiff, and by its final series was trans-Atlantic, being written by writers like Jane Espenson and featuring Bill Pullman! The John Barrowman-starring sci-fi action drama has never quite known what it wanted to be, and in keeping with tradition, the same can be said for the first part of ‘World Without End’, the beginning of a new Torchwood comic run for Titan, picking up after the end of the novel ‘Exodus Code’, also written by star John & Carole Barrowman.
If you’ve read that book, you’ll know it took place after Torchwood: Miracle Day, the last TV series which aired in 2011, and with everyone else from the original team dead bar possibly immortal, metro sexual former time agent Captain Jack Harkness and his erstwhile Welsh sidekick Gwen Cooper, this first issue is ostensibly about putting them back in the same room. Gwen is as happy as she can be in Wales with her long-suffering husband Rhys & little daughter Anwen, while Jack is now part of a rag tag space fearing crew on a ship called the Ice Maiden, made up of various very Torchwood-esque characters – lots of sass, lots of flirting, lots of UST. Where this issue should be commended is in tone, because much of the dialogue perfectly fits the Russell T Davies sauciness that characterised the show.
It’s just a shame everything else is a right old mess. Good luck deciphering the narrative here because it’s a jumble of character beats picked up from a book most of us won’t have read, introducing strands & old characters in plots that seem completely separate from everything else going on (the return of one bad guy though should raise a smile), which all builds to a suitably action packed climax that while incentive will leave you scratching your head a bit. There’s nothing wrong with mystery or laying track for future stories, but the Barrowman’s only really inject Gwen & Rhys with any sense of character alongside it, and make no attempt to make it easy for readers to pick up and grab the essential Torchwood premise from this.
In other words, off the back of this, it’s one for Torchwood fans and completists only because John & Carole Barrowman make almost no concessions to any new audience you’d imagine they’d want to capture with this, given how John is constantly fighting for either the show or just Captain Jack to return to screens (which you suspect he wants more than the rest of us, but there you go). It’s inked relatively well by Antonio Fuso & Pasquale Qualano, and it’s got some broad adventure concepts, plus it has a wry sense of fun in the dialogue that fits the tone. It just needs to settle down, bed in, and tell a story properly before it truly becomes worth reading.
Rating: 5/10
Tony Black
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Originally published August 3, 2016. Updated November 14, 2019.
