Death's Head
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The term death's head also refers to a human skull as a symbol of mortality, or similarly the Death's-head Hawkmoth.
- For the World War II German Waffen-SS division, see SS Division Totenkopf.
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Death's Head is the name of a fictional cyborg bounty hunter (though he hates to be called this, prefering the term "freelance peacekeeper") created by Simon Furman and artist Geoff Senior for the Marvel UK imprint of Marvel Comics.
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[edit] Publication history
Death's Head was originally planned to star in his own series, but was shelved. A little later, Furman decided to use Death's Head in his UK Transformers stories, and so the character was unleashed, first in a one-page strip ("High Noon Tex") that ran in many comics to confirm Marvel's ownership of the character (if he had appeared in the Transformers comics first, Hasbro would have owned him), and then in the Transformers comic itself. Two incarnations of Death's Head have followed the original, with the second also being created by Furman.
[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] The original Death's Head
[edit] Transformers
Death's Head's first appearance after High Noon Tex, was in Marvel's Transformers series, which saw him attempt to claim the bounty that Rodimus Prime had hastily placed on Galvatron's head. Learning that Galvatron had travelled back in time, Death's Head transported himself back to 1987 in pursuit of his quarry, while Rodimus Prime, realising his error, followed him back, and stopped him from destroying Galvatron, forcibly returning him to the future. Subsequently, Death's Head was contracted by the Decepticons to take out Rodimus Prime, a piece of business that Death's Head considered a pleasure, only to have the hit interfered with by Decepticons Cyclonus and Scourge, hoping to take the glory for themselves. Death's Head was tricked by Rodimus into entering the Autobot base, where, outnumbered, he cut a deal, and was paid by Rodimus to hunt down Cyclonus and Scourge.
Over the course of the next year, Death's Head pursued Cyclonus and Scourge across the galaxy, eventually confronting them on the Planet of Junk, where they all fell under the mental control of the disembodied head of Unicron. Death's Head tried to resist the control, but was manipulated into killing Shockwave, allowing Cyclonus and Scourge to take command of the Decepticons and re-ignite the stalemated Cybertronian war, which would disguise Unicron's own activities. In his continued battle against Unicron's control, Death's Head confronted him on the astral plane and discovered the true origin of the world-eater, using that knowledge to help Rodimus Prime seal Unicron within the Matrix. As explosion tore the area apart, destroying Unicron's head, Death's Head - vowing to see his contract through to the end - forced himself, Cyclonus and Scourge through Unicron's time portal, vowing to kill them "another time". However, in the course of the time travel they became separated, and while Cyclonus and Scourge wound up on Cybertron in the past, eventually joining with Scorponok and becoming Targetmasters, Death's Head instead encountered the Time Lord known as the Doctor. The Doctor shrank him to human size and shot him off through time, leading him into an encounter with the future government's troubleshooting team, the Dragon's Claws.
[edit] 8162 and The Body in Question
Subsequently, Death's Head was finally granted a comic book of his own, originally set in the year 8162 but later travelling to the present (where he met the Fantastic Four) and then to the year 2020 (where he met Iron Man 2020). During this series, Spratt, a young gang member rebuilt Death's Head after he was destroyed by Dragon's Claws, leading to a redesign of Death's Head body, and his becoming the cyborg's unwanted partner. The series was ended abruptly with a cliffhanger at issue 10 due to the closure of Marvel UK's own creative team.
In 1990, the ongoing storyline was resolved in the Marvel UK graphic novel, Death's Head: The Body in Question, which was serialized in the magazine Strip before being reprinted in the Marvel Graphic Novel format. In this story, Death's Head's origins were revealed to him for the first time.
His mechanoid body had originally been constructed to host the life energy of the techno-mage Lupex. However, a woman named Pyra, who wished to steal Lupex's secrets, ultimately decided to use the mechanoid body against him. She gave it a cold and calculating business-like mind, but before it could be used against Lupex, the body was stolen by an unknown party (later revealed to be the Doctor[citation needed]), enlarged to the size of the Cybertronians, and catapulted through time.
At this time, 6 issues of the original series were also collected in the graphics novel The Life and Times of Death's Head, together with the High Noon Tex strip and some words from writer Simon Furman and concept art for the character's original design. The article makes mention of a new limited series entering production, with a new, gothic, redesign of the character. However, this series was never published.
Around this time, Death's Head's increasing 'cult status' meant that he also made a few appearances in some US Marvel comics, most notably the Fantastic Four (issue 338), She-Hulk (Sensational She-Hulk issue 24) and Marvel Comics Presents (issue 76).
[edit] Death's Head II
Eventually, after many undocumented adventures, Death's Head was beheaded and his personality "assimilated" into the mind of the cyborg Minion. Minion was a cyborg created by Dr. Evelyn Necker, an employee of A.I.M. in the year 2020. Death's Head's personality overwhelmed Minion's programming, and they became the gestalt lifeform that called itself Death's Head II. Death's Head II was partnered with Tuck, an artificial human from the pseudo-medieval planet of Lionheart, where humans had outlawed advanced technology and waged war against androids and cyborgs. Death's Head II encountered many more Marvel characters, including the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Cable, and crossed over with almost every Marvel UK character who was published at the time.
Death's Head II was created by artist Liam Sharp and primarily scripted by Dan Abnett.
The original Death's Head was only ever seen again in flashbacks or within Death's Head II's gestalt mind. A coda to the original Death's Head could be found in the Simon Furman-penned issue of What If, issue #54, which was entitled "What If Death's Head I Had Lived?"
The original 10 issue series, plus High Noon Tex and the relevant Doctor Who and Dragon's Claws stories, were reprinted in their entirety in a 12 issue miniseries, The Incomplete Death's Head, featuring new covers and a new framing sequence featuring Death's Head II replaying the original Death's Head's memories. The series also had Death's Head II teaming up with his original incarnation to battle a mechanical life form named Hob in a strange space station which existed outside time.
Other Death's Head II titles included the 4 issue introductory miniseries, a 16 issue 'ongoing' run, and Death's Head II Gold, a second miniseries that only got as far as issue #1 (although issue #0 was featured as a flip cover on issue #15 of the ongoing series).
Death's Head's exploits ultimately came to end with the (second) demise of Marvel UK's in house creative team, and aside from a cameo in Avengers Forever and profiles in various reference books, he has not been featured in a Marvel comic since.
[edit] Death's Head 3.0
In August 2005, Death's Head won a Marvel.com poll (with 49% of the vote in his favour) to be "remade" in the pages of Marvel's anthology series Amazing Fantasy. The five-part "Death's Head" storyline began with #16 (December 2005). The comic is written by creator Simon Furman and drawn by James Raiz, featuring "Death's Head 3.0", carrying over the continuity from the previous two characters to carry the name.
The story of Death's Head 3.0 is set 100 years in the future. Advanced Idea Mechanics are set to make peace with the UN and become a legitimate non-terrorist organisation. Hardliner AIM Senior Scientist Patricia Goddard has decided to stop the peace treaty and force AIM back underground by assassinating the UN Secretary-General, using a mysterious alien cyborg in AIM's possession codenamed Death's Head. Powered and given intelligence by an artificial variant on the Uni-Power, it was sent out in to the field with preprogrammed objectives, coming to terms with its existence, the clash between its murderous nature & inclinations and instinctive Uni-Force desire to help people, and needing to decide what side it wants to be on.
The final panel of the Death's Head 3.0 story concludes with an image of the cyborg with mouth horns, alluding to the original Death's Head. It is mentioned as now operating as a deniable troubleshooter for the GEIST organisation (Global Enforcement/Intelligence Symposium Taskforce), carrying out operations they can't be officially involved in for political reasons.
[edit] Continuity tie-ins
Death's Head cyborgs have been involved in the Incredible Hulk storyline, Planet Hulk; the backstory for Death's Head 3.0 is that they were part of an alien invasion AIM thwarted in the future. The story also ties into previous Amazing Fantasy stories - Death's Head sentience and power source comes from AIM'S attempts to replicate the power that created Captain Universe, and the scientist behind this is the mother of Carmilla Black, the new Scorpion, as well as being Patricia Goddard's grandmother. While the Minion project is mentioned as the reason for Death's Head being given his name, no other ties to the previous Death's Heads were given, but in his Comixfan interview Simon Furman said if the character returns he will "work in a little retroactive back story to create a kind of unified Death's Head-verse."
[edit] Collections
- Death's Head 3.0: Unnatural Selection (paperback, collecting Amazing Fantasy 16-20, ISBN 0785121080)
- Death's Head: "Death's Head Mini-series, No. 1-4", "Maxi-series, No. 1-12" (Paperback) [1]
[edit] Note
In the third issue of the All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z (released on March 22, 2006), Death's Head and Death's Head II both receive entries, and a mention of "reports of a new Death's Head" at the end of the original Death's Head's entry is presumably a reference to Death's Head 3.0. Also, the original Death's Head's entry describes his encounters with the Transformers to have taken place in an alternate reality, referred to as Earth-120185, thus separating these stories from existence in standard Marvel Universe continuity.
[edit] External links
- Death's Head I at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe.
- Death's Head II at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe
- Interview with creator Simon Furman about Death's Head 3.0
