Despite all of the action, Four Doctors #2 contains a lot of dialog which suffers from the missing personality of the live-action actors. The idiosyncrasies of the various doctors are visual, verbal, and dispositional. Capaldi's Twelve is already a master of maintaining an incredibly condescending brow without ever really seeming too brood-ish. Smith's Eleven was a goddamn spaz and loved to call things wobbly. Tennant's Ten was deftly able to switch gears between action, frivolity, and really depressing shit.
But many of the things that made these characters so beloved are hard (some, even impossible) to evince in the pages of a comic. Capturing the true charm of these characters is even more difficult when the depictions of the Doctors are only kept consistent by their outfits. The work on the faces fluctuates, often seems rushed, and it always seems like I would not be able to recognize these iconic characters if not for their clothing. Granted, banking on the outfits themselves is visually the best move to make and I'm not disputing that; however, specifically because everything down to the outfits is iconic about these characters, inconsistencies in their depictions stand out all the more.
There are still small moments within the comic that are pretty funny for fans of the show. At one point, Eleven quips to his companion that, much to his surprise, it seems like he's not the silliest of the Doctor's recent incarnations. Surely that's not true in the context of the show, but its truth is evident in the comic, and that is a humorous result.
Unfortunately most of the interactions between the Doctors are annoying. In a way, they're supposed to be annoying, but it's just not entertaining to read. They are finishing each other's sentences, they are mad at each other, they know what the other is thinking but they constantly disagree about a course of action. It's like watching a bunch of twin brothers who hate each other bring their girlfriends to a family reunion. I wish that analogy wasn't so on-the-nose.
Even if you're built in to the demographic of this comic, you're going to have a hard time enjoying it. It requires you to really imagine that this is an episode of the show occurring; otherwise, you have to focus on pages of comics where people are just talking to each other in a minefield of bright colors and stock comic poses. It really seems like three is a crowd, and I don't know how much I want to stick around to see how a fourth curmudgeonly old man fixes things.
Score: 2/5
Doctor Who: Four Doctors #2 Writer: Paul Cornell Artist: Neil Edwards Colorist: Ivan Nunes Publisher: Titan Comics Price: $3.99 Release Date: 8/19/15 Format: Mini-Series, Print/Digital