The Official Doctor Who Magazine #88
The Official Doctor Who Magazine #88 (cover date May 1984) holds a dual distinction in the strip's history: it is both the first comic appearance of the Sixth Doctor and the debut issue of Frobisher, the shape-shifting Whifferdill who became one of the most enduring companions ever created exclusively for the comics medium. Where the television series was still building toward Colin Baker's on-screen debut, writer Steve Parkhouse and incoming artist John Ridgway beat the broadcast by introducing the regenerated Doctor in print — and wrapped his entrance around a noir-inflected bounty-hunter premise that deliberately leaned into storytelling freedoms unavailable on the BBC's budget. The issue also marks the point at which the magazine adopted the masthead 'The Official Doctor Who Magazine,' a deliberate assertion of licensed authority made in direct response to the rising production values of unlicensed fan publications of the era.
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The issue was written by Steve Parkhouse, the dominant voice in DWM's comic strip through the early-to-mid 1980s, and was the first DWM assignment for artist John Ridgway, who would go on to illustrate virtually the entire Sixth Doctor run. The strip, 'The Shape Shifter Part One,' acts as a sequel to the preceding Fifth Doctor arc 'The Moderator' (DWM #84–87), threading villain Josiah W. Dogbolter through the regeneration boundary so that the new Doctor inherits an active narrative debt rather than beginning from a blank slate. The masthead change from 'Doctor Who Monthly' to 'The Official Doctor Who Magazine' had been introduced just three issues earlier, with #85 in February 1984, making #88 one of the first issues to carry the new branding into a genuinely landmark strip storyline.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date May 1984, released April 12, 1984, published under the 'The Official Doctor Who Magazine' masthead by Marvel UK — the fourth issue to carry that title, adopted from #85 onward.
- First appearance of Frobisher (real name Avan Tarklu), a Whifferdill shape-changer who debuts as a private investigator hired to collect a bounty on the Doctor; Frobisher would become one of the longest-running companions ever created for the DWM comic strip.
- First Sixth Doctor comic strip story in Doctor Who Magazine, published before Colin Baker's full television debut season had aired; the cover features a publicity photograph of Baker with the caption 'Colin Baker is the Doctor.'
- Written by Steve Parkhouse (also writer of the preceding Fifth Doctor strips) and illustrated by John Ridgway, marking Ridgway's debut on the title — he would go on to draw virtually every Sixth Doctor DWM strip.
- The story is a direct sequel to 'The Moderator' (DWM #84–87) and reintroduces villain Josiah W. Dogbolter, a frog-like corporate magnate who has placed a bounty on the Doctor's head; 'The Shape Shifter' was the second DWM strip to feature Dogbolter.
- Frobisher's surname and penguin form are not established until the following issue (#89, part of the same two-part story); his given name 'Avan Tarklu' — visible on his office door — is a pun on 'haven't a clue.'
- The story has been reprinted multiple times: in the 1989 and 2007 Voyager graphic novels, DWMAC 5, Doctor Who Classics Series 3 #1, Doctor Who Classics Volume 6, and Doctor Who Classics Omnibus Volume 2.
- Features editorial articles including 'Glimpses of the Future' by Richard Marson and 'Who'd Have Believed It?' by John Wakefield (a survey of Doctor Who parodies/spoofs), alongside a DWM Archives episode guide segment covering 'The Time Warrior.'