TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Marvel is again looking for people to make the choice on the next character to get a revamp in the pages of Amazing Fantasy, starting with issue #16 in December.

To these ends, the publisher has placed a poll on its website, asking for fans to vote for their choice of who should get the extreme makeover come AF #16: (and yes, it kind of feels like Marvel is pushing for one over the other three) the Aquarian, Texas Twister, Woodgod, and Death’s Head.

Currently, with nearly 12,000 votes cast (surprise, surprise) Death’s Head is winning.

BUT...

Go vote now.

www.marvel.com

Are there any details as to what they´re going to do exactly?

Restart all over, or continue? If continue - what about DH II? (not his ship)

No indication, but seeing as it's Death's Head listed in the poll, not DHII I imagine that they'd go back to the original character as a starting point.

So they can **** him up again in a new and interesting way.

Interesting...

Now, Circuit Breaker could be a foe.

*ducks

Well, he won.

its marvel comics.......the new deaths head will have absolutely nothing to do with the original bar the name. Im so exited about the teenage girl version of deaths head that will soon grace the pages of amazing fantasy!

What happened with the origional Deaths head ? We didn't get hardly any of the comics where I live. Last srtip I saw on Deaths head it was when Doctor Who made an appearance.

And what is Deaths Head 2 ?

The original Death's Head went for about 12 issues.

The Doctor dropped him into the year 8162, where he´s been scrapped and rebuilt, then worked as freelance-peacekeeping agent again.
He later ended up in 2020, where he stayed for the rest of the series, AFAIK.

There´s been no definite end, so I suppose this is where Marvel will take up(if they continue him).

Some time(years?) later, the idea was taken on again, by Marvel UK again.
This time, though, it´s not been the old Death's Head, but a new Cyborg, built to defend A.I.M. against some unknown threat(in the year 2020).
To achieve this, he was supposed to assimilate the instincts and knowledge of 100andsomething persons. All of them experts in one or another field.
Number 105 was the original Death's Head Cyborg.

As we all know, DH doesn´t die easy, and he´s able to leave his body, if necessary.

Well, after Minion(the other Cyborg) beat him, he tried to absorb the instincts of DH.
However, ol´ DH was able to project his entire personality inside the new Cyborg.

BUT, it did not lead to immediate control over the Minion construct, instead it further disoriented the original programming(it´s been faulty before - not easy to bring order into the chaos of 104 personalities...).

When Minion tried to get Subject 106, Reed Richards(FF), he(Reed) managed to scramble Minions programming, giving DH the opportunity to gain control over the Cyborg body.

Apparently it took DH/Minion some time(about a year, I think) to collect his mind(s), and when he´s been seen again, he´s neither Minion, nor DH, though he prefered the name Death's Head.

He´s a different personality now, though he shares some of DHs traits, as the lust for money, and the rather indifferent approach to killing people(for money).

Aside from their one-time meeting, DH and Minion(DH II) never met again, except for the limited Series "The Incomplete Death's Head", which basically retold the original series, with an added story that tries to tie up a few lose ends.
(As for example how DH ended in the TF universe and such.)

--

DH II was one of the main characters of Marvel UK, he´s been in almost any of their comics in the 90.

And if they didn´t bite off more than they could chew, we´d know by now who DH II really was(the Minion construct was built around a (then) living being), but the company went bankrupt or so, before they could even write that story :-(

Here´s a good reading if you´re interested in DH IIs story:

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/dhminion.htm

[edit]There is no definite information about the time-frame between the end of DH (I) and the start of DH II, there might have been years in between.
The only information is that Spratt, the "partner" of DH, didn´t seem to be much older - but his age was never told AFAIK, and the drawing of Spratt wasn´t consistant either, if you ask me.

I'm suprised there hasn't been a decent DH TPB done in the last few years considering how Hitch is now somthing of a big name artist... After all, the Doctor Who trades only happened because Dave Gibbons drew most of them.

Didn't Bryan only manage the first 2/3 issues before the usual thing of "oh ****, this takes too long, just get him to do the covers" kicked in? And then they let tossers like Art Wetherall.

I think Issue 9's got the best art myself, showing that Geoff could have really done great superhero artwork if he was really given the chance.

Death's Head Wins!
You, the users of Marvel.com, have overwhelmingly voted to give the cybernetic assasin a massive Marvel makeover. Look for the newest version of Death's Head in Amazing Fantasy #16, in stores in December!

Oo-er. [/CC]

The article on Outpost Gallifrey (it got a mention thanks to Crossroads In Time lists DH as being created by Furman, Senior and Hitch... But I thought the bounty hunter first appeared in a Senior drawn strip, so what exactly did Hitch contribute to his creation? Did he come up with the original design? Or is someone just trying to big up the involvement of the better known name?

Hitch's earliest input was drawing High Noon Tex, IIRC, which probably slots him into owning the character, if not creating him... a bit like the way Garry Leach/Alan Davis/John Totleben etc. owned part of the copyright for Miracleman when they were working on it, despite the fact they were simply drawing what Alan Moore told them too.

I've never really got the DH ownership thing... the rough version as far as I've heard goes like this:

- Simon owned the character through getting High Noon Tex published as a private advert before the character appeared in Transformers [it would have become Marvel's character, not his].

- But then Marvel do whatever the Hell they want with the character, very much to Furman's displeasure. Eh?

Unless Furman's dislike of DH2 was one of his standard convention/interview lies, where he acts all aggreived when actually he just took the money, but isn't going to say that.

The origin of the character's kinda muddled.

According to Furman in the "Incomplete Death's Head" trade, the character first appeared in a strip drawn by Hitch. "Simon Furman and Bryan Hitch - writer and illustrator, respectively - were kicking around ideas for a new bounty hunter character and created the short story. They did this in order to cement their concept and to have something to show to others in the company."

All well and good, but that doesn't seem to ring true, considering Bryan Hitch's first job with Marvel UK didn't seem to be until a year or so after his first published appearance. Given that Furman has also said that he created Death's Head as a throwaway character for the Wanted: Galvatron, Dead or Alive Transformers story, the two don't seem to tie up. He's said he created him to just die at the end of the story, but was so impressed by Geoff Senior's character designs that he decided to keep him around.

I suspect that Hitch has been falsely credited with the character's creation, probably for political reasons. Certainly the art style and story style, with more humor to the DH character, seems characteristic of the Death's Head that was depicted AFTER his Transformers appearances.

It seems like the story's got out there that Hitch created him because Furman and particularly Marvel UK wanted to differentate him clearly as a MARVEL character and not a TRANSFORMERS character and later put about the story about his first appearance actually predating his Transformers appearances so that Marvel UK would have a more solid claim on him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A3094391

Yeh, The Life & Times trade has that the Senior character drawing was so great Furman decided to make the character recurring - initially he was meant to deliver all the exposition about the post-Movie sit. in #113, and be swiftly killed off to show how tough Galvatron was...

Hitch's first work on Transformers was #151, DH's last appearance in Transformers, when I believe he was something like 16 or 18... Though I think he did redesign the character ever so slightly for the ongoing title. I agree that some sort of political thing is probably behind it to stop any claim Hasbro or whoever might have... It wouldn't surprise me if Senior transferred any rights to Hitch at some point as a) he seems like a very easy-going chap and b) he currently isn't remotely interested in comics or Transformers, so I expect it means very little to him.

EDIT: High Noon Tex wasn't printed in Transformers until #167 - http://www.tfarchive.com/comics/guide/i ... 61_170#167 - it could have been printed in another title earlier, I suppose, and then reused to promote the spin-off series, but why, when they did the "Munchkyn" strip for the same purpose?

Originally posted by Cliffjumper
- Simon owned the character through getting High Noon Tex published as a private advert before the character appeared in Transformers [it would have become Marvel's character, not his].

Not quite, according to the behind the scenes stuff in the Titan tpb's the High Noon thing was done to ensure DH was a Marvel, rather than a Furman, owned charecter. They didn't want Hasbro being able to claim ownership if the charecter took off. I don't think Furman has ever owned (or even claimed to own) him. It's all very cloak and dagger isn't it?

EDIT: Having just seen Cliffy's edit in his above post, I'm now even more confused...

Originally posted by inflatable dalek
Not quite, according to the behind the scenes stuff in the Titan tpb's the High Noon thing was done to ensure DH was a Marvel, rather than a Furman, owned charecter. They didn't want Hasbro being able to claim ownership if the charecter took off. I don't think Furman has ever owned (or even claimed to own) him.

Wasn't it normal in those times, at least at Marvel, that company owned characters and stories, not their creators? That was the reason Image was created, right?

Originally posted by Ozz
Wasn't it normal in those times, at least at Marvel, that company owned characters and stories, not their creators? That was the reason Image was created, right?

Exactly, but according to the Titan thingey, if he'd been in a TF strip first then Hasbro could have tried to claim ownership. But based on what Cliffy says above, and the fact Furman latter tried to launch a Neo Nights comic (God, that would have been rubish) ultimately leaves me confused as Nel Yomotov when presented with a new crayon.

Yeh, the whole situation's a bit opaque... I'm pretty sure Furman can't own DH, as he'd have at least wanted in on DH2. High Noon Te being done to scupper Hasbro would be the best bet.

But then, there's still this problem of when exactly High Noon Tex was first printed, and how exactly it predated DH's Transformers debut considering Hitch's age... I can't find anything definite on his age, but why would this kid be chosen by Furman to do a one-page strip, and then not do anything else for about a year [I'm 99% TF #151 was his first pro work]?