Tony Lee Talks Doctor Who Ongoing Series
Thursday, Mar 12th, 2009
In case you hadn't heard already, this summer IDW is kicking off a brand new Doctor Who ongoing series with Tony Lee at the helm! You can check out a full interview with Tony Lee about the project over at Comic Book Resources.
CBR: Tony, the big news for Whovians coming out of New York Comic Con was that you are writing a “Doctor Who” ongoing monthly for IDW Publishing. How did you ever get the BBC to agree to that one?
Tony Lee: I didn’t. This is the thing: IDW got the license about two years ago and they did the six-parter with Gary Russell. They then asked me to do a six-parter, which was “The Forgotten.” “The Agent Provocateur,” which was Gary Russell’s miniseries, went down really well, but for some reason “The Forgotten” just checked people’s boxes. I have had so many people come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed it over the last couple of days. I even believe the first three issues are sold out, totally, IDW doesn’t even have back issues left.
So I started doing some other bits and pieces and then one day Chris Ryall said, “Hey, do you want to do another story?” And of course I said, “Yeah sure, why not?” And I pitched him another six-parter and then the following day, I was speaking to Chris about something else and he made a comment about an ongoing. I said, “I would totally put my hat in the ring for that.” And he was like, “Duh. You’re the writer.” I thought he wanted me to a pitch a six-parter but he wanted me to pitch the series.
And so I said, “Don’t give the BBC what I gave you” and I went off and wrote this 6,500-word pitch. It was basically how I saw an ongoing working, how I saw things changing and about 18 issues’ worth of plot ideas. And then he sent it to the BBC. And the BBC came back with a couple of changes. They wanted a character removed and some more information about something else and I turned it back in. I wasn’t too sure what happened but the next thing I know, it’s the day before the panel and Chris is saying, “Yeah, we’re announcing it tomorrow.” We’ve got the art team. It’s all sorted. The first issue is coming out in July.
The problem they have always had with the “Doctor Who” books, generally, is that we’ve had to keep bouncing around with the artists. Pia had [a very close friend pas away] that affected her during “The Forgotten,” which delayed the book, so they had a fill-in artist and then the second artist couldn’t do the third issue in time, so they had to do another fill-in artist and it’s been an ongoing problem like this.
So one of the things we’re doing with this series is that we’re having a variety of two-part stories intermingled with three and four-parters and basically we’re going to make sure we have enough art teams involved so that we never miss an issue, so that we’re always on time. So the first two-part I’m writing is for Al Davidson, who is obviously a very recognizable name in comics. He’s done Vertigo, he’s done Dark Horse. But at the same time, I’m also writing #3 so we can have the two parts hit the art teams at the same time.
The full interview is available at Comic Book Resources
