Marvel's run of their new Death's Head series is now halfway through it's 4 issue limited run. Written by Tini Howard and drawn by the awesome Kei Zama, I really hoped that the Freelance Peace Keeping Agent would finally make a comeback worthy of the character. Unfortunately that's not the case, and this is a terrible treatment of a character that frankly deserved better.
Having grown up in the 80's with the unstoppable robotic bounty hunter (don't call him that to his face, yes?) who murdered his way through the UK Transformers tales, only to be shunted by a God into the Marvel universe proper where his adventures became even grander, the character had a dry wit, fourth-wall breaking dialogue before it was trendy, and a love of capitalism that even Donald Trump would envy. Basically, if you could pay, he'd slay, and he was exceptionally good at it.
Enter the new series. Now, the first issue I gave a bit of a pass to. Take it from hereon in that everything looks spectacular as Kei Zama rips a swathe of awesome throughout the book. Her heavy lines wouldn't be out of place in an issue of 2000AD and she's one of the most Heavy Metal artists in comicdom. Nothing in this review reflects on her talents - hell, I even paid a lot of money to buy one of the original pages of this series, even given what follows.
Where to start. Well, forget the fact that Death's Head is one of the most advanced robots in the Marvel universe, because Trini Howard has (or more likely didn't realise). His origins as a mystical replacement body for a mage-warrior named Lupex are chronicled in an amazing book called The Body in Question, and it explains why he's so damn hard to kill. Here however, he's presented as a relic, in constant need of repair and reduced to hunting bounties to cover his maintenance. In fact, he's called obsolete by a bunch of tarts with gun implants that then attack him and throw him out of an airlock. Hm, symbolic.
He awakens having been used, inexplicably, as an Amp for a rock-band. No explanation is given as to how this occurs, but he pulls himself back together and then runs into two Marvel characters I've never heard of Wiccan and Hulkling. And oh my God, let's talk about these two.
Essentially an insulting parody of a gay couple (I've been to 2 gay weddings in the last 12 months, I've never met any couple who act like this). With Wiccan an ineffective magician who just YELLS REPEATEDLY A THING FOR A SPELL TO DO which is bloody annoying to read, and Hulkling, a Skrull hybrid thingy that talks inane rubbish, this pair are awful. It's like a bad episode of Will and Grace with two Jack's. Yes, that awful. Wiccan in particular is terribly written, self-googling his own name across the multiverse with no hint of irony at how that just sums up everything wrong with the Google generation.
In issue 2, Wiccan is concerned about burning his waffles while Hulkling wants to know why they have a similar-looking robot to Death's Head under their bed. It's an awful design mind you, with wire hair and a millennial glazed-over look in every panel, so I can at least appreciate his desire to find out why his boyfriend has collected a crap knock-off. Turns out this is Death's Head V, a new model built by Evelyn Necker of AIM that Wiccan has called "Vee" and stolen. Hulkling channels the writer patting herself on the back for how clever the name is, despite just being a rip-off from Alan Moore's V for Vendetta set-up. From 1982. It was old before this writer was even born.
With all this drama over waffles and new models running around (we'll get to "Vee" in a minute, worry not) what's happening with Death's Head? You know, the titular character? Well, nothing really, he's just hanging out being buffeted by the chaos around him. Which is odd, because I've read stories where he's killed an entire room full of people for being much less irritating than everyone in this book.
As if enough characters hadn't been stuffed into this mess already, we get girl-Hawkeye awkwardly thrown in, and God almighty if this is the direction Marvel is going in, I'm not surprised there's a Comicsgate. When asked "where are those men?" by Death's Head, she replies "Hah, "men"". Are they not men if they're gay? Is she being homophobic? Hawkeye, as written here, is a narcissistic bitch who has a problem with sharing her name with a markedly better character, throwing out nonsensical "Your mom" jokes and then, when there is finally a mission, responds to a suggestion from a team-mate with "Aww, you're trying to give me orders! I'll do it only 'cause I like you." Oh fuck off.
The mission in question ends with a rip-off of Alien Resurrection, with lots of failed copies of Death's Head strewn about the place. When you're reduced to ripping off Alien 4 you know you've got serious problems.
So let's look at why - firstly, the writer clearly has no idea whatsoever about the character she's writing about. It's like she was given CliffNotes but never bothered reading the actual stories, so almost everything in here is completely wrong. It's telling that 90% of the dialogue in Death's Head's own book is given to everyone else, while he's laughed at for being an out of touch piece of scrap - it's thinly veiled contempt at those of us who remember and care about the character by a writer out of her depth.
Death's Head is not a junky robot, he's a hybrid of magic and cybernetics from another realm who has the sheer mental will to take on a God. He's survived a blow from Galvatron's cannon at point-blank range (shield took the brunt, yes?) and for that reason he's of interest to Evelyn Necker in Liam Sharpe's Death's Head II. The only reason Death's Head was replaced in that series was because Liam Sharpe wrote the character into breaking his number one rule (never kill for revenge) and Death's Head didn't know that the Minion cyborg he was fighting, which he referred to as out-of-date, was actually 104 deadly killer personalities in 1 body. Plus the writer wanted his Minion design to take over from the original, so it was rigged. Art was good though.
There's certainly no way he'd sit around in this terrible wannabe sitcom. Hawkeye subdues him with an arrow to the knee and Wiccan traps him with deckchairs. If this was the actual Death's Head, he'd have divorced Hawkeye's head from her neck and then shoved it up Wiccan. Death's Head is a violent 80's parody of capitalism, not the butt of a slew of crap jokes from two camp idiots and their bitch hag mate.
And finally there's Vee, an awful, Millennial version of our hero. He calls people "Dude", he doesn't like to fight, but when he does he's better than everyone else at it, because reasons. My only hope for this garbage is that this is the 616 version of Death's Head and that the one from Marvel UK is safely off peace-keeping in his own inimitable freelance style.
This is a sad comic. That they'd bring back Death's Head and not even ask Simon Furman to have some input into his own creation just shows how little regard Marvel has for this character. He's a timeless design that's writ larger than life by Kei Zama's art, reduced to a joke by someone who's resume includes GLOW, Power Rangers Pink and Rick & Morty. On what planet is Tini Howard qualified to write about a character from a decade she can't possibly remember who writes mostly feminist-slanted comics? It would be laughable if it weren't a character I cared about. In an age where we're told that writers have to come from the same place as their characters, we give the one character that would have actually benefited from being written by an older writer to someone who not only seems to hate the subject matter, but everything he stands for. Terrific.
It's not like Marvel can't create good stuff - the Separation Anxiety one-shot from Maximum Carnage is a wonderful horror story with perfect pacing and art, and House of X is proving absolutely fascinating.
This? This book is insulting. It's one of those comics I wish I could un-read. And then set on fire so it couldn't hurt anyone ever again. The story is crap, the writer doesn't understand the character and hasn't the wit to write his dialogue even if she did. This is a massive "F.U." to those of us who loved and hated the character (he killed Bumblebee!!!) from a time where clever satire actually existed.
The only good that can possibly come from this mess is some rocking Kei Zama art and enough interest to re-release the original stories - I'd love to see them on Comixology one day. It breaks my heart to criticise any project that gives Kei a break, as I've met her several times and she's absolutely awesome, but she's been undermined by Howard who, if this is any indication, can't write for toffee.
Art: A+
Story: Just no.
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