Doctor Who & Star Trek's Assimilation2 At IDW Panel London Super Comic Con

This weekend I was lucky enough to attend the inaugural London Super Comic Con at the ExCeL Centre in London...

By John Rivers /

This weekend I was lucky enough to attend the inaugural London Super Comic Con at the ExCeL Centre in London. Exhibiting at the convention were IDW, publishers of the Doctor Who comic, attending their first major UK event. On Saturday afternoon, the IDW team took to the stage for a panel entitled €˜IDW - The Year Ahead€™. Over the course of forty-five minutes IDW Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall introduced forthcoming highlights from IDW€™s schedule and top of the list was the much discussed Doctor Who and Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover €˜Assimiliation²€™. Ryall was joined on the panel by, amongst others, long-time Doctor Who writer Tony Lee, who is €˜assisting€™ writers Scott and David Tipton on the book (i.e. he€™ll probably be keeping an eye on the €˜Britishness€™ of the Doctor Who elements, which is interesting considering the steps taken to €˜Americanise€™ the show in the last BBC season) and artist JK Woodward, who admitted that drawing Matt Smith was certainly more of a challenge than Patrick Stewart, but easier if you €˜get the hair right€™. One new, exclusive image, that I had previously not seen online was the Doctor stood with Picard in a 1940s bar while in a Dixon Hill adventure on the Holodeck. The supporting cast stood in their period clothing around the bar. Needless to say the Doctor hasn€™t changed his outfit! Otherwise the team wouldn€™t give too much away, refusing to answer a question about whether Q or River Song would appear in the story. Sadly I couldn't get a pic of the new Holodeck image, cos I thought some goon would snatch my phone from me. Ryall went on to state that from August 2012, after the €˜Assimiliation²€™ storyline, the new volume of Doctor Who adventures would begin written by Andy Diggle. Diggle is a hugely experienced comics writer and former editor of 2000AD, perhaps most famous for his take on DC€™s special ops team The Losers, which was adapted into a movie in 2010 starring Idris Elba and Zoe Saldana. Diggle is ideal choice for IDW€™s Doctor Who, being a British writer who understands the comics market in both the US and UK.