Doctor Who (American Marvel Reprints)

The earliest Doctor Who strip seen in America was the Dell Comics adaptation of the first Dalek movie in the 1960s, but in December 1980 Marvel Comics began reprinting (in colour, for the first time) the Iron Legion strip from Marvel UK's Doctor Who Weekly in the pages of its tryout title, Marvel Premiere. The Iron Legion ran in #57-58, followed by the following story, City of the Damned (retitled/relettered as "City of the Cursed" for the more conservative US market) in #59-60. The issues, which also contained specially commissioned new full page pin-ups of the Doctor and his supporting cast to fill out the back pages, were well received but The Doctor nevertheless did not apear in an American title again until the Star-Lord Special Edition published in February 1982, which rather oddly included an unadvertised Doctor Who back-up strip, The Spider God, reprinted from Doctor Who Monthly #52. October 1984, though, saw the launch of the Doctor's own American Marvel title, which began reprinting the Marvel UK strips from where the Marvel Premiere run had left off (including, at the appropriate point, The Spider God again) along with the various back-up strips which had originally appeared in the British weekly/monthly (a notable ommission being the three strips by Alan Moore and David Lloyd which had introduced the characters of the Special Executive, which Moore had by this time denied Marvel the rights to reprint). The title lasted 23 issues to August 1986, ending part of the way into Marvel UK's run of stories starring the fifth Doctor (although in Britain, the sixth Doctor had made his debut two years previously).