Another day, another Free Comic Book Day (or FCBD) comic that I’ve been very slow to get around to reading; with the FCBD event happening on the first Saturday in May every year, I’ve not had a great deal of time to get through the stack of comics I picked up, but I’m getting there.

Someone who doesn’t let time stand in their way is the Doctor, and it’s the Fifteenth incarnation of the renegade Time Lord who’s the subject of the comic featured in this issue, which previews the new ongoing series from Titan Comics.

Though we barely felt like we got to know Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor across the all-too-brief first season of his TV show, it does feel as if writer Dan Watters has already got a handle on the basics of this joyous, emotionally open Time Lord.

He absolutely nails the characters of the Doctor and Ruby (who will make older readers feel, well, even older with one particular quip here), as they happen upon Dick Turpin on the day he is due to be hanged. Yet this Dick Turpin has been given some very advanced technology, and it seems that someone is sending a message to the Doctor across time and space.

Not only does Watters get the basics of the main characters right, but he also drops in some satisfyingly deep references to Who lore too, each of which I’m pleased to say I was familiar with, though there’s at least one that I wouldn’t have recognised before embarking on a binge of classic Who.

The art is wonderful, with Kelsey Ramsay’s expressive linework and Valentina Bianconi’s vivid colours perfectly complementing the writing. Oddly, it feels more like classic or even Nu Who than most of the Fifteenth Doctor’s TV stories have so far, so if you bounced off his live action adventures (as they proved quite divisive, I assume lots of people did), you’re still likely to enjoy this jaunt through time and space anyway.

It’s a great preview of what’s to come in the new series (which kicked off with the first issue in June), and shows real promise; it’s certainly done its job in making me want to read more.