Doctor Who Ongoing

Doctor Who Ongoing, Doctor Who: Ongoing, Doctor Who: The Ongoing Series and simply Ongoing are all unofficial names the American publisher IDW Publishing have used to market two different titles, Doctor Who (2009), featuring the Tenth Doctor; and Doctor Who (2011) and (2012), featuring the Eleventh.

Title
The cover and indicia titles for both the 2009 and 2011 series are simply Doctor Who. This name is again confirmed on the publisher's page of issue Doctor Who (2009) #1, where readers are welcomed to "the first issue of Doctor Who". According to the strict conventions of US comic enthusiasts, this means that the titles are most properly given with the year of first publication appended; hence, Doctor Who (2009) and Doctor Who (2011). Not only does this distinguish between these two series named Doctor Who, but it also differentiates them from earlier series of the same name: Doctor Who (2008) and Doctor Who (1984).

Though accurate, this system of naming the publications was hardly likely to have been the most memorable way to market the 2009 series at launch. Thus it was solicited to comic shops and marketed on the IDW website as Doctor Who Ongoing for easier identification. This neatly helped to separate it from the occasional, stand-alone Doctor Who stories, like Black Death White Life, that IDW were then publishing.

Ongoing and original
The two series' main claim to fame was the fact that they are both ongoing and original. Whilst Marvel's 1984 Doctor Who, Doctor Who Classic Comics, and IDW's own Doctor Who Classics were all "ongoing" titles, they all reprinted previously-published material (in most cases, comic strips originating in Doctor Who Magazine). And though IDW's Doctor Who (2008) had in fact begun as the ongoing title Doctor Who (2008), this plan was scrapped in favour of releasing a "series of miniseries", forcing that title to become retroactively known as Agent Provocateur, after its only story arc.

By contrast, Doctor Who (2009), (2011) and (2012) publish original material, and multiple stories. Moreover, the titles offer a largely inter-connected narrative with occasional stand-alone stories, in a practice common to both 21st century US comics and the BBC Wales version of the parent programme.

Availability outside North America
All IDW publications were widely available in the US and Canada in their paper, single-issue formats. Single issues were not available in this format in the United Kingdom, since this would have violated the existing print comic license held by Doctor Who Magazine. However, in 2012, IDW began distributing their comics worldwide in a digital format, thereby making the individual issues available in the UK on the same day they dropped in the US.

Trade paperbacks were periodically issued both in the US and UK as the series progressed. IDW handled these larger publications in North America, while Titan Publishing Group were the British reprinters.