Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics is an American comic book publisher with roots dating back to the 1930s. Its connection to Doctor Who began In 1979, when Marvel's British publishing arm, Marvel Comics UK, Ltd., wrested the license for Doctor Who comics from Polystyle Publications, Ltd.

Doctor Who Magazine
Initially they exercised this license in Doctor Who Weekly, a publication that was a fairly even mix between comics and Doctor Who news. In the very earliest days of that magazine, it served not only as a location for a regular comic strip featuring the then-current Doctor, but also for a variety of other sequential art. These non-Doctor stories included some tales that were set in the Whoniverse, but featured original characters, along with irregular reprints of material from The Dalek Chronicles. It also featured some comic art not always strictly related to ''Doctor Who', such as adaptations of classic science fiction novels, and reprints of original science fiction stories that had appeared in various American Marvel anthology series of the 1950s and 1960s. For these latter types of comics, a tenuous connection was established to the Fourth Doctor in that he appeared in the first and last panels as a sort of "Greek chorus-cum-narrator".

Over the years, the title of the publication, its page count, and its target audience changed. Whereas it had started with a significant number of pages devoted to a variety of comic strips, it gradually became more of a news and reviews magazine with a single comic strip featuring the Doctor. It began as a child-oriented magazine and gradually became more interested in attempting to be something closer to a journalistic exercise that happened to have some comic content. Its name changed over the years until finally settling on Doctor Who Magazine, by which it is most commonly known today.

Doctor Who Magazine Special
Soon after the launch of Doctor Who Weekly, Marvel UK also began publication of a seasonal, sister publication called Doctor Who Magazine Special, which in many ways was like an American comics "annual". Although it could be purchased separately from the main magazine, it was also a subscriber bonus. Initially quite general and a home to comics reprinted from the main magazine, these specials gradually became increasingly thematic toward the end of the Marvel era on Doctor Who Magazine. Later issues featured exclusively original comic material, and was a major source of comic material featuring past Doctors and companions. In fact, a number of different companions, whose TV runs had been previously ignored by both Marvel and Polystyle, made their first comic appearances in DWMS. Among those who debuted in DWMS were: Vicki, Steven Taylor, Benny, and Mel. Others, such as Romana I had their first Marvel treatment in the pages of DWMS, rather than the parent publication.

Although many fans do not consider the Doctor Who Magazine Specials as a separate publication from DWM, the indicia of these issues does give cause to, however technically, think of them as comprising a distinct run. Indeed, some fans informally number them because of this indicia distinction.

Doctor Who Yearbook
Marvel also briefly produced another series, called the Doctor Who Yearbook, from 1992-1996. Sometimes considered "annuals", they are perhaps most accurately thought of as hardbound issues of DWMS. Whereas a true British "annual" is a collection of prose and comics stories featuring the then-current stars of a property — it marks that year in television, film, or sport — the Yearbook appeared at a time when Doctor Who was firmly off the air. Thus it became a retrospective look at the program as a whole, and featured a variety of different companions and Doctors. Like DWMS, it occasionally reprinted material from Doctor Who Magazine, but was largely used to feature new stories. Its comics featured Marvel's first non-parodic attempt at Ian and Barbara, along with the first Marvel usage of Jo, Leela and Nyssa,

Doctor Who Classic Comics
Marvel UK was briefly involved in a project to reprint material not generally available to Doctor Who fans in the 1990s. In a series that lasted less than 30 issues, Doctor Who Magazine's resident comic experts attempted to reprint important stories from both the Polystyle and Marvel UK uses of the various incarnations of the Doctor. Where necessary they also colorized stories that had originally been monochromatic. The magazine ended long before it had gotten anywhere close to being a comprehensive collection of the Polystyle era, but it nevertheless offered the only taste of that time that most fans had experienced.

The publication also had significant text articles which gave details as to the story names and artists that worked on every known Doctor Who comic adventure. Because of this, it is today still considered the de facto definitive guide to early Doctor Who comics. Many reference websites, including the Doctor Who Reference Guide, use this Marvel UK title as their primary reference for the comics of the first seven Doctors. Though in many ways just a reprinting of the "Stripped for Action" column that had begun appearing in DWM a couple of years before, DWCC offered expanded coverage of the subject.

One-offs
Marvel also occasionally printed some single-issue Doctor Who comics, marketed as "graphic novels". Of these, only The Age of Chaos was both wholly graphic and a single, novel-length story. The others — Abslom Daak - Dalek Killer and Voyager  — would be considered by North Americans to be trade paperbacks or "collected editions".

Marvel US
Marvel UK's parent company, Marvel Comics, had some minor involvement with Doctor Who during the height of US Doctor Who fandom in the 1980s. The Fourth and Fifth Doctors briefly got their own US title in 1984. This book, titled simply, Doctor Who, was prefigured by a few Fourth Doctor stories that had appeared in various Marvel anthology series. However, Marvel's Doctor Who was merely a repository for Marvel UK material; no significant comic material, other than covers, pinups, and the odd prose feature, was produced by American creators.

The Doctor and the Marvel Universe
Over time, Marvel UK began publishing a number of original stories featuring a variety of mainstream Marvel US characters, such as the Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four. Over time, these British versions of mainstream Marvel characters, combined with a few characters that were wholly original to Marvel UK, began to create a continuity that diverged somewhat from the mainstream American Marvel Universe. Thus, comic observers began to posit the notion of a "Marvel UK Universe". The Doctor Who comic strips came to be viewed as a part of that universe, and, indeed, a number of characters that originated in Doctor Who Weekly and its successor titles crossed over into other titles within the Marvel UK Universe. Even the Doctor, in his Seventh persona could be said to be a part of the Marvel UK universe. Indeed, because of subsequent appearances of Marvel UK characters in the mainstream Marvel US Universe, it is possible to consider the Doctor as simply being a minor part of the Marvel Universe, generally.

While the Doctor Who comics content was originally considered to be in a reality separate from the rest of the Marvel Universe, eventually some of the original characters that had appeared in the backup strips began to bleed into the mainstream Marvel UK Universe, which had a sometimes divergent. By the time of the Seventh Doctor strips, it could be said that the Doctor himself

and continuing until 1995, Marvel's UK branch published Doctor Who Magazine. The licence for the magazine was subsequently taken over by Panini Comics). The magazine included a serialized comic strip, and Marvel's US branch reprinted these in a monthly Doctor Who comic book in the early 1980s. Other Doctor Who-related publications issued by Marvel included the miniseries The Age of Chaos, written by Colin Baker, a graphic novel, Voyager (more reprints from DWM's comic strip), the Doctor Who Year Book - an early 1990s attempt at reviving the Annual format - and Doctor Who Classic Comics, a magazine dedicated to reprinting DWM strips as well as early-era First and Second Doctor strips. Marvel also published the comic Death's Head, which featured cross-overs with Doctor Who.