Was There Almost a Doctor Strange/Doctor Who Comic Book Crossover?

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Apr 12, 2020

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, see how close we came to a Doctor Strange/Doctor Who crossover in the early 1990s!

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and seventy-sixth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.

As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Marvel UK almost did a Doctor Who/Doctor Strange crossover.

STATUS:

True

For a number of years, Marvel operated Marvel UK (interestingly, at first, the company was run out of Marvel's New York offices. Tony Isabella was one of the earliest editors assigned to head up the British weeklies in the States. Later editors in charge would actually operate in England itself, including Neal Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys in the years before he became a pop star!). Marvel UK is perhaps best known for the character of Captain Britain, whose adventures featured early work from some of the top creators of the 1980s, like Alan Moore, Alan Davis and Jamie Delano (Captain Britain was initially created by Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe, who would produce the stories in the States while being published in England). Obviously, there were many other notable characters and creators (name a notable British comic book creator from the 1980s and 1990s and it is likely that they did some work for Marvel UK, from Dave Gibbons to Grant Morrison to Bryan Hitch to Steve Dillon).

And, of course, they put out comic books based on Doctor Who (the comics would then be published in the United States, as well).

Anyhow, in 1991, Andrew Cartmel, the writer who was the script editor for the Seventh Doctor era of Doctor Who in the late 1980s (and who continued to create new material starring the Doctor for novels and magazines)...

pitched John Freeman, the editor of the Doctor Who Magazine for Marvel UK on a crossover between Doctor Who and Doctor Strange.

Artist Lee Sullivan did a work-up for such a crossover (he did a great job on it)....

Freeman wrote about the proposal on his blog here, and he notes that he doesn't recall if he assigned Sullivan to draw the proposal or if Sullivan did it for fun.

In any event, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Tom DeFalco was a fan of Doctor Who, but felt that a crossover would be strange, since Doctor Who was in a hiatus period after the show was essentially canceled in 1989 (it obviously later returned for a TV movie and then an extended continuation years later). So DeFalco didn't feel like it would be much help for Doctor Strange to crossover with a canceled character...