Frobisher and the Sixth Doctor

The Sixth Doctor had one of the shortest lives in comics before that of the Ninth, but it came with one interesting result: we were able to enjoy a different Sixie before Colin Baker put on a similar portrayal in his audio stories, where he was much wittier, funnier, and able to be a less hostile Doctor than his TV counterpart. As a part of that interesting result, due to likeness rights being what they were back in the 1980s, most of the Doctor Who strips that ran in Doctor Who Magazine couldn't make use of the Doctor's actual television companion for a long time (the last time that a Doctor had his onscreen companion with him from his debut in the comics was the Third Doctor way back in TV Comic) so in Sixie's case, he was without Peri when he made his comic debut in "The Shape Shifter". But because it's always a difficulty in writing a Doctor solo, the writers of "The Shape Shifter"found a unique way around this problem and gave Sixie a companion in the form a shape-shifting Whifferdill named Avan Tarklu, who would soon become known as "Frobisher".

Aside from knowing about THAT coat, the other thing I remembered most in my early Doctor Who fanhood (mid-2000s...I didn't really watch the Classic series until around 2008) was that for some reason from the clips of those old DWM strips I'd seen that penguin and wondered "What in the world...?" and it soon became one of my favorite aspects of the Sixth Doctor's run that never would have been able to be presented in any way on television. Frobisher is a con-artist, flippant, speaks with an American accent, and has deep issues that make his character ark fascinating. He's been stuck in penguin form due to illness and been divorced and had his heart broken but he's always been one of the Doctor's most loyal of companions, even being enlisted by the Tenth Doctor for help in stopping a mad plot concocted by Adam Mitchell and the Master against the Doctor and all of his companions (that part was cool, too bad the rest of the story wasn't).

I had this idea of dialing up the hues and saturations to match the style and feel of a mid-80s comic story. Even though all of Sixie's appearances were in black and white, I imagined that if he had appeared in Marvel-US or DC Comics, he would have appeared like this. And the main conceit being that Sixie and Frobisher have to escape a Cyberman war ship, and due to Frobisher's condition as a flightless bird, the Doctor has to carry his companion in order for them both to get away. It represents how I feel that Frobisher was always a better fit for this version of the Doctor than he would have been for the Seventh (whom he did travel with for a bit) or even the more modern Doctors. But as I say that, he would have been a welcome fit opposite the Eighth Doctor and maybe even the Twelfth Doctor, the latter of which saw Nardole occupy much the same function as Frobisher without, well...being a penguin.