The Gods Walk Among Us
First published by Marvel Comics Ltd in Doctor Who issue 59 (December 1981)
Writer: John Peel
Artist: David Lloyd
Companions: None
Goofs: Impressively, an unconscious Sontaran can survive for five and a half thousand years without any apparent ill effects. Even more impressively, the ancient Egyptians could build a traditional Egyptian tomb in seven hours.
Apocrypha: The tomb has been sealed for five thousand and five hundred years, and bears hieroglyphs telling of "Sontar". It actually contains the body of Sontaran Major Styx, who crashed in Egypt at the time and exploited the natives' assumption that he was a god. He wanted them to build an ion cannon emplacement, giving Earth strategic value in the war against the Rutans. Realizing that Styx planned their deaths, his worshippers built a tomb around him whilst he was recharging, entombing him. They passed instructions down through the years to ensure his death if he was ever freed.
Links: The last of three of the original Marvel Doctor Who back-up strips to star a Sontaran, The Gods Walk Among Us is also the first to mention the Rutans, first mentioned back in The Time Warrior and eventually seen in Horror of Fang Rock. Like the Sontarans, they've appeared in a couple of Doctor Who novels (and one comic strip) over the years.
Location: Egypt, 1926.
Notes: By this point, the back-up strip has lost its charm and started to feel purely like a means of filling spare pages. This is probably because of the writer, John Peel. He would write the last three regular back-up strips for Doctor Who Magazine, beginning with this. It's basically Pyramids of Mars on the cheap, and has annoying plot holes, which is really poor in a story only four pages long. Lloyd's distinctive art is always welcome, using shadows and silhouettes to great effect, but it can't compensate for the general paucity of the concept. Possibly in homage to Terry Nation, Peel later recycles his own ideas by adding a scene to his novelization of the second half of The Daleks' Master Plan in which Ancient Egyptians bury a Dalek under the Sphinx.
Comic Guide by Paul Clarke
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