Comic Review: Death's Head, Volume Two

PUBLISHER: MARVEL UK (1989-1990), MARVEL (1991, 1993)
WRITERS: STEVE PARKHOUSE, SIMON FURMAN, WALTER SIMONSON, GARY RUSSELL
ARTISTS: ART WETHERELL, GEOFF SENIOR, BRYAN HITCH, WALTER SIMONSON, MIKE COLLINS

The second volume of Death's Head reprints basically plot an ongoing attempt to keep the character alive, a rag-tag punch of crossovers and guest appearances as all involved defiantly refuse to give up on the concept while continuing to unwittingly dilute it. Since landing his own ongoing series the capitalist killer had been calmed down considerably into a Saturday morning cartoon - you remember how in that nineties X-Men show where Wolverine would always be snarling about wanting to hack people up  but would always listen to Cyclops this time bub or someone would get lucky this time bub and those claws would only be used on robots and electric fences and whatever? That's solo series Death's Head - make an exception this time, yes? Hope heroics are not catching, yes? Let you live this time, yes? As such a series of guest appearances where he can't very well go around killing other established characters are hardly promising.

First on the table are the last three issues of his solo book, pinwheeling towards cancellation as readers got bored in their droves. The first actually sees the first run-out for the character not under the pen of Simon Furman; instead Steve Parkhouse gets the job, possibly because of his familiarity with guest star the Doctor. In fact, once you throw in Dogbolter hiring Death's Head to nobble the Doc and steal the TARDIS it feels more like a Doctor Who comic with Death's Head in. Death's Head claims his first name is Death and calls a robot 'son', which says a lot for Parkhouse's handle on the character. He's given a time machine jetpack thing and sent off to find the Doctor's not being written very impressively either, his combination of skills and interests leading him to opt to play a jester in a pantomime, literally. His comic was full of shit like that, though it rapidly turns into an escalating contest of crapness - Death's Head gets embarrassed busting into a ladies' changing room, the Doctor escapes him with the help of a bloke called Dave who lets him share a pantomime horse costume. I'm not sure if Parkhouse just hates the seventh Doctor and Death's Head or just the reader. Naturally Dogbolter tries to double-cross them with a bomb (the story is called "Time Bomb" so no points for rumbling that little twist before it thuds in two-thirds of the way through the issue) and the pair work together - naturally with Death's Head resisting the chance to get even with the Doctor and the Doctor handily dumping him on top of Four Freedoms Plaza. It might be the worst Death's Head comic ever but then there's a way to go yet.

The desperation continues in the ninth issue of Death's Head then as it's time for a crossover with the first dysfunctional family of comics. The good news, much needed after Art Wetherell's efforts on the last issue is that this one has an artist - with Dragon's Claws cancelled Geoff Senior is free. The finest of Marvel UK's cadre never really made it far beyond Transformers but really his dynamism here shows that it was the industry's loss as his geometric style is a great fit; his Thing and Mr Fantastic especially are superb. Furman's back on scripting duties and while that means less humiliation for everyone he can't come up with a better plot than "everyone fights until a common enemy comes along". This time it's the Baxter Building's security system that brings along the "we'll finish this when we're all safe by actually we won't and Ben's not going to smash Death's Head's face in and neither is Death's Head going to shoot Ben because he needs a time machine and that's the only reason he saves Franklin, yes? Some good dialogue and the aforementioned incredible art helps but it's basically exactly the same plot as every other crossover the character's in, a series of excuses for the character not to actually kill anyone.

More of the same follows when the time machine - thanks to last-minute tampering by Reed - sends him to 2020, where he gets embroiled in a scuffle with Arno Stark, the Iron Man of 2020 who - as discussed here - had a sizable UK following for weird reasons. The plot is so close to the previous issue it's amazing even Furman - the man who wrote Maximum Dinobots - has the gall to be so blatantly repetitive. Fight, fight, realise common enemy, sort common enemy out, bedgrudging respect, no-one dies, no imagination was harmed in the making of this comic. A slight twist comes when cascading sales led to the series ending, meaning a last-minute arrival for Spratt and Bigshot (from the first volume) to try and get the character to something approaching status quo ahead of the axe.

While Death's Head had died a death comics themselves were booming post-Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, which opened up an adult market. Marvel blamed the failure of Dragons' Claws and Death's Head on the book's US format being lost on British shelves (no, seriously) and, eyeing the success of the seminal Deadline and Fleetway's similar Crisis opted to make the character part of their own planned large-format grown up comic Strip. Like the others it mixed the serial anthology format that continued to dominate the weird UK market with stories for grown-ups; initially it featured the likes of Marshal Law and The Man from Cancer but midway through the run with the title dying (sensing a theme here?) and decided to up the ante by bringing back some better-known names, with Death's Head joining up in #13 (the Punisher would also sign up soon afterwards).

The result was "The Body in Question", a respectable return to form tying up some loose ends from the ongoing (including Spratt and Big Shot crashing in on Death's Head in 2020 and the teased stuff about Death's Head's apparent wife looking for him in 8162) and then exploring the character's origins. It's a little darker than the previous material both in that they actually let him kill someone without diffusing it with comedy and in the introspective nature; it might just be the best post-Transformers script the character's had, certainly. Best of all is the format, with all sixty pages of the serial beautifully drawn by Senior and with painted colours too.

Around this time the character made his debut in an American Marvel comic for the first time (his solo series had been released in the USA as an import but actual distribution was sketchy) in Fantastic Four #338, written and drawn by Walter Simonson. I'm sure Walt did do some good comics but everything of his I've read recently has been garbage and it might be that I'm thinking of Louise Simonson. Fair play though the art is striking but the issue is part of some Kang-related time travel madness that's already trying to fit Iron Man and Thor (because Simonson) into things so Death's Head's appearance as an agent of the Time Variance Authority isn't hugely substantial, though Simonson has a fair handle on his dialogue and he's no worse than he was in much of his solo series but it's not the character's finest moment either. Even more inessential is a third run-in with the Doctor at a birthday party in which Death's Head cameos in about three frames; you can admire the editor's exhaustive approach but the truth is the strip is as much about Captain Britain as it is about Death's Head.

Furman had by now crossed the Atlantic for most of his work and with Transformers clearly on the way to the knacker's yard was getting odd bits on other titles as well. Among these was a fill-in stint on the aggressively quirky Sensational She-Hulk. The first issue involves a plot where Jen ends up with a valuable vase and a local kingpin hires a hitman to - chortle - smash it rather than kill her. I know, it's zany. Such a remit brings out various quirky Z-listers like Plant-Man, the Whirlwind and Death's Head, handily zapped to the present day Marvel universe after his run-in with the Fantastic Four. Naturally after an initial fight they end up working together against the blah blah fucking blah. Released at the same time was a short, simple and none too original strip in Marvel Comics Presents depicting Death's Head on the run from a vengeful fellow freelance peacekeeping agent which touched on the same stuff as the first issue of his own series, clearly intended to strike a chord with American audiences. Seeing as this effectively ended the original Death's Head as a live character it can be considered to have failed.

Marvel UK, spearheaded by Paul Neary, however weren't giving up and despite their series of failures launched a whole line of new books in the US format with a full American distribution operation. The result was a plethora of sub-Image crap like Killpower & Motormouth and Warheads the character of Death's Head got killed off and given a radical overhaul as the even more generic Death's Head II. This was without the consent or involvement of Furman and ironically briefly found commercial success (partly due to an X-Men crossover in the early issues) before the whole idiotic idea collapsed in on itself to the extent that Marvel UK found effectively end when the surviving parts were sold to Panini. No material from this incarnation is included in the trade, thankfully, but this is the context for the book's endcap.

Largely left out of the whole Marvel UK disaster, Furman was in the process of prepping for Transformers Generation 2 and killing off Alpha Flight while also doing a couple of fill-ins on What If...?. For the third of his issues (#54) he reversed the events of the Death's Head II limited series - Death's Head survives his run-in with Minion and instead Reed Richards is killed. Minion is then taken over by Baron Strucker and becomes Charnal; the thing's inventor Carol Necker then hires Death's Head to take him down. Temporal antics and emotional blackmail lead to the rounding up of the remaining members of the Fantastic Four plus allies Namor, Luke Cage, Captain America and War Machine. The result is typical of the title with much preposterous death (Namor just pipping Rhodey to the title of most hilarious) but does see a decent take on Death's Head, arguably one that could never have worked in the real Marvel universe. Though to be fair one that could have worked in the UK subsection if Furman could ever actually kill anyone off.

It makes for a solid ending however and along with "The Body in Question" (probably the essential solo Death's Head comic) are worth reading. As for the rest, the initial Fantastic Four crossover and the Iron Man 2020 issues are workable but the rest is a mess; the problem with a comprehensive round-up like this is that Death's Head seems to be endlessly introduced to a reader who's halfway through a book about the guy while Furman's repetitive structure really does wear thin. Like the first collection it's as good a way as any of rounding up the character's adventures but the truth is the concept never received the storylines to bring it to fruition.

Comic Review: Iron Man 2020

PUBLISHER: MARVEL (1984-1986), MARVEL UK (1989), MARVEL (1993-1994, 2008-2009)
WRITERS: TOM DeFALCO, FRED SCHILLER, KEN MACDONALD, SIMON FURMAN, WALTER SIMONSON, BOB WIACECK, DANIEL MERLIN GOODBREY
ARTISTS: BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, HERB TRIMPE, MARK BEACHUM, BRYAN HITCH, WILLIAM ROSADO, LOU KANG, MANNY GALAN

Got to love a rogue obscure character getting a trade. The most fun thing about Iron Man 2020 (the hope of this blog is to avoid the obvious, so don't expect much bantz about how this will be happening in three years time) is that somehow, somehow, despite being popular with fans the character's still been sparsely used. To fill this trade whichever magnificent sod decided to run this collection has had to chase through issues of Machine Man, Spider-Man annuals, a nineties one-shot no-one remembers and the Astonishing Tales webcomic and even then rope in a storyline from What If. This is some editor's labour of love and I salute them. Quite what makes Arno Stark so appealing is a difficult thing to put the finger on; he's sort-of a bad version of relative (their exact relation is fuzzy, not least as 2020 started looking like a perfectly viable date for Iron Man to still be running) Tony Stark but not in a particularly evil way exactly, he's just a mercenary and a corporate bastard. Sort of what Tony Stark would actually be like in the real world, without telegraphed alcoholism or Skrull replacements or anything to offer a bailout. 

The character debuted in a comic which isn't even really about him, Tom DeFalco's reworking of Machine Man. Arno shows up in the first issue briefly then armoured up at the end of the second before being the antagonist (at the behest of Sunset Bain) in the last couple of issues but it's not a problem because the mini-series itself is excellent, a much-underrated gem of the era for Marvel. Machine Man had been around for years as a crap Silver Age idea that the company tried to push for a couple of years before giving up on; here he's awoken in a dystopia proto-cyberpunk 2020 by the Midnight Wreckers, a group of rogue robot salvage outlaws making a credit or two against the oppressive corporate might of Baintronics. The 2000AD-tinged world was met with rounded characterisation and a revitalised Machine Man, whose push for his own rights as a sentient being were better framed than in the cheesy original. The story, ably illustrated by Herb Trimpe & Barry Windsor-Smith, might just be DeFalco's crowning moment and it's fantastic how fresh the universe feels. Against all this is Arno, whose arrogance and disdain leads to an epic defeat. It's not an auspicious debut in those terms but the character is interesting just as everyone else in the series is, fully rounded and with well-mapped motivations. Incredibly the series was barely followed up on, which perhaps adds to its' special feeling.

The arrogance and bullheadedness of Arno is brought into full force for his second appearance, as a guest villain in the 1986 Amazing Spider-Man Annual. The story was fairly simple as Stark travelled back in time to try and prevent the future destruction of Stark Industries (and the death of his wife and child) at the hands of a terrorist with one of his own advanced nukes to try and stop the bomber in his youth. Spider-Man spots the aforementioned attempts and Arno's mix of clumsy, unilateral methods lead to a misunderstanding, a battle and a you-guessed-it ending. What's fascinating is the amount of focus given to Arno; the symbiote-suited Spider-Man doesn't appear until the 16th page and even then isn't given much more to do than to react to the antagonist. The whole drive is from the Iron Man end even if it's Spider-Man's comic and era and if this wasn't part of a push for some sort of Iron Man 2020 solo series I'll eat three of my fingers. The result is further rounding out of a flawed but more or less decent man who lets his ambition and stubborn inability to explain himself to anyone get the better of him and it makes for a rather good story, livened up by a solid cross-town brawl.

The Machine Man mini had been ran as a back-up strip in Marvel UK's Transformers and, the British people being weird from even a young age, gave Arno such a cult following that the Spider-Man appearance was also printed in the UK when things like Armor Wars weren't. As such he was roped in for the final issue of the British arm's Death's Head series, written by Simon Furman and drawn by Bryan Hitch. The titular mechanoid and poor old Arno are set up by a thrill-seeking ultra-powerful society named the Dicemen to fight for entertainment though naturally after a bit of a dust-up they both realise they've been had and go out for vengeance. Arno actually comes out of the whole thing better than the star of the comic and it's another fun little stop on his weird ride.

A couple of cameos aside though he then spent another few years out of print before inexplicably surfacing in 1994 in his own 64-page graphic novel. No-one knows why. It's possible it was some old pitch or plan from the eighties someone turned up in a draw or something but I've just made that up so I'd be surprised. The prestige format one-shot was written by Walt Simonson and Bob Wiacek and concerns Arno being hired to rescue a businessman's hostage; the idea of the guy getting his own story with his own name up there on the cover is intoxicating but alas Simonson is as much of a dullard as ever and really you're reading any old Iron Man filler story set slightly in the future; the last-page revelation that an aged Tony is actually overseeing Arno's new career as a boring traditional hero rubber-stamps the character decay.

The one-shot went down so well that Arno disappeared for another decade or so before resurfacing in Marvel's webcomic revival of Astonishing Tales (later being selected for the print version as well). The writer was webcomic pioneer Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, courted by Marvel to give the format some cachet; considering he's British it's not too much of a reach to imagine the choice of character was influenced by those Transformers reprints once again. Whatever the reason Arno's back in proper morally questionable form fighting sky pirates and the result is good fun for the most part, though I'm not sure about Lou Kang's hunched up armour redesign (even if he's not dumb enough to remove the bevelled shoulders).

Finally to top things off there's a What If, or at least a bit of one. The issue, #53 from 1993, was a triple-header and it looks like being a deadline issue; all three were written by Furman and each featured a different crap artist. For the Iron Man 2020 segment it's Manny Galan, long known as a bit of a joke for his work on Transformers - Generation 2, where he worked like a maniac to pull back the title's backlog while trying to ape Derek Yaniger's style. Those were obviously circumstances that brought out the best in him as here his work looks like it's out of a colouring book, and not a particularly great one either, probably a Chinese bootleg with Unkillable Steel Fellow daubed on the front. It poises the question of what would have happened if Arno had been left in the present after his run-in with Spider-Man; it turns out he would have taken advantage of Tony Stark's disappearance a few years down the line, killed Jim Rhodes (who really should never do What Ifs as he dies ridiculously easily) and then got put in his place by Tony almost immediately before going on to be an abusive father who would vaguely do some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy thing because something similar happened in the Spider-Man comic and Furman thinks it's clever but doesn't really understand.

So yeah, it's a collection of highs and lows as such an eclectic grab-bag of sources would suggest but really the Machine Man story alone is worth the price, with the Spider-Man and Death's Head issues worthy inclusions as well. The less said about Simonson's effort the better but I suppose it being here means you're less likely to get fascinated by the better parts and go and spend money on the thing like a sucker. No bitterness. The revival feels odd in there with its' digital colouring but is a harmless little oddity while the presence of the What If is not only a testament to completism but means if you're reading the book in the bathroom there's some emergency toilet paper on hand. The character was more recently revived for Kang's Chronos Corps, so this makes a solid primer.