Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-5545417-20150725190725/@comment-4028641-20150821015631

Been reading and looking at a bunch of these, and I have a strong take on these.

The back-up comics within the Eleventh Doctor comics are often meant to be comedic -- but for the most part, they do stick to the Doctor-Who-Universe. Sonic Sleuth, for instance, is highly comedic but still sticks to the characters and settings to some end. They're not stretching the characters or setting to make the story more comedic, they're letting the Doctor's zaniness do that. The Doctor Shops for Comics is a more clear example, as mentioned above. Despite being a highly stylized art style and having the Doctor talk in a way he wouldn't on screen, it's referenced in the main series and actually ties in directly. It appears that these stories are meant to be valid, weather they're goofy or not.

The WeLoveTITANS comics are a lot easier to interpret as non-valid, because they break the rules a lot more. When Temporal Loops Attack, for instance, is a direct parody of a scene in Weapons of Past Destruction. In multiple stories, the Doctor talks to the reader, Relaxing in the Void, for instance. Other stories, such as To Heck and Back's main joke is that the characters are not acting as they should be. 10 and The Beast are having tea, and the Beast talks about the Internet connecting in the black hole that he is trapped in. Friendly conversation. That's the sort of comedy that really falls into the not-valid sort I think, although I don't know if all #WeLoveTITANS stories are non-valid. Hot Springs Eternal, for instance, is pretty straight forward as a mini-strip. If it was illustrated, we wouldn't consider it a contender for booting. So maybe we should think of this on a case-by-case basis?

The back-up stories in The Tenth Doctor are a little more vague; a little bit of both of the above. In some ways the humour comes entirely from the interactions of the cast, and in some ways they do exaggerate things a tiiny bit. That is, 10's emotions over the loss of Rose are played kinda like he's a 22 year old who just had his first break up. But (and I hope I'm not stepping boundaries here) I kinda feel like the show did the same thing. Most of the comedy does spring from the fact that Rose-the-Cat is a cat, and usually doesn't seem to break outside of that. Even Garfield is more crazy than this comic, breaking huge leaps in reality to make a joke. A Rose just has the cat sharpening its claws and dragging in carcasses. You know. Cat stuff.

What I'm sure of is that Rose the Cat and the Eleventh Doctor comics are clearly meant to fit somewhere and stick to their characters for humour, not breaking outside of the line most of the time. Most importantly though, I'm pretty sure that they're meant to be valid. That's the big difference here -- WeLoveTITANS is clearly an ironic strip with no basis in the universe (usually) while the other strips are set within the universe and are just funny -- like The Horns of Nimon.