DWW 27: Star Tigers, ep1 , pp1

Steve Dillon's first work - aged sixteen - was with Dez Skinn at Marvel UK. The experience gained working on Hulk and Nick Fury, got him the gig working with Paul Neary on Marvel UK's nascent Doctor Who Weekly.

DWW was utlising some of the cream of the UK comics scene: Dave Gibbons, John Wagner, Pat Mills, Mick McMahon: but with 'B-team' (their words!) writers Alan Moore and Steve Moore, Dez Skinn and art editor Paul Neary were keen to develop other stories with what I suppose we now have to call 'The Whoniverse'. Along for the ride in 'Tales from The TARDIS' were young artists David Lloyd and Steve Dillon.

These stories were thrilling to my young mind, because, already a huge fan of the TV Show, the Target novelisations - particularly of Malcolm Hulke - had shown that there was so much to these stories than was just seen on the show. For the two Moore's Doctor Who was a playpen of concepts, ideas and characters; and while Alan tended towards the mind expanding and universal, Steve tended towards the action-packed and character-driven. Absolam Daak, the doomed love-lorn psychopath and self-styled Dalek Killer, had already appeared earlier in 1980, and here he was to return with his own motley crew of Whoniverse renegades, The Star Tigers, including the awesome humanoid reptilians, the Draconians, from the TV Season 8 story, Mac Hulke's 'The Frontier in Space'.

...and could there have been a more careful, accurate and dynamic artist that 18-year-old Steve Dillon? The definitive account of the genesis of the Daak stories and Star Tigers is told in a wide-ranging interview with both Steves Dillon and Moore in issue Two of Vworp Vworp magazine from 2011; including a detailed breakdown on the production of this very page! Seek it out!

Pen, ink, pencil and whiteout on thick cartridge paper
40 x 67 cms

Fourth Doctor stat by Paul Neary.