Cutaway Comics' epic crossover event continues as three new players enter the world of GODS AND MONSTERS: Cockney thief and rebel DRAX, transtemporal adventuress IRIS WILDTHYME and the maverick Antontine killer LOSKO.

Over a year in the making, Gods and Monsters will see friends and foes from the worlds of Doctor Who brought together across time and space onboard the Eltralla, a phantom colony ship lost in space and time, harbouring a hidden and potentially universe-shattering, secret.

PREVIOUSLY ON GODS AND MONSTERS...

SUTEKH, God of Death, revived but still weakened.

The mighty OMEGA, free of his Black Hole prison and hiding on board the starship Eltralla. 

FAUSTINE, Princess of Tharil, seeking refuge from the gathering chaos in the time winds.

ELDRAD, surviving against all odds in the Nunton reactor core.

The story is heading for an inevitable showdown between the Lords of Time and Death, and the price paid will be high for our heroes and the crew of the cursed starship Eltralla. 

All three stories will continue and converge in Phase 3, together with our heroes – and accidental heroes – from this, Phase 2.

GODS AND MONSTERS, our epic crossover will be delivered in three phases:

GODS (Available now): Faustine (Parts 1 and 2), plus Omega: Eltralla and Sutekh: The Heretic one shots.

MONSTERS (This Crowdfunder, 2024/25): Eldrad Must Live, Drax: London Calling, Drax: L.A. Woman, Iris Wildthyme: Partners in Time and Losko of the Antonine.

GODS AND MONSTERS: FIRE AND ICE (Winter 2025): The epic finale featuring our Gods and Monsters fighting for supremacy, survival and the Universe itself!

COMING IN THIS PHASE... 

Four brand-new stories featuring DRAX, ELDRAD, LOSKO and IRIS WILDTHYME.

Phase Two launches with a prestige 76 page graphic novel featuring Cockney wheeler-dealer DRAX! 

Continuing the story directly from ELDRAD MUST LIVE one shot – BOB BAKER's sequel to 1976's THE HAND OF FEAR (also collected in this book) – get ready for a deep dive into the murky underworld of 1970s London and a deceptively sunny LA. 

Written by IAN WINTERTON. Art by STEVE B. SCOTT .

Inspired to be a better man by events on Atrios, Drax returns to Earth to honour a promise to his friend and partner in crime, Judy. But temporal mechanics were never his forte and he accidentally arrives in 1976 – when an earlier version of him is still banged up in Brixton nick! And then Judy finds Drax and persuades him to help her tackle a situation at Nunton Power Complex, where the mutated remnants of alien warlord Eldrad still live.

We love Drax so much, we gave him his own trailer in fact! 

https://youtu.be/Pzw-hxgIfs4?si=snbX0FDM20u_7bhv

After all, it's your universe too!

Oh and keep your eyes peeled for a certain BEEF OF LONDON, a well known face in the London Elite, right hand to the sinister Mr. Cecil, occasionally known to venture South of the River. He might, just might, be getting his own little strip in the stretch goals.

And this being a comic, we can go anywhere. So get ready for sunny California in part two with:

Written by IAN WINTERTON. Art by MARTIN BAINES.

Following the disaster at Nunton, Drax is abducted by an old enemy and taken to 1976 Los Angeles where people have started falling out of the sky. Amongst them is a mysterious woman – a cyber-enhanced warrior from humanity’s far future. Except… she’s somehow also from 21st Century Scotland.

DRAX is followed by a 50 page prestige comic introducing Paul Magrs' much loved IRIS WILDTHYME into the Gods and Monsters saga. With colourful poppy art by LIBBY REED, a zippy script from SEAN MASON (Paradise Towers) and sign-off from Iris herself, KATY MANNING this is a tale fans of the big red bus won't want to miss!

IRIS WILDTHYME: Partners in Crime

Written by SEAN MASON. Art by LIBBY REED.

A young thief. A horde of bloodthirsty pirates. An interdimensional map. Ancient temples and deadly traps. Treasure of immeasurable and terrible power. Multiverse ending paradoxes. A talking flamingo. Just another Tuesday for Iris Wildthyme. But where is she going to find a decent gin & tonic in this apocalyptic wasteland?

Written by STEVE GALLAGHER. Art by MIKE COLLINS.

From the pen of Stephen Gallagher comes the origin story for Losko, the Antonine killer we saw at the beginning of the Warriors’ Gate novelisation opening fire on Captain Rorvik’s slave-ship, sending it crashing into E-space. One of a race of fierce feline warriors the Antonines – distant evolutionary cousins of the Tharils – Losko is born at a time when former human slaves of the Tharils, having overthrown their masters, now rule a vast interstellar empire of their own. In a twisted form of revenge, the human imperium is built on slavery, not just of the Tharils, but all non-humans. Experiencing human cruelty first hand, Losko’s growing hatred for humanity sets him on a path to become a killer – fanatical, remorseless and utterly deadly.

Here's Losko as imagined by Mike Collins, a busy artist currently thrilling Doctor Who Magazine's comic readership, but with LOSKO OF THE ANTONINE very much in his crosshairs for later this Autumn.

STEVE GALLAGHER sums up Losko like this in his pitch document:  "Early discussions have suggested that the Antonines may be human in general physique with a jaguar-like feline look, quite distinct from the leonine look of the Warriors’ Gate Tharils.  Also, the visual tone of the story should echo the youth culture of 1950s America, of dark desert highways and machine-loving, rebellious greaser kids."

Aaaaaand, as always, get ready for some very special post credit teaser strips from our old friends artist SILVANO BELTRAMO and Gods and Monsters lead writer IAN WINTERTON.

So that's four gorgeous new strips to come. but it's not just about the merch though is it?

MERCH, GLORIOUS MERCH!

Those of you who have been with us for some time will know we love producing limited edition merch, trinkets, precious things and prints for our esteemed backers. In the past we've produced everything from branded tea, to cut-out figures, via badges, T-shirts and everything inbetween!

MEET THE TEAM!

It's a big, beautiful team of people helping get this next phase over the line!  Let's meet them.

WRITERS!

STEPHEN GALLAGHER has been called a horror writer, a fantasy writer, a non-fantasy writer, a writer for big screens and smaller ones, a writer whose considerable talent has enabled him to slip in and out of genres precisely as if those tidy little boxes didn’t exist…

Novels and short story collections range from period horror to modern thrillers and include The Bedlam Detective, The Kingdom of Bones and Oktober. Screen credits include Doctor Who (WARRIORS' GATE, TERMINUS),  Bugs, Chimera, Chiller, Murder Rooms and more. Creator of Eleventh Hour and lead writer on Crusoe. Comics published include FAUSTINE as part of GODS AND MONSTERS book 1. New novella, The Next Thing You See When You Die, from Subterranean Press in November 2024.

We particularly love Steve's tales of working at Manchester's Granada TV in the early 80s. Well worth asking him if you bump into him.

SEAN MASON is a writer, playwright, director and improv practitioner. You all know him as writer of the brilliant PARADISE TOWERS series, which he's aching to continue (2025, we promise). He lives for comics and writing for Iris has been a dream!

IAN WINTERTON Lead writer for GODS AND MONSTERS. Ian worked as a film journalist, interviewing many big Hollywood names, before starting to write for theatre in 2009. His play, SHERICA, was short-listed for the BBC’s Alfred Bradley Bursary Award, and his stage adaptation of THE BEST, an unfilmed Jack Rosenthal screenplay about George Best, won a Manchester Theatre Award in 2013.

For the screen, Ian  has several TV and film scripts in development with various production companies including BLURRED for Saffron-Cherry Productions.

He is a writer and editor at Cutaway Comics, and has written a variety of titles for the company including Demons of Eden, Sutekh  and the forthcoming Drax: London Calling and Drax: LA Woman.

He also writes audio drama (his first Big Finish– still top secret – will be out in 2025), including his latest, SCUTTLED, a historical drama set on the Rochdale Canal in the 19th Century. Made in partnership with The Museum of London Archaeology, it stars Christopher Eccleston, and is free to stream and download here: https://audioboom.com/posts/8564866-scuttled-ep...

ARTISTS!

MARTIN BAINES is a professional storyboard and concept artist living in London for over 10 years. Working extensively in the field of storyboards for advertising agencies, with work for most of the major studios in central London for clients such as Hitachi, AA, Visa and Nescafe.

Beside advertising I work with Publishers on a regular bases producing images in a variety of styles; from realistic painted book jackets, to drawing comic strips and colouring the famous Garth comic strip in the Daily Mirror. His portfolio also includes illustrating the life story of famous footballers for Match of the Day weekly, Wallace & Gromit comic, Commando, the Beano and illustrations in People’s Friend. And of course, Martin is no stranger to Cutaway Comics with lovely work on TERRA ALPHA NIGHTS and the soon to be seen CHIN LI backup as part of the eagerly awaited INFERNO prequel.

SILVANO BELTRAMO is best known to us as the winner of our open art submission in 2021 and subsequently, the brilliant artist on PARADISE TOWERS. Silvano returns for more of the anticipated end credits mini scenes that tee up the next Gods & Monsters book for which Silvano will be lead artist.

Born in 1971, after various experiences with fanzines and self-productions in the '90s (Sauron, Crash, Ganesh, among others) and participation in the competition for young authors in Prato in 1997 where he was selected among the 25 finalists, debuts in 1999 as a comics artist realizing until 2001 various episodes of the “Clarissa” series published on the “Dodo” magazine (Giorgio Mondatori Editore).

He alternates the activity of colorist (for Vittorio Pavesio, Giorgio Rebuffi, Luciano Bottaro) with that of illustrator, graphic artist and Web Designer. Since 2017 he has collaborated with US and UK publishers Antarctic Press, Advent Comics, AC Comics, Minutehand Pictures, MWP Comics, Spinwhiz Comics, Maverick Arts, TPub Comics, Cutaway Comics.

MIKE COLLINS has drawn pretty much every major character at the big companies: X-Men, Batman, JLA, Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Judge Dredd, Slaine and Rogue Trooper amongst them.

In animation he’s worked on shows as diverse as Warhammer 40k and Horrid Henry, Sali Mali and many other Welsh language pre-school shows.

He’s drawn two well regarded and successful original Graphic Novels- an adaptation of Dickens’; A Christmas Carol and the docudrama about the first moon landing, Apollo.

In recent years he’s worked on several How To Draw books: a 100 issue run on How To Draw Marvel magazine; 3 volumes of How To Draw Fortnite; and most recently How To Draw Five Nights at Freddies. In TV he works as a storyboard artist on many genre shows: Doctor Who, His Dark Materials, Good Omens, The Witcher, Midwich Cuckoos and, most recently, the new Famous Five.

LIBBY REED is a brilliant artist we met at Thought Bubble and instantly thought of for Iris. An illustrator who has previously worked for Clockwork Soldier, self-published comics and other work, Libby has been recognised in a national Manga competition. Katy Manning loved here work and we do too! Libby's folio of work can be enjoyed at http://www.artstation.com/liliputt95

STEPHEN B SCOTT has illustrated such titles as; Batman, X-Men Forever, JLA, Batman Confidential, Marvel Adventures Hulk, Judge Dredd and many more. In his more than twenty year career, the publishers have included, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, Titan Comics and recently Storm King Comics where he illustrated John Carpenter presents Night Terrors with writer Steve Niles. Stephen is currently working with writer E. R. Torre, creator of the critically acclaimed Corrosive Knights series of novels, bringing them into the world of graphic novels. Additionally, Stephen is also providing covers and interiors for Cutaway Comics who are publishing comics tied into the Doctor Who universe.

COLOURISTS!

LOVERN KINDIERSKI is a successful writer, colourist and illustrator based in Winnipeg, Canada. He has been nominated as best colourist for the Eisner Awards, Harvey Awards, and Schuster Awards. As a writer, he has worked on titles including Spiderman, Wolverine, and The Victorian.

ANDREW ORTON is our go to colourist and we love his work on Cutaway!  In his time, Andrew Orton has been a writer, artist, designer, typesetter, animator, television historian, stage interviewer and probably lots of other things.

He’s usually happy.

ENGINE ROOM!

WILL BROOKS is our brilliant Cutaway designer, working with the artists to make the work shine and designing all that gorgeous merch.

MATT CHARLTON is Associate Producer for Cutaway Comics, working to support Gareth, Sean and Justin in getting the finished product to the shelves. A vital cog in the Cutaway machine, particularly good at backstopping the commentaries, we'd say.

GARETH KAVANAGH is Publisher and Commissioning Editor for Cutaway Comics. Does everything from teeing up properties, putting the teams together, overseeing the whole process and posting so many parcels. It's all glamour comics, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise!

JUSTIN JOHNSON moderates our new DVD commentaries, and by day works as Lead Programmer for the British Film Institute at BFI Southbank, the UK's Cinematheque. He also programmes animated films and films for families at London Film Festival. He regularly contributes to TV & Radio about film and in the past reviewed films for BBC Radio among other outlets. He's brings incisive knowledge and a lovely light tough to the tracks he moderates, even if now he's watched Dragonfire more times than is possibly healthy for any adult.

SEAN MASON is, aside from being a brilliant writer, our lead VAM disc producer pulling together a growing stock of documentaries, interviews and special features to compliment our brilliant commentary tracks.

VAM, BAM, THANK YOU FREE VAM! 

Our policy of giving you VAM discs with each issue we produce continues, and we are delighted that you are enjoying these freebies. 

We want to go deeper into the creation of our comics, and each disc unlocks secrets of how the comics have come to be, as well including newly commissioned and archive treats along the way! DRAX and IRIS & LOSKO are no exception with a VAM disc for both with the following proposed content: 

• FAN-tastic documentary, the latest in our series by Sean Mason on Bob Baker and Dave Martin
• Gary Russell gives his thoughts on the forthcoming GRAHAM WILLIAMS volume of the DNA of Doctor Who.
• The Cutaway team present a Video Essay on The Armageddon Factor
• Ian Winterton (lead writer) and Gareth Kavanagh (commissioning editor) talk Gods & Monsters Phase 2
• New commentary on the Armageddon Factor, contributors to be confirmed. 
• Who is John Lydecker? A chat with the mysterious author of the Warriors' Gate and Terminus Target novelisations.
• Into the Gallagherverse: Part Two

Plus chats with the creators, archive treats and much more to be announced in the Stretch goals!

STRETCH GOALS!

Here you go! Your first Stretch Goal to be unlocked at £7.5K is a brand new mini documentary all about the brilliant BBC Books 8th Doctor novels which first introduced us to IRIS!

INFINITE TYPEWRITERS: THE EIGHTH WONDERS OF THE MULTIVERSE

During the wilderness years, up and coming authors were exploring the possibilities of Doctor Who in print, crafting new realities and creating a new continuity. It was a time for creativity and experimentation, introducing us to fabulous new worlds and characters (including the introduction of a certain Iris Wildthyme).

In this documentary we want to bring together some of these authors to discuss this fascinating era, their journeys into print and how they were able to expand the mythos. We'll get the stories behind the stories and maybe even uncover some lost adventures! 

Whether through individual interviews or a round table discussion (depending on people's schedules), we'll get the inside scoop from the writers who were fundamental in shaping a new continuity as well as answering selected questions from our backers.

We are also working on one FINAL stretch goal. Just needs a few more things to come together, #staytuned.

SHIPPING TO SUIT YOUR BUDGET

One of the few things that is out of our hands is the shipping cost - especially beyond the UK where we’re based. We’re committed to shipping registered to ensure that you get your precious comics and goodies in a timely and stress-free manner. 

However, we also include digital copies as they are released so you can still enjoy all Gods and Monsters Phase 2 has to offer while waiting for your comic to arrive. 

WHY CROWDFUNDING? 

We’ve been asked why we are offering crowdfunding as an option to purchase our comics when much of the work is already completed - our answer hasn’t really changed from previous crowdfunders. 

Well, the answer to this is two-fold. We need to ensure the longevity of the range, and comics aren’t cheap. Aside from the script, artwork, colouring, and lettering (none of which you can cut corners on), there’s distribution, printing, covers, licensing all to be taken into account.

We’ve already committed to an extensive VAM package for our comics including video and audio content based around the comics, but we want to bring you even more. Crowdfunding allows us to do this in a risk-free environment to an extent.

We can experiment with stretch goals and perks that we would like to offer, and see if people want to purchase them. Our core product and commitment are the comics. Everything else is indulging our, and hopefully, your tastes for good quality material from the world of Doctor Who.

ABOUT CUTAWAY COMICS 

CUTAWAY COMICS is an independent British comics label currently exploring creator owned characters and universes originally featured in the worlds of BBC Television’s Doctor Who. 

Previous titles have included Eric Saward’s LYTTON (“The SF noir of Blade Runner had it been realised in London“, We Are Cult), OMEGA (“The grand mythic tone gives [Cutaway] a very classy - and distinctive - new string to their bow.”, Set the Tape), PARADISE TOWERS: PARADISE FOUND (“A triumph of colour over the forces of oppression”, The Tides of Time) and most recent titles SUTEKH, OMEGA: ELTRALLA and FAUSTINE, the first phase of our crossover GODS AND MONSTERS event. 

We have also launched one-shots featuring other characters from the Whoinverse including Eric Saward’s ORCINI (“A very enjoyable one-off adventure”, Sci-Fi Bulletin) and Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s ELDRAD MUST LIVE! (“A comic unafraid to wear its inspirations on its sleeve,” The Tides of Time). 

2024 saw our move into large format publishing via our ROUNDEL BOOKS label. The first of our titles in this format THE DNA OF DOCTOR WHO: THE PHILIP HINCHCLIFFE YEARS launched in August 2024, while the second book GO FIGURE! A VISUAL ARCHIVE GUIDE TO THE CHARACTER OPTIONS DOCTOR WHO FIGURES (2005-2024) launches later this year.

Forthcoming comics include INFERNO from Gary Russell and John Ridgway, Graeme Curry’s THE HAPPINESS PATROL from Steve Lyons, and the finale of our epic crossover GODS AND MONSTERS event.

You can find more about us at http://www.cutawaycomics.co.uk.

RISKS AND CHALLENGES

The risks are minimal. Work is ongoing on Gods and Monsters.  Drax part 1 and Iris are already complete, work is underway on Drax part 2. We are just waiting for Mike to finish work on DWM and then Losko will follow. It's all ready to roll and over 50% complete at time of writing!

The availability of our contributors to VAM material is always checked at the time of launching crowdfunders and agreed in principle, but without the funding, we cannot guarantee this, and as agents and circumstances change, so might our VAM. We are confident we can enhance our VAM offering - and if not, we have a creative team to ensure we can get the best out of the situation. 

Out of our control is the availability of printing and postage, which varies. We will aim to meet our shipping deadlines and keep everyone updated if elements have to move.