Even biggerBy Tim Quinn & Dicky Howett

Miwk Books, out now

A collection of all of Quinn and Howett’s cartoons about the Time Lord…

For over a decade, Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett provided a strip for Doctor Who Monthly, its three panels skewering some aspect of the show – sometimes an element which could only be appreciated by fans with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the series, other times deriving the joke from the perceived weight problem of one of its stars (okay, on a lot of occasions, deriving its joke from the perceived weight problem of one of its stars in particular). Occasionally, the pair would be allowed to display their madness over a whole page, and two books of new material were published.

Now, Miwk Publishing hasn’t just reprinted those books – which have been regular rereads from my collection over the years – but the entire run of strips, as well as some that didn’t make it for whatever reason over the years (one based around Ian Marter’s novel writing was unsurprisingly pulled after his shockingly early death). I’d completely forgotten that some of them were in colour, and was surprised at how many of those full page features there were. There are also elements from the creators’ scrapbooks, talking about some of their other, sometimes controversial, projects, and they don’t shy away from allowing some of the negative comments to be reprinted – Gary Russell’s plea to stop taking the mickey out of Colin Baker’s weight, for example. There’s also a fascinating interview with the pair from the pages of Vworp Vworp – and even a couple of new sketches…

There are a lot of humorous Who books out there at the moment (and we’ll be reviewing quite a few over the coming weeks), but I do wonder if any of them will stand the test of the time in the way that Quinn and Howett’s work has.

Verdict: Still funny after all these years – and occasionally quite prescient about the way the show would go – this is an essential purchase for any fan of the classic series… with a sense of humour. 10/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to pre-order It’s Even Bigger from Miwk Publishing

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