She’s deadly, she’s Scottish and she may or may not be on the side of the angels. But when she crosses swords with her past self, things get messy. Your Major Spoilers review of Doctor Who: Missy #2 from Titan Comics awaits!

DOCTOR WHO: MISSY #2

Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Roberta Ingranata
Colorist: Enrica Eren Angiolini
Letterer: Comicraft’s Richard Starkings
Editor: Jake Devine
Publisher: Titan Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 12, 2021

Previously in Doctor Who: Missy: Missy’s up to her old (or new?) tricks and is plotting to retrieve the Key to Time from an unbreakable vault. In order to do so, she attempted to break her own former incarnation, The Master, out of Stormcage prison by pretending to be their nemesis, The Doctor. But The Master has his OWN agenda…

THE ‘DOCTOR WHO’ GAG IS WEARING THIN

We pick up this issue where the last one left off, with Missy fencing against her own past incarnation, the first Master (or at least the first one we saw, as embodied by the late Roger Delgado and his epic evil goatee), implacable enemy of the Third Doctor. Missy explains, in between parries, that she needs his help to break into an unbreakable vault, but he’s not really buying her story, especially since he thinks she is a future incarnation of The Doctor rather than his own. When the alarms sound, though, they’re forced to give up their sparring and run for the hills, only to encounter the most infamous prisoner in Stormcage, the murderer known as… River Song! River also buys Missy’s disguise, helping the Time Lords make their way back to the TARDIS and escape. Once they make it back to The Doctor’s vault, The Master bluffs that he could easily unlock the security system, but instead chooses to take The Doctor back through “her” life to find the Key to Time there!

BUT OTHERWISE, THIS IS AN ENTERTAINING STORY

The idea of Missy disguising herself as The Doctor is a cute one, but I have to wonder why The Master doesn’t realize that she’s actually his future, given that most multi-Doctor stories have the characters quickly realize whom they’re dealing with. Still, aside from repeatedly hammering the claim that her name is “Doctor Who”, which has always been too meta for my tastes, the character interactions here are a lot of fun. Ingranata’s art is also up to the task, giving us recognizable but not overly photo-referenced versions of Roger Delgado and Michelle Gomez, and a River Song that looks NOTHING like Alex Kingston but is clearly River nonetheless. I really enjoy the “acting” involved in the art throughout this issue, selling the psychological conflict between their incarnations while never quite making it clear if she’s really trying to do good or not.

BOTTOM LINE: STILL NO DOCTORS

One complaint about this issue that might bother some readers: Though the solicitations make reference to the Third and Twelfth Doctors, aside from a brief flashback sequence in the first couple of pages where Twelve has a couple of lines, it’s a Doctor-free issue. Even with that being true, Doctor Who: Missy #2 is an enjoyable, tense issue that focuses heavily on character interaction over big explosions, making for some inspired interactions between Master past and present, earning 3.5 out of 5 stars overall. By next issue, I hope that we’ll get some idea of what it is she’s up to, but so far, this series has given us just the right amount of information to keep it all moving along.

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