The Incomplete Death's Head (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 17)

After his appearance in The Sensational She-Hulk, Death's Head was killed off in Marvel UK's Death's Head II miniseries—and as that title might imply, he was replaced by Death's Head II. DHII had the original Death's Head's memories, but was otherwise his own character. I am not so interested in pursuing the Death's Head strand that I would follow any of DHII's appearances. To my eyes, he has a very generic 1990s killer cyborg look, and none of the knowing humor that makes the original Death's Head work. 

However, Death's Head II was Marvel UK's smash hit, and an ongoing series was quickly commissioned, and DHII was dropped into every other Marvel UK book he could fit into. As I understand it, Marvel UK couldn't produce DHII content fast enough, and so they commissioned The Incomplete Death's Head, a twelve-issue reprint series. Its conceit was that DHII, along with his partner Tuck, ended up in an archive devoted to the original Death's Head, whose memories were replayed for them; each issue usually had one to two pages of new material framing an archival story. In addition to reprinting the original Death's Head vol. 1, it also reprinted Doctor Who Magazine #135, 140, and 173, Dragon's Claws #5, Marvel Comics Presents #76, and Sensational She-Hulk #24. (Death's Head doesn't appear in DWM #140, but the story features characters who reappear in Death's Head #5, reprinted in Incomplete Death's Head #6.) The major omissions are Fantastic Four #338, the The Body in Question graphic novel, and all of Death's Head Transformers appearances.

In the normal course of events, I wouldn't pick this up, but I had my reasons. The first is that it contains two stories Marvel didn't reprint in their 2019 Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent trade, one of which features the Doctor and DWM's Josiah W. Dogbolter. The other is that the frame story actually features both the Doctor and Hob, Dogbolter's robotic assistant from DWM. It's actually set during "Party Animals" (DWM #173), which was reprinted in The Good Soldier, so I read it after that collection, even though that's slightly out of publication sequence. I did dutifully read the whole thing, but in this write-up I am just going to focus on the three new-to-me stories. Just let me tell you that any story featuring Dragon's Claws does not get better on a second reading.

The first story I hadn't read before is a simple one-page tale just called "Death's Head!", though many people on the Internet call it "High Noon Tex." Basically, Death's Head goes and gets a guy with his usual style, the end. Cute but not essential. I have no idea what this wasn't reprinted in Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, given it's only a page and Marvel clearly ought to have the rights to it, given the story of its genesis.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #1
(script by Simon Furman, art by Bryan Hitch)

The oft-repeated story about it is that Marvel UK quickly had it made after Death's Head's first appearance in The Transformers #113 was written and drawn, but before it was published, and then published it in various Marvel UK titles before TF #113 actually appeared. Since it featured Death's Head but not the Transformers, that would make Death's Head a Marvel character who happened to appear in The Transformers (akin to Spider-Man), instead of a Transformers character, so Marvel UK would hold the copyright instead of Hasbro. They could tell he was going to be a breakout star and didn't want to be limited in what they could do with him.

I can find no evidence this actually happened. No one on the Internet provides any specific issues this strip supposedly appeared in. Indeed, most of the evidence I can find indicates this is not true. The notes in Incomplete Death's Head #1 say "the original appearance of Death's Head was a one page strip called High Noon Tex (reprinted this issue) which set the tone for the character. Originally, it had been intended as a one-off page to appear in a British comics fanzine, Scan." No mention of any Marvel UK title; indeed, the main thing we know is where it did not appear. As a Wikipedia sleuth drew my attention to, the strip is drawn by Bryan Hitch, who was not yet active as a comics artist when TF #113 came out in 1987... and indeed, it is clearly signed "Hitch '88" in its final panel. As far as I can tell, it actually originally debuted as a back-up strip in Transformers #167 in March 1988, the month before Death's Head made his first non-Transformers appearance in DWM #135's "The Crossroads of Time." So sure, Marvel UK was establishing Death's Head as a Marvel character... but seemingly retroactively and belatedly, no matter what has been claimed elsewhere.

The other omission from the FPA trade is much more understandable: Death's Head #8, "Time Bomb!", features the Doctor, Josiah W. Dogbolter, and Hob, and thus Marvel would need BBC permission to reprint. Unfortunately, it's a pivotal story for Death's Head, establishing how he went from 8162 in the Doctor Who universe to bouncing around in time in the Marvel universe. (It's also pivotal for DWM from a chronological perspective; because Dogbolter appears in it, it's the reason we know that a vast number of DWM characters including Frobisher, the Free-Fall Warriors, Sharon, and Olla the Heat Vampire reside in the 82nd century.)

It's been interesting to note in my DWM readthrough that the idea of a DWM universe hasn't really emerged yet; usually, writers do not reference the idea of previous eras of the strip. This is one of the first times something created for DWM has been brought back later; Dogbolter appeared in two fifth and sixth Doctor strips from 1984, five years before "Time Bomb!" (Abslom Daak was the first, back in Nemesis of the Daleks.) The reason he made a comeback is because "Time Bomb!" is the only Death's Head vol. 1 story (and, indeed, the first-ever Death's Head story) not written be Simon Furman; it's penned by Steve Parkhouse, regular DWM writer from 1981 to 1985, and creator of Dogbolter.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #9
(script by Steve Parkhouse,
art by Art Wetherell & Steve Parkhouse)

Thankfully, this isn't just a keystone story for both Death's Head and DWM, it's also very good. Dogbolter has created a time machine, and he hires Death's Head to kill the Doctor. What Death's Head doesn't know is that the time machine itself is a bomb, so the Doctor and Death's Head end up working together to turn the tables on Dogbolter. The previous Death's Head/Doctor Who team-up, "The Crossroads of Time," didn't work for me because it wasn't much of a story in general, and it wasn't a good Doctor Who story in specific. Despite the fact that this is a Death's Head story, it feels more like Death's Head turning up in a Doctor Who story than the other way around, and it's all the better for it. Parkhouse writes a good Death's Head, but there's a certain goofy charm that only Doctor Who can yield: Death's Head is initially lost in time when trying to find the Doctor, so we get some quick historical hijinks. (My favorite gag is when Death's Head thinks he's found his mother.) Then when he does find the Doctor, he's acting in a pantomime! The cuts between the Doctor and Death's Head in one strand, and Dogbolter and Hob in the other, are effectively done. Overall, this is a nice story, and I was glad I tracked down this series to read it.

As I said, the whole set of reprints has a frame. I think it runs about thirty pages in total across the twelve issues. In the first issue, it's called "Connections," in the second, "Mind Meet!", and after that it has no title. The credits are also inconsistent; how I've indicated them below is how they are given in the book.

Death's Head II and his sidekick Tuck are teleported to an unknown location; Tuck is attacked by robots while DHII is uploaded into cyberspace, and both watch memories of the original Death's Head. Eventually, the original Death's Head joins DHII in cyberspace.

Eventually, we learn a number of things:

• This is Maruthea, the planet at the heart of the space-time vortex from the DWM strip "Party Animals."
• This in fact is set during "Party Animals"; in the middle of its events, both the seventh Doctor and the original Death's Head come to aid DHII and Tuck.
• The archive was made by Hob, Dogbolter's assistant. Dogbolter was destroyed by the bomb in "Time Bomb!", but Hob was flung into the space-time vortex and eventually ended up on Maruthea.
• The Doctor has been manipulating Death's Head's life longer than we knew: he shrunk him down and sent him into the Transformers universe to begin with. He also wipes the original Death's Head's mind of the events of "Party Animals" and this story to maintain the timeline.
  

I mean, it's fine. It does what it needs to, I guess. Like I said, there's no Transformers content here; it's just called a "robot universe." I thought it was curious to establish that Death's Head didn't come from this universe, given that he himself is a robot, though now that I think about it, that might be consistent with what we learned about his origins in The Body in Question, so I guess I didn't think that through enough. I thought it was odd that the vague references to the robot universe aren't actually consistent with the Transformers comics, as it seems like it would have been easy to make them so.

What I don't understand is why this whole story takes place during a Doctor Who one, and why in the process of writing the Transformers out of Death's Head's backstory, they write the Doctor in. One would think that Marvel UK had just learned its lesson about incorporating licensed characters into the backstory of their original characters! Like, this story can never be reprinted now for the very same reason that the Transformers ones couldn't be at the time.

(For an archive on Death's Head's history, the events of The Body in Question seem like a staggering omission... but I imagine that the 1990 collection was still in print when this came out, so it wasn't needed here.)

I am not sure what I think about Hob becoming a gigantic death robot who is also insane. I don't exactly remember how Dogbolter and Hob return in DWM, but I feel pretty certain all this will be ignored.

from The Incomplete Death's Head #2
(script by Dan Abnett, art by Simon Coleby)

Nothing about this story made me rethink my preconceptions of Death's Head II. He is clearly the inferior character to the original, and I don't understand how anyone could think otherwise. His partner Tuck is all the worse thing about "strong female characters" of the 1990s. The bit where the Doctor suggests that maybe she could be a companion boggles the mind. What a clash of genres! I guess I could imagine her hanging out with New Adventures–era "Spacefleet" Ace, though.

Ultimately, I have enjoyed this weird side-step. The early 1990s were a weird, often bad time in comics, and the strange journey of Death's Head from The Transformers to Doctor Who to the Marvel universe embodies that. When the character is written well, he's fun, but I've come to realize he's one of those characters who's a better foil than a star. I'm not sure that Simon Furman, at least, ever figured out how to make him a main character.

Anyway, this was basically it for the original Death's Head at Marvel, until Kieron Gillen revived the character in his S.W.O.R.D., Iron Man and Spider-Man runs in the 2010s. Those, I am given to understand, actually take place before Death's Head's Transformers appearances, as he is still big but doesn't yet call himself a "freelance peacekeeping agent." I'm not so motivated as to track them down, but he did get a miniseries in 2019, which I'll read when I get up to that year in DWM. Until then, it's the end, yes?

“Death’s Head!” (also known as “High Noon Tex”) was reprinted in issue #1 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Jan. 1993). The story originally appeared in issue #167 of The Transformers (Mar. 1988), and was written by Simon Furman, illustrated by Bryan Hitch, and lettered by Richard Starkings. The reprint was edited by John Freeman.

“Time Bomb!” was reprinted in issue #9 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Sept. 1993). The story originally appeared in issue #8 of Death’s Head vol. 1 (July 1989), and was written and inked by Steve Parkhouse, pencilled by Art Wetherell, lettered by Annie H, colored by Louise Cassell, and edited by Steve White.

“Connections” / “Mind Meet!” originally appeared in issues #1-12 of The Incomplete Death’s Head (Jan.-Dec. 1993). The story was plotted by John Freeman (#1); scripted by Dan Abnett (#1-2, 5, 8-12); pencilled by Simon Coleby (#1-2, 5, 8-12); inked by Simon Coleby (#1-2, 5), Sean Hardy (#8-10), Niel Bushnell (#11-12), and Tim Perkins (#11); lettered by Annie Parkhouse (#2, 5) and Gary Gilbert (#8-12); colored by David Leach (#2, 5, 9-12) and David Boyle (#8); and edited by John Freeman (#1-2) and Tim Quinn (#5).

This post is the seventeenth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers Evening's Empire. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
12. A Cold Day in Hell!
13. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 1)
14. Nemesis of the Daleks
15. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 2)
16. The Good Soldier