Death's Head Avengers Infinite Wave Available for Pre-Order @ BBTS

Ahh, Death's Head. You can set him up with your Marvel figures, your Doctor Who figures, or your Transformers figures and he'd still fit in, yes?

BeastProwl wrote:What does Deathy up there do in the transformers universe? I wanna buy him, but I also want motive...

Apparently he's from some filler material written only for the original Marvel comics run of Transformers, and THEN only for those published in the United Kingdom. I have no idea why, either.

Wrong website !!!

Ryan's gonna be pissed. He said only official Transformers brand products get front paged.

Ryan must be happy to finally see that Deaths Head. One can only hope we see it in the Legends line too. Really psyched for that Eric Masterson Thor.

I collect nothing but Transformers, and I can assure you Death's Head will be in mine.

Death's Head was originally written my Simon Furman as a disposable character for use in the Transformers UK comic. However, he didn't want Hasbro latching onto DH so my introduced the character in a short that was published prior to his appearance in Transformers. That little bit of foresight on Furman's part is the only reason DH isn't exclusively a Transformers character.

Death's Head is going to be awesome. I've waited since 1987 for a figure of this guy. Can't wait to have him in my hands at long last.

To those of you bitching about Death's Head news coverage ... I grew up, in the US, reading Transformers UK comics when I could get my hands on them at local comic stores in the Detroit area. Death's Head is a much bigger character in the Marvel Transformers Universe than even Circuit Breaker or Blackrock. He certainly made a bigger splash!

If you're not familiar with him or his awesomeness, you're missing out, yes?

Sabrblade wrote:

Rated X wrote:Wrong website !!!

Ryan's gonna be pissed. He said only official Transformers brand products get front paged.

I had a few Marvel TF comics as a kid (not UK books) I think they were the reason I never got into the comics. Too many super hero/villain style characters like Robot Master, Mechanic, Circuit Breaker, etc. for my tastes. That type of stuff didn't fly with the G1 cartoon. Glad to see IDW isn't really into that type of stuff either from the little bit I have read that come free with the new Generations deluxes.

As a kid I grew up in Ireland. I thought Deaths head was BADASS. I cannot wait to add him to my collection. I have wanted a deaths head figure for almost 30 years! I will have to cut off his right hand, stick his ax in there, glue his shield to his back and stick some additional weapons on his back to recreate the look from the comic.

Wolfman Jake wrote:Yep, like I said, filler.

It's UK only stories, and yeah...that's just a continuity mess.

Like Trek said, the only UK stories that have any real conflicts with the U.S. ones are the Earthforce ones, which even Simon Furman acknowledges as a separate continuity. The rest that all came before fit in rather well and, also like Trek pointed out, were of a superior quality to the far more goofier American stories.

Wolfman Jake wrote:Seriously, if you're going to put in Death's Head in your Transformers collection, you might as well throw Spider-Man in there too. And any GI JOE characters you'd like too.

Not when those were all one- or two-issue guest stars (or in the Joes' case, co-stars exclusive to crossover events), while Death's Head, as Ryan noted, was a major player whose first biggest role was in the Transformers comics before his making the jump over to other Marvel properties and getting his own series.

Wolfman Jake wrote:Why were the UK comics padded out with all that additional "content" anyway? Did that happen with any other Marvel books during the 80's when crossing the Atlantic Ocean?

It was because of the difference in comic release schedules between the US and the UK. In the US, comics came out on a monthly basis, while the UK had them out weekly. Due to the faster schedule in the UK, as well as a demand for more comic content, Marvel UK had little choice but to start churning out their own material in addition to the importation of American issues.

And though the comics the UK created stuck to the story and world of the US comics, they eventually evolved from being additional stories written in between and on the side of US issues into being their own entity entirely, with the UK issues (while still coming out and being slotted in between US issue reprints) developing their own ongoing arcs that took place parallel to those in the US issues, and would sometimes overlap with the US stories, having the casts of characters from both interacting with each other in big events, which took place in the form of "epics".

The UK stories were oftentimes richer than the US stories, and overall helped to enhance the world of the Marvel Transformers comics on many levels. For instance, the UK issues gave more focus and exploration to several characters that the US comics seemed to ignore. Like, the US comics barely gave any focus to the Dinobots after their debut issue until only after Optimus Prime died many issues later. But the UK issues had been giving the Dinobots plenty of character attention to help them become very popular as a characters (rather than merely popular for being "dinosaur robots"). And the 1986 movie cast was largely unused in the US comics for quite awhile, while the UK comics used that cast to give the UK comics its own group of people to play with and to help shape the world that the UK comics would go on to create.

As for it happening with other comics, it definitely happened when G.I. Joe came over as Action Force, and that case was even more complicated since the Action Force comics established not only its own universe but one that, IIRC, had the international-based Action Force and the American-based G.I. Joe as separate teams who worked separated from each other and would sometimes team up as allies before eventually coming together to merge into one team called "G.I. Joe the Action Force" (later shortened to just "G.I. Joe" to create a consistency between the US and UK brand name).

Wolfman Jake wrote:Is it really a bit of nostalgia glasses, though, thinking Death's Head was really "badass"? Obviously, I had no exposure to the character or the Marvel comics (US or UK) during G1. The original cartoon was my defacto Transformers fiction. Looking over the comic content with Death's Head now, he really comes off pretty forced and silly to me. I agree with the notion that he is just too super hero-villainy for the more sci-fi tone of Transformers I've come to love.

Actions speak louder than word, my friend, and thus no amount of praise any of us here can give to the character could really do him justice without one having read the comics he appeared in. His character arc was simply that intriguing to us that we all latched onto the character rather well, so I'd say it'd only be best for you to check out the comics that he showed up in to see for yourself why we find this guy so appealing, yes?

Though, it's definitely no nostalgia glasses for me, in my case, since I wasn't born until after the 80's and only read all the Marvel stuff just a few short years ago.

Sorry, double post!