Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor - Holiday Special #2 (Titan Comics)

Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Roberta Ingranata
Colourist: Enrica Eren Angiolini

49 Pages

Published by Titan Comics -  December 2019

The second and final part of the Thirteenth Doctor Holiday Special comic from Titan is another case of writer Jody Houser (writer of this series) setting up something fun and at least mildly intriguing in one issue, but then we rush towards an ending in the second. Admittedly, this isn’t the worst offender by any stretch, but it is a pattern I have felt often during the run. The first issue had the heroes investigating their memories having been wiped and replaced, stumbling across tin soldier guards and elves...and a seemingly baddie Santa. This issue wraps it up, with the baddie Santa turning out to actually be Krampus (a yuletide monster that is being absolutely overused in media lately).

There have been quite a few direct to video Krampus movies, a pretty solid theatrical film, and even within Doctor Who media Krampus keeps popping up.  The character has shown up on audio with the Eighth Doctor, and has not only appeared in comic form via Doctor Who Magazine...but Titan themselves had a version already! In short: it’s been done to death and now it feels old hat. 

The issue is fine I suppose, but I have to admit that I lost interest when Krampus became the enemy. The story also hints that Santa may actually be real too. Which is silly but does hark back to a very old First Doctor comic in which the Doctor had to help Santa save the day. But that jokey wink isn’t really enough to make me care.

This issue not only wraps up the Holiday Special, but also serves as something of an ending for the Thirteenth Doctor’s first year of adventures in Titan’s pages. The next issue due out is the launch of “Year Two.” On the whole I haven’t been too impressed with this series. It set up interesting stories, but I often felt let down by the final issues.  It kept feeling like empty set up and then a rushed ending. The art is great, the stories have potential, and from the opening issue they had capture the character’s voices...but there never seemed to be enough meat in those bones to make a proper stew. Maybe Year Two will improve on this...but based on Houser’s work so far, I am unsure if she has any way to put a structure to hold her neat ideas on.