Second frame of third story:

This is a collection of the Dalek comic strips from the magazine TV Century 21, published between 1965 and 1967, a page a week about everyone’s favourite evil metallic pepperpots and the obstacles that get thrown up in their plans to dominate the universe. I found it an unexpected pleasure. There are about a dozen storylines across the run, each reasonably self-contained in the structure of needing each page to have a beginning, middle and end. There are not a lot of women – a slave princess in an early story, a little girl who gets into trouble in a later one – but there aren’t in fact a lot of humans, as the main dynamic in the stories is between the Daleks themselves.

There’s also a dozen pages of introduction setting the scene for the series and printing a 1986 interview with one of the main artists. The only two women mentioned are both fictional – Lady Penelope from Thunderbirds and Maria from Metropolis, but no doubt this reflects the reality.

I must say that this greatly exceeded my expectations, and it seems a lot more mature than the contemporary First and Second Doctor strips that I have seen. Hugely recommended. Sadly it’s out of print, but I’d keep an eye out for it if I were you.

This was my top unread English-language comic. Next on that pile is Land of the Blind, by Scott Gray et al.