Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Indie publisher Cutaway Comics has launched its latest Kickstarter, this time for Inferno – The World Dies Screaming!, the first in their new line of prestige comics. Inferno was the beginning of the end for a doomed alternative Earth glimpsed as part of the acclaimed 1970 Doctor Who serial by Don Houghton. But what led to that end?

Also including characters from Houghton’s other acclaimed Doctor Who adventure – The Mind of Evil (1971) – the book’s decade- and continent-spanning saga takes us from a dark and twisted alternate 1940s, right up to the night before the Doctor arrives at Project Inferno and discovers the planet hurtling towards a volcanic apocalypse.

Writer Gary Russell is well known to Doctor Who fans as editor of Doctor Who Magazine between 1992 and 1995, the co-founder of Big Finish productions, script editor for Doctor Who, Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures as well as holding producer, director and executive producer roles on many of the animated recreations of classic missing 1960s Doctor Who stories. He’s also written many acclaimed novels for the Virgin and BBC ranges of Doctor Who and Bernice Summerfield books, including the acclaimed Beautiful Chaos, Spiral Scratch and The Scales of Injustice amongst many, many more. His latest novel is an upcoming novelisation of the first 60th anniversary special The Star Beast due in print early 2024.

Providing the art to accompany Russell’s script is world renowned comic artist John Ridgway. As well as drawing some of the most legendary Doctor Who strips for Doctor Who Magazine, including Voyager, Ridgway has worked on Judge Dredd, 2000 AD and is probably best known for co-creating John Constantine for DC Comics’ Hellblazer. For Cutaway, he’s provided art for Omega and Omega: Eltralla.

A full-colour instalment, published as a 48-page prestige perfect-bound comic, Inferno – The World Dies Screaming! will be available from February 2024, with further instalments continuing the story in Europe, the US and China planned to follow.

The Kickstarter campaign provides an opportunity for backers to receive the book – in either digital or printed form – before it goes on sale anywhere else. In addition, backers will receive an exclusive VAM disc which contains:

• Brand new inferno commentary track! We travel back to 1970 to appreciate the story voted the greatest Third Doctor tale ever by readers of Doctor Who Magazine in 2023! Hosted by the BFI’s Justin Johnson, our guests across the seven episodes include Inferno comic writer Gary Russell, Paradise Towers comic writer Sean Mason, BFI television archive guru Dick Fiddy, Gods and Monsters lead writer Ian Winterton, Omega writer Mark Griffiths, and Graeme Harper – Doctor Who royalty and former Production Assistant to Inferno’s genius director Douglas Camfield.
• Fan-tastic: inferno – Why is this dark tale of a doomed Earth such a treasured and revered piece of Doctor Who? Director Sean Mason asked fans and guests at Derby’s 2023 Whooverville convention that very question and the results were quite revealing!
• Archive convention footage of Nicholas Courtney and his legendary eyepatch story.
• Comic interviews and insight with Inferno’s creative team members, including Gary Russell and John Ridgway.
• Archive convention footage of Sheila Dunn, Iain Fairburn and Derek Newark, the much missed actors behind our beloved Petra and Greg, donated by our good friend (and Hollyoaks icon) Annie Wallace.

For the truly dedicated fans, other rewards available include autographs, T-shirts, a quad movie-size poster or even – for six backers only – the chance to have their likeness drawn by John Ridgway himself and included in the comic itself.

The INFERNO – THE WORLD DIES SCREAMING Kickstarter can be found at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/room5064/inferno-the-world-dies-screaming and closes on Friday, October 27th, 2023 at 11:30am BST.