Twelve-issue mini-series, published by Marvel UK in 1993
Starring the 7th Doctor, Hob and Death's Head
A Review by Finn Clark 31/8/04
During their short-lived boom of the early nineties, Marvel UK's most popular property was Death's Head. Originally created by Simon Furman to fight Transformers, a dimension-hopping Death's Head ended up being pitted against the 7th Doctor, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man and many others. He got his own series. He even eventually got destroyed and reincarnated in a spiffing new cyborg body with morphing weapons and multiple personalities.
For those unacquainted with this charming character, Death's Head was an assassin-for-hire with a passable line in deadpan humour and no morals whatsoever. He killed anyone for cash. So far he probably sounds roughly on a par with Abslom Daak, but the key difference is that Daak had pain and dramatic motivation. Death's Head is basically a one-joke cardboard cut-out whose stories at best were fun but disposable. However since he tangled with the 7th Doctor on several occasions, I find myself reviewing this mini-series.
The Incomplete Death's Head was a reprint series, reprising the adventures of the old pre-morphing Death's Head for the benefit of new readers. The stories it reran were:
High Noon Tex (Scan)
The Crossroads of Time (DWM 135)
Keepsake (DWM 140)
Party Animals (DWM 173)
Here's Death's Head! (Dragon's Claws 5)
The Deadliest Game (Marvel Comics Presents 76)
Priceless! (The Sensational She-Hulk 24)
...plus the ten issues of the original Death's Head series:
Death's Head Revisited (Death's Head 1)
Contractual Obligations (Death's Head 2)
High Stakes (Death's Head 3)
Plaguedog! (Death's Head 4)
Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling! (Death's Head 5)
Sudden Impact! (Death's Head 6)
Shot By Both Sides (Death's Head 7)
Time Bomb! (Death's Head 8)
Clobberin' Time! (Death's Head 9)
The Cast Iron Contract (Death's Head 10)
However there was also a framing story, normally just a page or two per issue, in which Death's Head and his partner Tuck got caught up in an archive of his past adventures on Maruthea. This linked into Party Animals (DWM 173) and the Dogbolter-Hob stories going back to The Moderator (DWM 84-87). This framing story was written by Dan Abnett and pencilled by Simon Coleby and comprised:
Connections (6 pages in issue 1)
Mind Meet! (25 pages in issues 2-12)
So is it worth reading? Um, ish, if you like that sort of thing. There's a certain amoral entertainment value in Death's Head killing random people for money, but unfortunately Marvel UK kept giving him crossovers with other characters which seemed to be even less interesting than him. Take Dragon's Claws, for instance. They're a military peacekeeper squad in the year 8162, but more importantly the evidence of these pages suggests that they're a personality-free zone. Two-thirds of this mini-series passed before I found anything I'd recommend to anyone who wasn't already a Death's Head fan.
Eventually things get livelier. In quick succession, Death's Head meets the 7th Doctor, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man in the year 2020 and the Sensational She-Hulk. I quite enjoyed those episodes, though they're no more than what you'd expect from one-off comics crossovers with the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, She-Hulk, etc. But as for the Doctor Who content...
The Crossroads of Time (DWM 135) was Death's Head's only significant appearance in the pages of DWM. That's the one where he's the size of Marble Arch until the Doctor pulls one of the Master's Tissue Compression Eliminators from his pocket (as you do) and zaps him with it. It's amusing and I give it points for being drawn by Geoff Senior, but it's still basically a runaround.
Keepsake (DWM 140) doesn't star Death's Head but appears here because it introduces Keepsake, a character who went on to meet Death's Head in Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling!. Believe it or not, I've always liked this one. I don't even mind the PG-certificate swearing (e.g. "Holy spit!") which at least is in tune with what Ace was being allowed to say on TV around then. Keepsake himself is entertainingly misanthropic and John Higgins's scratchy art was a wonderful surprise by the standards of the early McCoy comic strips. Admittedly it's basically disposable nonsense, but I think it's fun.
Party Animals (DWM 173) has the most tenuous Death's Head connection imaginable, which might be why Marvel UK felt they had to tie it into Mind Meet!, the framing story. It's a goofy wankfest written by Gary Russell in which the 7th Doctor meets his future self (based on Nick Briggs's Doctor from the eighties fan-produced Audio-Visuals and set to return, after a fashion, in the McGann comic strips), not to mention dozens of familiar faces. They have a fight. That's pretty much the whole story. It's utterly brainless, but amiable and attractively drawn.
Time Bomb! (Death's Head 8) isn't from DWM, though there's an unrelated Colin Baker comic strip with the same name except for the exclamation mark. Instead it's a 7th Doctor crossover in Death's Head's own comic. On first glance it's just crudely drawn nonsense... but study those credits. Time Bomb! was written (and inked) by Steve Parkhouse, the comics god who crafted the Doctor's DWM strip adventures from 1981-85. These 22 pages don't really compare with Parkhouse's more serious work, being kiddie comedy with crude-looking pencils from Art Wetherell, but they have its moments. I liked the flashes of Steve Parkhouse's wit, but more interestingly there's an easily overlooked closing scene in which the 7th Doctor delivers moral judgement on Death's Head. This may be the only moment in the history of this (let's be honest) nasty, shallow piece of work where someone's ever stepped back and criticised him on any kind of meaningful level... and arguably the Doctor's the only man who could have pulled it off.
Oh, and it co-stars Dogbolter and Hob. Yup, you read right: the frog of Intra-Venus Inc. Time Bomb! also ends with the TARDIS landing on the roof of the Fantastic Four building in New York in 1989.
Finally we have the framing story, which is a sequel to Time Bomb! The 7th Doctor appears at the end to rewrite Death's Head's timeline in a gratuitous info-dump and invite Tuck to travel with him in the TARDIS! Fortunately she says no. (In case you were wondering, Tuck is a buxom lass with a penchant for face paint, explosive crossbow bolts and outfits that make her look like a stripper. She's also Death's Head's partner. No, I don't want to know either.)
As Doctor Who stories, Connections and Mind Meet! are negligible. Arguably they're significant for what they do with Hob, but any Doctor Who content in this mini-series is purely incidental. No, this framing story is essentially an excuse to show Death's Head arguing with himself and committing ultra-violence. It's kinda fun, though.
Overall, I'm not sure if I could recommend The Incomplete Death's Head to anyone who wasn't already a fan of the character. It's a mish-mash of various different story types and its Doctor Who content sits a little awkwardly with the rest of the mini-series. It's easy to see why the 1990s Marvel UK boom didn't last. However I can't deny that I kinda enjoyed some of this. In particular I wouldn't mind seeing the framing story reprinted without the filler material, while Death's Head himself can be fun in his shallow way. Good for a laugh, I suppose.