By Rob McCow

Junk-Yard Demon
 

In issues #58-59 of Doctor Who Monthly presented the bizarre Junk-Yard Demon, published in November/December 1981. US Marvel Doctor Who Comic fans got to read it in issue #13, published in October 1985 with a new Dave Gibbons cover. The story is also in the Doctor Who graphic novel ‘Dragon’s Claw’, published in 2004 by Panini Books.
 

Writer – Steve Parkhouse

Pencils – Mike McMahon

Inks (all black, presumably) – Adolfo Buylla

Editor – Alan McKenzie
 

Flotsam and Jetsam are a pair of space scavengers. They’re a friendly pair of junk dealers, dressed in a mish-mash of assorted clothes, badges and bags. They roam space in their coal-powered ship, which Flotsam built. Jetsam is the engineer, who can mostly be found shovelling coal in the engine room. They have a robot living sculpture called Dutch who helps them in their salvage operations. Dutch has a brain that is operated by a windmill, so he needs a good blow from the bellows to be able to think. When he gets a puff of air, he’s the brains of the outfit.
 

Travelling through space, the salvage ship Drifter comes across a strange artefact. Drifter’s pilot, Flotsam, describes it as a box with little windows – the TARDIS. He decides that it’s terrific and that he has to have it. Flotsam, Jetsam and their robot Dutch take it on board and examine it. Trying to penetrate the door with a diamond tipped drill, Dutch wakes the Doctor who was meditating inside the TARDIS.

The Doctor introduces himself. When he hears that Flotsam and Jetsam are junk traders, he asks if they have a non-variable oscillator. The Doctor is shocked to see that they have a Cyberman in amongst the junk. He hurls a spanner at it, but Jetsam assures him that the creature is inert. They refurbish the Cybermen as robot butlers, which they then sell.

The Doctor shows Flotsam and Jetsam around the TARDIS. He uses the oscillator to repair his drinks vending machine and orders hot chocolates all round. The Cyberman, however, is not as inert as they thought and boards the TARDIS, attacking them with a laser beam that it fires from its wrist. He states that he has the authority of the Cybernaut Zogron and that he is commandeering the Doctor’s craft. Dutch shoots the Cyberman, but it absorbs the power of the blast and projects it back at the robot. The Doctor and Flotsam rush out to inspect the damage, but the Cyberman steals the TARDIS with Jetsam on board.

Jetsam and the Cyberman arrive on a rocky planet, near a crashed space ship. On board is Zogron the Cybernaut. Jetsam, meanwhile, is excited by the salvage potential of the crashed remains of the cyber-fleet. The Cyberman orders Jetsam to revive Zogron.

Taking a long shot, the Doctor and Flotsam pilot the Drifter back to a planet near where Flotsam first found the Cyberman.

Jetsam works through the night to revive the Cybernaut, but has to make a few delicate adjustments. The Cyberman asks for instructions from its leader. But Zogron merely asks whether he wants a small sherry before dinner. Jetsam has betrayed the Cyberman by reprogramming the Cybernaut Leader Zogron as a robot butler. Jetsam runs from the crashed ship, chased by the Cyberman.

The Drifter lands just as the Cyberman is closing in on Jetsam. Dutch emerges with a new weapon to use – a paint spray that clogs the Cyberman’s circuits.

The Doctor says goodbye to Flotsam and Jetsam, who are delighted with the haul of junk on the planet.
 

As time goes on, the comic strip seems to drift further and further from the TV show. It’s been a long time since the Doctor has faced one of his TV foes and even here the Cybermen are radically different, with a new hierarchy that includes Cybernauts, who are explorers, pilots and leaders.

The Cyberman is a cross between the Tenth Planet and Moonbase models, with a sack-cloth face and lamp on it’s head, but Hoover balls and tubing on it’s body, plus a Moonbase style chest unit. Or is that Tomb of The Cybermen?

The idea of the fourth Doctor sitting and meditating in the TARDIS isn’t too far removed from the start of the Deadly Assassin, where he creates a decoy out of his jacket that he sits on a chair, smoking a hookah.

Shocking! You really have to make up your own mind about whether you like this style of art or not. It’s a million miles away from Gibbons’ superbly realistic style and that must have come as a complete shock at the time, especially in the main strip.

In my opinion, it’s superb. Although Flotsam and Jetsam are hardly recognisable as human, the different take on the Doctor is refreshingly bizarre. It retains the distinctive hat/scarf/boggle-eyes, but makes it as stylised as possible. The scarf is enormous and covers his entire body, but is patterned with simple black and white stripes. There’s lots of lovely solid black in this strip, but it doesn’t overwhelm everything else.

The only thing that I’m not sure about is that everyone has enormous feet, which doesn’t look too great, especially on the Cyberman. When the art is being functional however, and serving the exposition, it’s a bit less interesting.

There are a few things that are undeniably superb, but best of all is the first picture of the Cyberman sitting on the junk-heap. It’s an image that sent a tingle down the spine when I first saw it. The bit where it’s head jerks up as it comes back to life is wonderfully atmospheric too.

The story is no great shakes, but that’s not what makes Junk-Yard Demon a classic. The combination of a more detached Doctor and the stylishly anti-naturalistic art makes this feel more like an Unbound adventure in the comic format. It stands up much better today as a one-off than it probably did at the time, when all the kids would be wondering why the Doctor looks all weird and would the comic be like this forever?

Flotsam and Jetsam are interchangeable and don’t have as much personality as their robot, Dutch. It’s a very funny strip though, with the paint sprays and converting the Cybernaut into a robot butler.

As an experiment, Junk-Yard Demon works very well, but for a continuing TV Tie-in comic it wouldn’t have been wise to have sustained it’s style.
 

This is the first full Doctor Who strip without Dave Gibbon’s artwork since Timeslip.

The Doctor’s coffee machine goes ‘Beep! Beep! Meep!’

In this story, the Cyberman seen is able to absorb the energy of power weapon attacks and use it to grow and repair itself.

The Cyberman is also capable of accurately flying the TARDIS.

Zogron was a Cybernaut and one of the great pioneers of the interstellar Cyberman empire. His ship crashed in Quadrant 746, the Arcturian System, on planet A54.

In Marvel’s 1996 Doctor Who yearbook, there is a follow-up to Junkyard Demon called – wait for it – Junkyard Demon 2. Once again, the fourth Doctor meets Flotsam and Jetsam, along with an antiques dealer by the name of Joylove McShane. The artist for this strip, Adrian Salmon, based his style on the art in Junkyard Demon. Salmon was also responsible for the long-running Cybermen one-page comic strips that appeared in Doctor Who Magazine in the mid 90’s.

Antony Cliffe from Mynydd Isa in Mold was chomping at the bit to send this missive to Doctor Who Monthly (from #59):

‘Austin Si! – McMahon Non! I am writing to complain about your latest issue, number 50. The artwork was appalling. The story Junkyard Demon was fairly good, except for the picture of the Doctor and all the other characters. They were completely out of proportion and their feet were too big! The artists Mike McMahon and Adolfo Buyalla have made a very good job. I hope they either improve or stop doing the comic strip altogether.’

Other readers were more forgiving, however, with several letters praising the strip appearing in issue #61.