The Doctor arrives on an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire not only didn't fall, but has grown to galactic proportions - thanks to alien interference in the timeline. The Time Lord figures it'll be simple enough to sort out the paradox, until he discovers that the masterminds behind this new Roman Empire are flesh-eating demons who, upon learning of the Doctor's origins, develop a taste for Gallifreyan meat...

In 1979, at the height of Tom Baker's popularity in the lead role of the BBC's enormously successful SF series Doctor Who, comics publisher Dez Skinn launched Doctor Who Weekly through Marvel UK. It was a cleverly calculated mix of articles about the making and history of the show, occasional original fiction, and, naturally, original comics featuring both the Doctor and his various and sundry adversaries, some from the TV series and others entirely new. Within a year, both the backbreaking workload and the enormous popularity of the magazine led to it reinventing itself as Doctor Who Monthly, but the established comic series remained - and both are still around today. Iron Legion collects several early serialized comics from the magazine in their entirety, reprinted in their original black & white.

A color guide was prepared for these early comics for reprints in the early 80s in America, as Marvel decided to cash in on the show's increasing popularity there, and when the comics were eventually reprinted in collected form in the short-lived Doctor Who Classic Comics magazine in the early 90s in Britain, fans got that "colorized" version. But for the sake of historical accuracy, this reprint leaves the artwork in its original B&W form.

The stories themselves are a fascinating glimpse into Doctor Who at the time. Originally published in 1979, Tom Baker's penultimate year in the series (and in the eyes of some fans, possibly the lowest point for storytelling in TV Doctor Who during his reign), the stories reprinted here, on average, boast interesting (if lightweight) premises, though it's also not uncommon for the actual plot to meander once the groundwork is laid. Writers Mills & Wagner make good use of the Doctor's sense of humor, and on average it's a fairy accurate representation of where the series itself was at the time in terms of the Doctor using glib humor to win the day (keep in mind, the script editor of that year's stories was the late Douglas Adams). Generally speaking, the science fiction and time travel elements are well used. It's interesting to note that the same duo was also originally slated to write Colin Baker's debut story, under the working title of The Space Whale, but apparently those plans fell through.

In retrospect, some of the stories are quite interesting - the seemingly THX-1138-inspired "City Of The Damned" hits a few of the same notes as The Natural History Of Fear, an eighth Doctor audio story released around the same time as this compilation. Now, granted, Natural History goes a lot deeper into some seriously Orwellian territory and has a twist at the end that could only have been done in an audio story, but it's an interesting coincidence to see the same dystopian groundwork underlying two Doctor Who stories 25 years apart. There's one story, "The Time Witch," written by Steve Moore, which is simple stuff - the New Adventures, these ain't - but packs a nifty little surprise into the proceedings by subjecting the Doctor's school-aged sidekick Sharon to an instantaneous four years of aging - something which isn't undone by the end of the story.

The real star of the show, however, is Dave Gibbons' artwork. I'm glad we got to see this stuff without a color scheme dropped on top of it for which the art was not originally designed. Gibbons' art is sharp, and he draws some fantastic close-up likenesses of the Tom Baker - I was truly impressed. Anyone who's seen their fair share of both fan and professional artwork depicting the Time Lord knows that it's not too difficult to be way off. More often than not, Gibbons is right on target. His use of contrast and various shading techniques lends a startling variety to the scenery. If I have one regret, it's that Gibbons' covers for the Marvel U.S. reprints weren't included here, but that falls under the same heading as the comics appearing in their original B&W - this book seeks to reproduce the original, British, Doctor Who Weekly experience of reading these comics for the first time. Like the Star Wars reprints in the A Long Time Ago... series, nothing is being added that wasn't there already when the comics were first published. I can't fault them for sticking to that approach.

Iron Legion is a dandy deal for fans of vintage Doctor Who comics, and a neat trip down memory lane to a time when pro Doctor Who fiction wasn't trying to be dark, dreary, and miss-a-book-and-you're-screwed interconnected.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster

• Year: 2004 (comics originally published in 1979)
• Writers: Pat Mills & John Wagner
• Artist: Dave Gibbons
• Genre: comics / franchise science fiction
• Publisher: Panini
• Pages: 162 pages