Mooretoons - Early "Doctor Who" Adventures - Man-Eating Ants, A Glass Dalek And Ogrons

Top: The Man-Eating Ants attack and the Master Ant    Bottom: The Meddling returns... and more Ants

Having suddenly fallen into an artistic style which clearly suited my needs by being both clean-lined but also reasonably detailed, “The Invasion Of The Man-Eating Ants” is arguably my favourite original “Doctor Who” story. Indeed I have re-used the story for a subsequent adventure involving my own time-travelling character “The Rambler”.

The main motivation behind the four-parter, as I recall, was that I thought I could swiftly and easily draw a horde of ants and as a result speedily finish another tale. Unfortunately the time required to draw all the ants, irrespective of my technique of simply using a continuous squiggle, quickly lead to the little ‘monsters’ being replaced by a far larger, but infinitely easier to draw Master Ant. I also used the story as yet another excuse for me to include the Meddling Monk; my own take on the villainous Time Lord who I thoroughly enjoyed writing and drawing. In addition, knowing I was fast running out of stories for William Hartnell’s incarnation of The Doctor, I started to have the time traveller begin thinking about his great age and that he would soon have to regenerate. Thus at the end of the adventure, an over-tired Time Lord collapses from mental exhaustion.

Top: An invalid Doctor and Ogron meet the Glass Dalek    Bottom: The Doctor's Dalek and a Rad-Mutie

Carrying on with this theme that the Doctor was mentally unwell “The Decoy Of The Daleks” was a chance to once again script an insane Gallifreyan and include a few official canon monsters from the BBC television science fiction series; namely the glass Dalek from the March 1985 programme “Revelation Of The Daleks” and the classic Ogrons, thanks to the July 1986 VHS video release of “Day Of The Daleks”.

By this time my portrayal of the First Doctor had dramatically departed from his televised counterpart and was now decidedly bald and wore a tracksuit. The story also provided me with the opportunity to give an appreciative nod to the nuclear irradiated mutants known as Mutos from the 1975 BBC story “Genesis Of The Daleks”. 

"MEN OF MYSTERY" Virus Of The Panda - Part Four Post Two

With this scene I wanted to quickly cover why the Peking Panda wears the skin of a Giant Panda, and show him infecting Cheng Fu with the virus. Indeed, I actually went so far as to use a red mottling effect to visually show that both the villain's claws and some of this own ninja henchmen were contaminated with the infection.

As I didn't want too much of a distraction from this simple 'story telling' I predominantly reverted back to using my basic composition format of similar-sized rectangular panels. Although I had already learnt that by changing their edges and making some of the frames larger and smaller it was possible to completely eradicate the dialogue ellipses I have been using for the past ten years or so.

Infected with a deadly disease, can Cheng-Fu defeat both the Peking Panda and the killer virus..!?!

Mooretoons - Early "Doctor Who" Adventures - Daleks, Cybermen and Dodo

Top: 'City of Daleks' and a Thatcher!?!     Bottom: Dodo and the Emperor Dalek

Written at a time when I was clearly full of teenage angst and lashing out at anything and everything, irrespective of whether I actually understood the subject matter in question, “The Demise Of The Daleks” is probably the most disappointing story I’ve written… and much of the artwork isn’t that great either. Indeed if I could turn back time and remake just one story, this would definitely be it.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s some nice elements to this four-parter, such as being set within the ‘City of Daleks’ and being based upon companion Steven Taylor’s to recover and resurrect the Doctor after he is electrocuted by Terry Nations’ pepper-pot creations. It also introduces the new travelling assistant Dodo Chaplet, a talking budgerigar and provided me with an opportunity to draw my own version of the Dalek Emperor. But all these good ideas are implemented quite appallingly, and the inclusion of a clip-clopping tortoise-shelled behemoth based upon Margaret Thatcher is possibly the worst thought out creature I’ve ever imagined.

Top: The Doctor falls foul of a water trap     Bottom: The Cybermen

Bizarrely, the following story, “The Chasity Of The Cybermen”, despite its somewhat perturbing title is actually one of my all-time favourite tales. And it would appear that some passage of time passed between its creation and that of ‘The Dalek Story’ before it, as the artwork is clean, stylised and the plot rather funny; in my opinion at least. Clearly inspired by the “Doctor Who” September 1967 television story “The Tomb Of The Cybermen”, it concerns the TARDIS crew exploring the Tomb of Metal shortly after an archaeological explorer has been killed by a Cyberman.

Fleeing the silver giant, the Doctor, Steven and Dodo rush headlong into a water trap and only escape by drinking all the liquid up using straws. Having survived, the friends then rush back to the time machine, and depart. Simple, straightforward stuff which let me draw plenty of ‘Patrick Troughton-era’ Cybermen for the first time. 

Mooretoons - Early "Doctor Who" Adventures - The Doctor Battles Strontium Dog

Top: Johnny Alpha faces Impetigo     Bottom: Johnny Alpha blasts TARDIS crew member Viki

Many of my early “Doctor Who” cartoon strips were either heavily influenced or based upon actual monsters and events from the BBC Television series. But I never strayed so far into the IP domain of another comic book character as I did with the four-parter “Stronties Rage”. 

The 1986 “2000 A.D.” comic strip “Strontium Dog” had a profound effect upon me as a teenager and when the bounty hunter Johnny Alpha’s long-time partner Wulf Sternhammer was killed at the conclusion of “Max Bubba” I was mightily upset. The comic’s following adventure “Rage”, in which Alpha hunted down and shot Max Bubba and his gang did little to sate my anger at the demise of one of my favourite characters. So as a result I decided to write and draw my own ending to the lengthy “Strontium Dog” saga.

Top: The Doctor stupidly disguises himself as Bubba     Bottom: Alpha and Bubba die as lasers fly everywhere

Unfortunately “Stronties Rage” was a far cry from the excellent “2000 A.D.” storyline and the artwork, although far more detailed than that of its predecessors “Dual” and “The Earthboom”, was still very rushed, rough and ready.

The adventure was notable for several reasons however. Firstly Strontium Dog Johnny Alpha featured prominently throughout the story and dies at the end; a complete departure from the conclusion of “Rage”. The tale also features both Max Bubba and one of his gang members, Impetigo. Both of which are slain by Alpha. But lastly, and most importantly, the four-parter also depicts the accidental slaying of the Doctor’s travelling companion Kame Viki [Vicky] and introduces a new assistant, Katarina; who inadvertently wanders into the TARDIS whilst taking an armful of fruit home. 

Mooretoons - Early "Doctor Who" Adventures - A Duplicate Doctor And The Ice Warriors Return

Top: 'The Two Doctors' meet     Bottom: The TARDIS lands in a variety of bizarre locations

In many ways my early “Doctor Who” stories “Dual” and “The Earthboom” are of little interest except as examples of a time when both my storylines and drawing style were possibly at their most sloppy and undisciplined. However despite the poor quality of my writing and shoddy penciling, both four-parters do hopefully have some elements of note within them.

“Dual” was a rather half-hearted attempt to bring back one of my Doctor’s former companions, Susan Foreman and a duplicate First Doctor. It soon becomes abundantly clear however that I quickly ran out of ideas for the adventure as the tale swiftly degenerates into the Timelord simply meeting an earlier version of himself and having to then briefly travel with him (and his grand-daughter) in order to return to his own timeline’s co-ordinates. 

The story was clearly drawn in a hurry as well, as the inking is splotchy and undisciplined, and many of the panels lack any background whatsoever. However the plot does contain several references to genuine BBC “Doctor Who” television serials, and I must have been heavily influenced by these adventures at the time. As a result the TARDIS lands in Brisbane, Australia during World War Three (Magnus Greel was the Butcher of Brisbane and started World War Six in “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”), momentarily stops off in the year 1,000,000 B.C. (as does the real TARDIS in “An Unearthly Child”) and then briefly arrives in sunken Atlantis (inspired by “The Time Monster”). Even the planet Skaro and the Daleks make a single panel appearance before the Doctor is reunited with his own TARDIS once again.

Top: The Ice Warriors are swiftly replaced by a Terminator     Bottom: The Doctor blows up the Martian rocket

I still remember that at the time of my drawing “Doctor Who And The Earthboom” I was fleetingly filled with a lot of enthusiasm for the story, as it heralded the long-awaited return of the Ice Warriors; one of my favourite televised monsters. However my zeal for the tale quickly evaporated when I started making mistakes drawing the Martians and as a result I quickly removed their visible presence from the ‘screen’. Indeed after just a handful of frames during the second part, and yet another poorly executed Ice Warrior, they were never to be seen again.

Instead I replaced them with the Terminator character, who had accompanied my Doctor’s companion Viki during her initial story “Magma’s Return”. During that earlier two-parter I had only implied that the bald-headed humanoid space policeman had been eaten by the monster, Magma. In “The Earthboom” Viki discovers her former jailer was somehow rescued by the Ice Warriors, cybernetically enhanced (i.e. given the trademark ice Warrior clawed hands) and placed in charge of a rocket which had been built in order to destroy the Earth. A complicated, convoluted and unbelievable plot which only a young teenager could create.

In addition the story also gives my companion the full name of Kame Viki… a massive departure from the televised companion Vicky (Pallister) and in all honesty a bad mistake on my part. However as with its predecessor “Dual”, it was clear that I was in something of a rush to finish the tale and move on to the next one; my keenness for reintroducing the Ice Warriors clearly having been already exhausted. Needless to say the Doctor uses the TARDIS to land inside the Martian’s rocket, and blow it up prematurely, rescuing both Steven Taylor and Viki in the process.

Mooretoons - "Doctor Who" - Gallifrey

Top: The Doctor defeats a giant lizard in "Orckingdom".     Bottom: The TARDIS captures Ian the Were-Lizard.

I have tapped into quite a few sources of inspiration for my ‘original’ “Doctor Who” comic stories but possibly one of the strangest was my liking for the 1984 David Lean drama film “A Passage to India”, which I rented out on video immediately upon its release. The idea of exploring a strange land with a mysterious ancient history seemed like a cracking idea for a story so I simply replaced the British Raj for the planet of the Timelords and threw the TARDIS crew into an adventure which would illustrate the home-world of the Doctor.

Written as a direct sequel to “Orckingdom”, “Massage to Gallifrey” is a six-page tale which sees the elderly time traveller return to his people in order to obtain a cure for Ian Chesterton; who has been transformed into a were-lizard. Despite a rather action-packed opening, which involves the TARDIS itself incarcerating a homicidal Chesterton and the Doctor dodging the laser beams of the Chancellery Guard, things soon peter out and become rather dull. I clearly tired of the entire idea and quickly curtailed the TARDIS crew’s exploration of Gallifrey by having them all captured and sentenced to death by the Timelords midway through the adventure.

Top: The TARDIS lands on Gallifrey.     Bottom: The Timelords and Chancellery Guard.

Even an attempt to explain the motivation behind the Doctor’s travels through a series of flashback panels is soon replaced by my simply drawing the character alongside a huge word balloon. The artwork also deteriorates as my figures significantly increase in size in order for most of the panels to simply depict their heads.

However, all is not entirely lost with the story, as the ‘look’ of the Gallifreyans' ceremonial attire would remain for as long as I drew my “Doctor Who” comic strips, and there is a definite smoothing out of the mouth area for the majority of my characters; a significant step closer to the way I draw my figures these days. 

Mooretoons - Some More Early Original "Doctor Who" Monsters

Top: The Dekkarian astronaut Dallos.     Bottom: The Earth is invaded by Chang Fang's Toilet Tube Army.  

Inspired by the 1986 UK video release of Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor adventure "Doctor Who: Day of the Daleks", as well as a rather impressive-looking astronaut action figure I owned, I wrote "The Daleks Return" simply to introduce the Dekkarians into my 'Mooretoon' world of "Doctor Who". Essentially they were created as a space-faring alternative to the British television science fiction series' extremely popular UNIT (Unit Nations Intelligence Taskforce) family and the anti-Dalek taskforce consisted of Captain Derek Manning, his trusty number two Dallos and a Rambo-like soldier called Botreil. However the four-page plot of the team almost single-handedly dispatching an entire spacecraft full of Terry Nations' 'pepperpots' didn't really work and it would be some considerable time before the Dekkarians would make a return.

 

To be fair "Invasion Of The Toilet Tubes" marked the start of a serious decline in my "Doctor Who" story telling and came at a time when I was seemingly struggling to both draw consistently and with much enthusiasm for the stories I was writing. In a nutshell the Earth is successfully invaded by a race of giant toilet tubes lead by their king, Chang Fang. The Doctor tricks a group of the cardboard aliens into chasing him through the TARDIS and 'drowns' them in the swimming pool. In the meantime companions Barabara Wright and Ian Chesterton distract Chang Fang long enough for the Earth resistance to kill the toilet tube King.

Top: Barbara Wright is captured by Orcs.     Bottom: Ian Chesterton battles a Werewolf.

"Orckingdom" was an attempt to combine two of my main hobbies together; cartooning and 'Dungeons & Dragons'. Unfortunately I quickly ran out of ideas whilst drawing the four-pager, and what started as a possible run of stories set within a fantasy world of goblins, wolfmen and lizard creatures, turned out as simply a series of set-pieces where Ian Chesterton and the (First) Doctor encountered a werewolf, a lizardman and some warty orcs; all in order to save Barbara who had once again been captured at the start of the story.

 

The plot was so rushed that I apparently forgot to even include fellow TARDIS companion Viki (or as it should have been Vicki) in the story until the last few panels. However the tale would lay the foundation for the next adventure; a six-pager which saw the Doctor return to Gallifrey and introduce my version of the Timelords...  

Mooretoons - More Early Original "Doctor Who" Monsters

Many of my original “Doctor Who” cartoon monsters were inspired by the toys and games I was playing with in the early Eighties. The most prominent of these creatures was the Magma, a large carnivorous race of aliens who dwelt on the volcanic planet of Maglang. Unsurprisingly these terrors were based upon an especially big toy figure which I often used as an adversary whilst playing Doctor Who with my “Kenner” Star Wars action figures. It was therefore probably inevitable that my adventures with the plastic monster would transfer over to the inked page, but never did I anticipate that the Magma would feature in three of the first five stories I drew during my second phase of cartooning.

 

Interestingly the artwork to “Magma”, “Magma’s Return” and “Magma’s Curse” is especially detailed for its time, as I used a phenomenal amount of line-shading in almost every panel. This ‘technique’ would remain as part of my drawing style until I moved to a graphics editor on a computer, and even today I still utilise such line-work for scenery such as bushes and snow mounds. However I have never used it as exclusively as I did during this particular period in the evolution of the Mooretoons look.

 

This was however also a time when I tried to start adding some detail to my backgrounds, and this can clearly be seen in the six-page story “The Carrots”, a tale which followed directly on from the first appearance of the Magma. Inspired by the 1964 Doctor Who television serial “Planet of Giants”, I thought it’d be fun to have the TARDIS crew land in a supermarket shopping trolley, and then, having fallen out, desperately try and find their way back. However mid-way through the story I introduced the Karrots, an alien race of mind-reading vegetables who attempt to trick the First Doctor into letting them enter the TARDIS.

 

The story is rather forgettable, as you can probably imagine, apart from the fact that I kill off Susan Foreman, the Doctor’s grand-daughter, by having her fall into a meat grinder at the conclusion of the adventure.

Mooretoons - "Doctor Who" - The Meddling Monk - Part Two

Drawn with a black ballpoint pen, “Doctor Who in Game-Ball” was a twelve-page ‘epic’ based upon the plot that the Meddling Monk had somehow managed to trap the TARDIS crew within a VIC-20 home computer. The renegade Timelord then forced them to play various computer games in the hope that they’d be killed. Clearly a storyline heavily inspired by the 1982 Walt Disney Productions science fiction film “Tron”.

 

However, although at the time I did own one of Commodore’s 5kb RAM machines, my parents had more recently replaced it with a Commodore 64, and as a result all of the games played during the tale are actually my favourite ones (of the time) for the more powerful computer. “Game-Ball” also came at a time when I had settled into a somewhat consistent and distinctive style of drawing, which although still somewhat different to my current artwork, clearly enabled me to produce my cartoon strips at a good rate.

 

The first two episodes of this magnum opus would be based upon the computer game “Crazy Kong 64” by “Interceptor Software”, a 1983 “Donkey Kong” clone which saw the First Doctor hurdling giant barrels, clambering up ladders, leaping over fireballs and defeating a giant ape with a large mallet. Once the game had been successfully beaten however the Meddling Monk immediately loaded a second title into the computer…

 

“Spy Hunter” by “US Gold”. To be honest I don’t recall actually being overly impressed by this computer game. However I was totally enamoured with the 1983 arcade machine by “Bally Midway” as it came with a sit-down cabinet, steering wheel and gear stick. Either way the next two parts to “Game-Ball” would depict the TARDIS crew driving in the fictitious G-6155 Interceptor, made famous by the arcade game, avoiding head-on collisions with oncoming suicidal cars, dodging machinegun fire and finally blowing up gun-toting helicopters in a go-fast boat.

 

The next video game, the 1985 “Rambo: First Blood Part II” by “Ocean Software”, was based upon the Sylvester Stallone film and was probably more famous for its excellent Martin Galway soundtrack then its actual gameplay. However it gave me ample opportunity to transform the First Doctor, via a bi-generation with the game’s main sprite(!?!), into a muscle-bound killing machine, complete with head bandana, massive portable machinegun and huge hunting knife. And in a serious departure from his televised counterpart, my Timelord merrily massacred his opponents with nuclear bullets and knife slashes to the torso.

 Episode Seven of “Game-Ball” would provide a brief respite to the continuous stream of video games as the VIC-20 broke down and the Meddling Monk desperately tried to repair the home computer before the TARDIS crew escaped its internal workings back to the time machine. Needless to say at the conclusion of the page, and with the big blue box in sight, the Doctor, Steven Taylor and Katarina are once again caught by a multi-coloured loading screen and transported inside the game “Breakout”.

 

This single page episode was actually based upon my love of the 1987 arcade conversion “Arkanoid” by “Imagine Software”; a video game developed by “Taito” which was a considerable improvement upon the original Seventies “Breakout” by “Atari”. However I felt that the name “Arkanoid” wasn’t as well-known as that of “Breakout” thus drew the Meddling Monk holding a copy of a cassette with the older game’s title emblazoned upon it. In many ways the episode was actually quite similar to those involving “Crazy Kong 64” as the eleven panels portrayed the Doctor, Katarina and Steven dodging giant balls and leaping in between the gaps in brick blocks.

 

The final computer game to feature in this adventure was actually the first Commodore 64 programme I bought, alongside “Football Manager” by “Addictive Games”, and that was the licensed film tie-in “Ghostbusters” by “Activision”. This is one of my favourite games of all time, and even these days I will occasionally have a game using an emulator programme. As one can imagine not only did this plot twist enable me to sketch out the TARDIS crew in grey overalls with proton packs, but got me drawing some spooky spectres and a haunted house. As a nod to some of the first voice sound effects within a home computer game, I even had Doctor and his companions name themselves the “Geek Buckors”, as that is how the computer game sounded when it's sound chip tried to verbalise “Ghostbusters”.

 

The conclusion to “Game-Ball” is utterly bizarre and features two pages of complete nonsense. No computer game is actually featured or mentioned, though I get the distinct impressive I was trying to convey the impression that the TARDIS crew had become immersed within an adventure game of some kind. I also believe I was tiring of the story and wanted to finish it quite quickly. Certainly that is the only explanation I have as to why the First Doctor would suddenly find himself submerged in elephant droppings on the planet Nope and be able to simply saunter, covered in mastodon dung, over to the TARDIS. Deciding that they didn’t want to wait for Katarina, the Timelord and Steven depart determined to track down the person responsible for their plight.

Mooretoons - "Doctor Who" - The Meddling Monk - Part One

I’m rather confused as to where my inspiration to use ‘The Meddling Monk’ in my “Doctor Who” cartoon strips came from. It could have been some chance glimpse of a short clip from the British science fiction television series, but I doubt it. For although the character of the Monk, superbly portrayed by actor Peter Butterworth, appeared in two stories during William Hartnell’s tenure as the (First) Doctor, neither would have made it to VHS Video at the time I first started drawing my interpretation of the villainous Timelord. Indeed it wasn’t until 1992, some six-seven years after Mooretoons were born, that the surviving episodes of “The Dalek Masterplan” were released on PAL video as part of the “Daleks: The Early Years”, and the 1965 story “The Time Meddler” was not available on tape for a further eight years until June 2000.

As a result I’m far more inclined to believe that I took such a deep interest in the character from his 1983 appearance in "Doctor Who Monthly", when the Monk teamed up with the Ice Warriors against the Fifth Doctor. Whatever the reason, my Monk was a decidedly different creature from that of proper Doctor Who lore, for although he still retained some of the quirky humour Peter Butterworth invested into the television character, my Meddling Monk most assuredly wanted the Doctor dead.

Initially appearing towards the end of my first run of comic adventures in “The Fall of the Daleks”, the Meddling Monk was a skulking manipulative villain, who watched from the shadows as the TARDIS crew inadvertently stumbled upon (yet) another Dalek city on the planet Skaro. I clearly wanted the Monk to stand out from my usual drawing style, and as I wanted him to be simple to sketch (as I needed to draw him a lot) I went with a monk’s robe complete with blacked out hood and penetrating eyes. In many ways not dissimilar to the appearance of Jawas from the “Star Wars” motion pictures. Indeed with hindsight I distinctly recall previously drawing the adventures of a Jawa Bounty Hunter named Volcano as a child, so it could be George Lucas’ influence over the look of my Meddling Monk could have been stronger than I initially thought. Suffice to say the evil cloaked figure fails miserably to cause the Doctor’s death in “The Fall of the Daleks” and instead is blasted himself blasted to death by the Masters of Skaro.

It was quite a considerable time later, well within my third phase of drawing Mooretoons, that I finally brought the Meddling Monk back and in doing so I set the ground work for a series of stories that would take me the best part of two - three years to draw. “Id?” was a single page, eleven panel teaser story, designed to lay the foundation for a much longer twelve-page adventure I planned to draw a short while later.

Sketched in (trendy) red ink with yellow pencil panelling, the tale simply established that the Monk had survived being shot by the Daleks, and had remained on the planet Skaro building a Commodore VIC-20 home computer. Somehow this 8-bit machine was capable of sending a mind-beam into the TARDIS and momentarily disorientate the Doctor..?

Having briefly appeared at the conclusion of the following story “Stronties Rage”, a re-imagining of a 1986 “Strontium Dog” serial from the British science fiction comic “2000 AD”, The Meddling Monk would feature throughout “Game-Ball”; the longest “Doctor Who” adventure I ever wrote and drew…

Mooretoons - Early Original "Doctor Who" Monsters

Alongside entertaining myself and friends by depicting ‘all-new’ confrontations with the Daleks, Sontarans, Ice Warriors and Zygons, I also created a fair few original monsters for my “Doctor Who” to battle. However in the beginning I was still heavily influenced by the BBC science fiction series and as a result, many of my ‘own’ adventures were based upon what I had watched on either television or VHS video.

 

“The Mutant Rampage”, a seven-page reimagining of the first ever Dalek story, is a good example of this. To begin with its name was actually taken from the working title of the Skaro-based television production - “The Mutants”. Whilst its plot, the tale of two races, one living in a technologically advanced city whilst the other survives on the fruits of the land, is straight out of Terry Nations’ storyline as well. Even the Canabalsans, the large jelly like inhabitants of the planet Danos in the year 3029, are little more than oversized Kaled mutants – the creatures which operate the Dalek travel machines.

 

Following on from this I wrote/drew “The Maddening” a simple two-page tale of the TARDIS being struck by asteroids in the time vortex causing the (first) Doctor to suffer a head injury. Upon recovering the Time Traveller becomes a homicidal maniac and attempts to murder his companions. Once again this is very similar to the two-part television adventure “The Edge of Destruction”, where the Time Lord (and to a larger extent a scissor-stabbing Susan) appears to want to harm his ‘friends’.

 

It therefore wasn’t until “The Treemen of Tremolius”, two-thirds of the way through my first drawing phase, that I finally created a couple of aliens I’d actually call ‘my own’; and even then they were… inspired. The first was a dragon-like creature called the Glasmhmore, a fearsome looking yet ultimately timid monster, who was possibly based upon my love of the Drashigs from the Jon Pertwee television story “Carnival of Monsters”. The second, long before Groot and Marvel Comics’ Guardians of the Galaxy motion picture, was the Treemen (and women) of Tremolius. These walking talking tree-people were almost certainly inspired by the Ent, Treebeard, following multiple viewings of the VHS video release of “The Lord of the Rings”; a 1978 animated fantasy film version of J.R. Tolkien’s famous book trilogy. Neither were terribly successful though and neither would ever make a return appearance in my “Doctor Who” Mooretoons.

 

However I still had plenty of other sources of inspiration for my monsters, such as toys, vegetables and even snooker players..!?!

Mooretoons - Early "Doctor Who" Monsters

Although I was determined to try and introduce my own cartoon creations into my “Doctor Who” comic strips, my second adventure “The Mutant Rampage” featured the large blubbery Canabalsans, the lure of using the established foes of the time traveller were irresistible to my teenage imagination. And whilst Terry Nation’s universally famous Daleks were quickly encountered by my TARDIS crew, for me, still in awe of the 1985 television story “The Two Doctors”, the alien race that was to dominate my cartoon capers had to be the Sontarans.

 

“Deadlock of the Daleks” was the fourth “Doctor Who” story I drew, its seven-pages so inspired by the multi-monster mash-up of the 1983 broadcast “The Five Doctors” that it introduced not only my version of the Daleks [n.b. no Davros allowed], but the cloned humanoids of the planet Sontar; albeit these were to be based upon the far larger version seen during the science fiction serial’s twenty second season.

 

Having turned to black ink for my drawings as a result of my blue ink ballpoint pen running out I then drew arguably one of my favourite early stories “Ode to a Sontaran”. The plot itself is rather thin with the TARDIS simply landing onboard a Sontaran spacecraft in order to rescue Barbara Wright, one of the Doctor's companions who had been abducted by the aliens during their earlier battle with the Daleks. However my drawing style remained reasonably consistent throughout, and even lead to me daring to colour the opening two parts with pencils.

 

I’m not entirely sure why the last monster to appear during my first foray was a Zygon. I have a great love for the old VHS (video) “Doctor Who” story “Terror of the Zygons, but that was released in 1988, a few years after I drew the six-pager “Julius Caesar”. Looking back on the black and white drawings depicting a Zygon invasion of Pompeii, I can still remember a specific evening at my Nan’s scribbling away inside each pencilled panel border. I was particularly proud of the detail I put into the Roman’s Galea (helmets) and would later come back to these sketches when drawing the sixteen-part serial “Pax Romany” twenty years later.

Mooretoons - Comic-Reading Friendly Mirror Site

Having sought and received some feedback from websites such as DeviantART, the Webcomic List and Comics Fury, I plan to make a few changes to the layout of this blog. These’ll take a few days to implement but once in place will hopefully make it easier for you to read my cartoon stories without both my comments and copyright getting too much in the way. In addition to a change in format and larger cartoon panels (just by clicking on them) I’ll be running a more comic-reading friendly format over at http://moorteoons.thecomicseries.com/.

 

This website is specifically designed to follow comic strips on the web but probably not so accessible if you want to follow my thinking behind why I drew something a particular way. As a result I don’t plan to post most of my musings onto the webcomic. In addition, this blog will still be where I’ll be (hopefully) daily posting story panels. Only once I have posted a full episode will I copy the images over to the comic series website.

Mooretoons - The Inspiration and The Beginning

The inspirational ‘light bulb’ moment for me, when I first decided to start trying to write and draw comic book stories was in 1985, sometime after the rental release of the BBC Video “Doctor Who: The Seeds of Death”. Back then, still a young teenager, I was obsessed with the time-travelling BBC television series and had been imagining a slew of adventures whilst playing the video game cartridge “Bezerk” for the Atari Video Computer System. Frustrated by being unable to record the exploits of my pixelated Timelord, and having created an additional mythology whilst pretending my collection of Kenner “Star Wars” action figures were really “Doctor Who” characters, I started to scribble down the highlights of my battles with Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors. From here “Mooretoons” were born…

“Doctor Who and London Nights Of Terror” was a four-page adventure drawn ‘right off the cuff’ which, despite its title, only concerned itself with the First Doctor spending a single night on the streets of London in 1965. It introduced the television series’ original TARDIS crew of Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, as well as the stranded Ice Warrior called Catus. Drawn with a blue ink ballpoint pen, the quality of the artwork is increasingly erratic throughout the story as I started to development my own style. Indeed, at times the look is considerably different from my current method, as the mouth is actually visible beneath the enormous nose and the hands have no fingers, just some scratch-lines to represent digits. However it already contains some of the elements which dominate my cartoons’ approach today, such as the closely set eyes, the wrinkles and the side-on waist-level viewpoint.

 

I’m not sure how long it took to sketch the four pages. I would not have thought too long as most panels lack any sort of a background, even those set within the TARDIS. What I do know though is that the finished product motivated me to quickly draw a second seven-page adventure, and then another and another, until, after a few years, I had built up quite a collection of original “Doctor Who” stories covering the wanderings of the first three incarnations of the Doctor…

The Purpose Of This Blog - What Mooretoons Are All About

For the past thirty or so years I have been drawing Mooretoons...

 

To begin with they were little more than a teenage boys rough ink scribblings that were penned as I went, using blue, black or red biros. Numerous panels were crammed together on a single page and the dialogue was hastily written, poorly spelt and hard to read.

 

Nonetheless it gave me the opportunity to depict the Earth being frequently saved from alien invasion by a certain time-traveller in a blue box and the super-hero Campaign continually battling such notable baddies as Deaf Woman, Captain Sumo and The Sword.

 

For the next ten years my style developed and stabilised into pretty much what you see today, but with the introduction of a personal computer I was able to hand draw my characters on pre-printed panel layouts, have my text neatly printed inside respectable-looking bubble balloons and introduce colour sound effects. There was even the odd partially coloured story.

 

As a result the aliens of Beorge were able to plot the adventures of their Earth Timeman to ensure the smooth passage of time, the British Police Service established a covert department designed to thwart and hide any alien incursions, and in the near future a spaceship was launched to establish whether there was a tenth planet at the far edge of our solar system. Oh... and in the far future the Human race fought squidgy tentacled aliens for oxygen-rich planets.

 

For the last decade however things have got really busy, as although all my characters and props are still hand-drawn, they are now scanned into Paint Shop Pro, cleaned up, coloured and all placed on the computer. As a result a lot of the movement and dynamism of my earlier drawings has been lost and replaced with relatively static chest height up panels. But, in my opinion at least, the quality of my comic images these days are far more consistent and colourful than their predecessors ever knew.

 

Certainly without the change in technology I would not have been so prodigious in my output, and therefore the ancient Romany Empire would not have unleashed a horde of gibberlings upon the ancient world in "Pax Romany", the World governments created a legion of super-heroes and villains in "Alternate Heroes" and "Heroes Of Godwinson", the saviour of souls defeated numerous risings of the Undead in "Ermin Meonstoke" and the fourth agent of Beorge ultimately sacrificed himself in Nineteenth Century New Zealand in order to save the Earth in "The Rambler".

 

What in the World am I talking about? Well hopefully over the next few years or so you'll find out...