Alternating Reality Books

Marvel Comics reprinted a series of Doctor Who comic books for Americans. The City of the Dammed or City of the Cursed is Volumes 59 and 60 in the series, and a lot of fun to read. The basic premise of the series is that the Doctor shows up somewhere and either causes an event or helps solve an event, and the comic book series were fairly faithful to the premise. Where there is an unfortunate tendency for this period of Doctor Who comics to be too Americanized, overall Marvel pulled off a decent beta test of the product, and was able to get decent run of the series.

The Doctor arrives in the city of Zombus on the planet Zom. A ruling council, the Brains Trust, who wear eyeless masks which look like brains, have identified emotions the cause of all crime and outlawed it. With the Moderator General and the Moderators, the people are controlled and forbidden emotional experiences. They use Harmonisers to remove emotions from the citizens. There is resistance from the Zom Emotional People’s Organization, each of whom carries out and lives by one emotion alone so as to preserve it until the arrival of the Great Emoter.

The Doctor is seen as the Great Emoter and is helped to escape the city. But ZEPO’s Big Hate has a plan to destroy the Moderators using his savage Barabara (giant blood bugs). The Barabara are released into the city but start to eat everyone, not just the Moderators. The Barabara however are defenceless against adrenalin. The Doctor appeals to the Brains Trust who agree to reinstall emotions to save what they have but the Moderator General is opposed to the plan and kills the others. The Doctor overpowers the Moderator General and order the people into the Harmonisers where they regain their emotions. The Barabara quickly die and the city begins a new life with a full set of emotions that the Doctor leaves behind. The people feel so grateful to the Doctor that they try to dress like him and adopt his mannerisms. Source: Tardis Wikipedia

According to Tardis, these comic books were part of an American test study to see how well the comics would translate over the water. They did very well so the Doctor Who USA series was started. Because these were testers, issue 57 is harder to find than 60 because of the print runs. The doctor who comic book classics though are being reissued with the popularity of the new Doctor Who series in the USA and in England. Finding really good doctor who comics is difficult, and the early Marvel entries into this as a test market are few and far between. If you are a doctor who fan, these are comics you want to pick up. If you are a collector, you might want to wait a bit longer, the value of these varies depending on the seller and the venue they are selling on.

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