Rising stars Tini Howard and Kei Zama take on Marvel UK's hottest character, Death's Head, in a new miniseries! When intergalactic mech merc Death's Head botches a job and wakes up half assembled at a punk show, he goes on a rampage. He's not the only one feeling broken down and obsolete, as former Young Avengers Wiccan and Hulkling are on the scene with a plan of their own. There's no way the best robot bounty hunter - oops, we mean "freelance peacekeeping agent" - in this universe is getting taken down by a couple of C-list heroes still wearing their teenage tights. No, if anybody's gonna take out Death's Head, it's gonna be...Death's Head, yes? It's time for an upgrade - meet the adolescent new model who'll turn Death's Head's world upside down! COLLECTING: DEATH'S HEAD 1-4
A lot of reviews of this book contain the assertion that nobody cares about Death’s Head. I am here to testify that this is not the case. We UK comicbook readers who were kids in the ‘80s freaking LOVE him, yes?
I sometimes wonder how many of my cohort, the aforementioned UK comicbook readers who were kids in the ‘80s, are still reading comics... probably not many, which doesn’t bode well for the sales of this book.
Speaking of this book, the artwork was pretty decent, in a retro-‘80s-Transformers kind of way, which is, needless to say, perfect for this character. As for the story... well, I have mixed feelings. Pretty much any Death’s Head book that stays true to the legacy of the character is going to be a no-brainer 5 stars for me, and I did absolutely love having the chance to read about my favourite freelance peace-keeping agent again, and the creative team clearly has a genuine love of the character... but...
... well, they seem to be using this book as a kind of backdoor pilot (that sounds like a euphemism for something I won’t go into here) for a new Death’s Head; Death’s Head V, or just ‘Vee’ for short. I’m sorry, guys, but I really don’t have any interest in a new Death’s Head. I want the original. For this reason, I’m going to have to dock a star. Sorry.
Let’s be honest — no one gives a shit about Death’s Head. I hadn’t even heard of him before this title. But Howard’s writing is fun, and there’s some really good character moments between Wiccan, Hulkling, and Hawkeye. Honestly, this should have just been a miniseries about those three, and it would have been even better. Death’s Head who? 5/5 stars
I've enjoyed some of Tini Howard's other stuff a lot, and on paper a book in which everyone's favourite freelance peacekeeping agent teams up with Young Avengers power couple Wiccan (or whatever he's calling himself this week) and Hulkling, plus Kate Bishop, should have been right up my alley, yes? But somehow this didn't quite click for me. I think it may be that, while seeing Death's Head exasperated is always fun, here he's too much on the back foot for too long. On top of which, the plot about sinister scientists replicating him and upgrading him feels too much like a repurposed Wolverine story awkwardly interwoven with some ideas on software upgrades and product lifecycles which don't get enough room to fully develop, then have a vaguely Westworld coda about free will tacked on. Still, it's always a pleasure to see the big metal bastard, and hopefully this will remind other creators to make more use of him.
I’d never heard of this character but saw Wiccan and Hulkling on the cover and bought it. It was a fun read with intricate art and a pretty good story. Is the robot man more sentient than machine? It’s been done before of course but this was funny and didn’t get full of itself. Of course I love to see Marvel’s most underused heroes in action.
I didn’t like Billy’s weird witch nails. Odd choice there. I did like the manga moments. I enjoyed Teddy exploring his concerns about Billy overdoing the magic.
I like it more for the struggles that Billy has. And to see him with Teddy and Kate. The thing that surprised the most is that Wiccan or Demiurge is going through a different fashion sense of the one I seen al along for him. Death's Head and Vee are very amusing and is a nice short story.
I foolishly gave the first issue some credit. My mistake.
It is awful, in just about every conceivable way. There's no real point to the story. All characters are handled awkwardly and ham-fistedly. The art isn't very appealing.
To think that I'd dislike a book with Death's Head, a hot gay teen Death's Head, Wiccan, Hulkling and Yondu (even if he isn't the real Yondu)... egads. It takes effort to turn ME off that.
Literally just here for Teddy and Billy, with zero interest in the actual title character. Kate also shows up, which is a bonus for Young Avengers fans. This book did nothing to get me interested in Death's Head as a character, but I did appreciate seeing some more of my favorite defunct Marvel team.
I read this story when it came out as individual issues of Death's Head v2 in 2019 and it didn't make much sense then. I got the collected edition as a birthday present a few days ago and gave it another go, to see if a second try and a couple of years made a difference. Alas, it has not.
The main problem is a chronic lack of coherence. Despite being published as Death's Head v2, I think it's supposed to be the origin of a new version of the character -- Death's Head V, or "Vee" -- except he gets very little screen time and achieves almost nothing. So maybe it is about the original DH after all? It does start and end with him, but then he gets pushed aside by half of the Young Avengers, also achieves very little except to get a new sidekick, then disappears with her off to deep space where undoubtedly we will see neither of them again.
We don't get enough of Vee to make him compelling enough to follow, not that we can follow him because he hasn't appeared since as far as I can tell. If it's about reintroducing Death's Head to the Marvel Universe, sticking him in deep space is an odd way of doing it. If it's a celebration of the character -- which is what artist Kei Zama suggested when it was first published -- sidelining the ostensible star is an odd way to do it.There's no room for anything to breathe, and it all feels muddled.
Then there's the nonsense. We start with Death's Head falling through a space portal into a bin in New York, which is apparently enough to deactivate and dissasemble him. Then he is somehow turned into an amplifier for a punk band. I don't know how this works. Wiccan and Hulkling run into him by accident, except it's not by accident because Wiccan did some magic that brought them there. I think? Maybe? Wiccan did this because he already has a DH -- Vee -- under his bed and wants to know what it is. Probably? Wiccan has Vee under his bed because he did some magic to see possible futures for the Young Avengers and saw vee in some of them, and then went on an untold solo adventure to an AIM laboratory and stole Vee. I think? But it turns out that the whole thing was some sort of elaborate plan by the villain to get her hands on the original DH for... reasons. Except the villain turns out to just want to hang with DH so they go off together and leave everyone else behind. It's possible that the villain just changed her mind and switched sides halfway through the story, but it's not clear. Nothing is clear.
Oh, and then at the end, Death's Head is standing, deactivated (?) in Vee's cupboard, except he's also running around space with his new friend.
I, uh, ah. No, I have nothing. I can follow the chain of events, just about, but the individual events are baffling and the storytelling is so weird. Wiccan goes off and breaks into an AIM lab on his own and steals a robot, but we don't get to see that. Why? Wouldn't that have been interesting? What's going on with the extra Death's Head in the cupboard? Wouldn't there have been easier ways for the non-villain to ask DH to be her friend? I cannot tell if I'm being dense and this is all clever plotting, or if it's just really bad. I suspect the latter.
On the plus side, Kei Zama's art is lovely. There's a nice balance between strong cartoony storytelling and intricate detail, although the inking is perhaps a bit heavy in places and makes some of the pages look a little muddy. Even so, the art is by far the best thing about the book.
Death's Head fans will probably get this because we like to follow all of his appearances, but I can't recommend it to anyone else because I'm not sure it's very good. Disappointing, yes?
Oh, and to pad out what is still a very thin book, we get a reprint of Death's Head v1 #1 by Simon Furman, Bryan Hitch, Mark Farmer, Nick Abadzis, Annie Parkhouse, and Richard Starkings. I list the entire creative team because Marvel seems to have forgotten to do so anywhere in the book. That's a poor show.
This was kind of good on catching up with what Wiccan and Hulkling were up to between their time in Bobby daCosta's Avengers Idea Mechanics team and Wiccan being in the Strikeforce team and then the events of Empyre, which included Emperor Hulkling and Wiccan fighting the evil plant people.
Death's Head is some kind of killer robot that's popular in U.K. comics? He travels between space and time and what have you, apparently, and was doing bounty hunting for Yondu, a character featured in various versions of the Guardians of the Galaxy, including the MCU movies. Yondu is not pleased, and Death's Head next reboots (whatever his equivalent of waking up is) as an amp for a band that Billy and Teddy were in the audience for. The robot is not pleased at coming to as an amp, but Hulking and Wiccan temporarily put a stop to his rampaging.
Billy has apparently been in a very bad mental state, which he thinks will be improved if he rejoins the Avengers. My take on it is that being on the Avengers may or may not improve an individual's mental state, depending on what happens. But Billy's been having anxiety attacks in the closet of the apartment he shares with Teddy. Another strange thing is that his fingernails are very long and pointed and black (or dark red?). Is Billy trying to work for a living? Because those fingernails don't look like those of someone who would be working anything like a non-superhero job. IDK
Wiccan has also been scanning "all possible futures" to find ones he likes, but he doesn't know how he'd get to those particular futures. This is a Demiurge thing that Billy didn't think he was ready for, and Teddy had thought that Billy wasn't doing that anymore. Oops. Apparently Billy thinks that acquiring a collection of robot assassins will help him become an Avenger again? Teddy could have told Billy that that was a bad idea. Also, Billy is at this moment not talking to Tommy. I must have missed something. By the time of The Trial of Magneto, Billy and Tommy are working together again, and again considering each other brothers.
Teddy's emotional equilibrium seems to be pretty good here. He's frustrated that his fiance doesn't feel up to discussing when they might get married. This issue is resolved in Empyre. But aside from that, Teddy seems much more okay than Billy. Teddy doesn't struggle with mental illness like Billy does.
I was confused about what was going on. Fortunately, Billy seems to have gotten out of his depression and anxiety funk by the time Strikeforce starts. It is established that he gets tired when he uses a lot of magic, so he's not all-powerful. He's not using his powers creatively in fights here.
Kate Bishop (the female Hawkeye) shows up to help out partway through. She seems to be doing all right at that time, though she's tired from her flight from Los Angeles. Katie-Kate was okay during the battles against the land sharks, but got kind of messed up dealing with the clones that Madame Masque was making. She doesn't look battered here, though, so the reader may be able to assume that she's between clone stuff and not yet dealing with vampires. (May be? Maybe.)
I'm still confused, and I'm not particularly a fan of killer robots and their various upgrades, but I had wanted to see what Billy and Teddy were up to before the events of Empyre.
Being on a Marvel UK kick at the moment, I decided to look into one of its more bizarre creations: Death's Head. This big metal freelance peacekeeping agent with a penchant for asking abrupt rhetorical questions, has appeared in Transformers, Doctor Who and Dragon's Claws comics, as well as going up against the likes of the Avengers. To make sure Simon Furman's eccentric creation did not fall under the ownership of licensor Hasbro, a solo comic was written to extricate Death's Head from the Transformers Universe. He was then sent to Doctor Who to alter his intimidating stature using tissue compression technology, before Death's Head faced off against the human Dragon's Claw team.
While I adore the madness of this character's print history, I could take or leave Clone Drive. It's a serviceable story which makes great use of Death's Head's past and future, tempered by a story featuring Marvel fan favourites Hulkling, Wiccan and Hawkeye (Kate Bishop). However it feels like a story midway through a longer series, namely Wiccan's and Hulkling's, and I wasn't as interested by that context as Death's Head and his own personal mission.
Consequently I much preferred the Death's Head Revisited comic (also featured), which gave me a better idea of who Death's Head is and his dark comedy antics. Nevertheless I am grateful to Tini Howard for bringing this character under the Marvel spotlight with a reverential story that will also appeal to a more current readership. Her script is complemented by the dynamic artwork of Kei Zama.
I recommend Death's Head: Clone Drive to young Marvel readers looking to dip their toe into one of the stranger parts of comic history and maybe Death's Head fans who want to see where the big guy has got to these days.
Lead artist Kei Zama comes out five star on cult favourite character with a solidity for DH's edges and technics and innovative page layouts. The protagonist only has one expression, true, and this rendering resonates perfectly after three decades away from the spotlight. Zama carries the mantle of Geoff Senior, Will Simpson, Nick Roche and others brilliantly. Writer Tini Howard's tale is a Young Avengers team-up. A soft-reboot and MCU intergration which seeks to combine the various (DH) incarnations. Similar ground as Lanning & Cowsill did in Revolutionary War (ie. bringing out many characters versions), though there's more breathing in this treatment. Some structure and motivations are shaky, but largely it's not a bad attempt. Marvel's key identity - humanising heroes - work against Howard's mission as DH is not a team player. Some of the dialogue is off, for the merc is mercenary, and a soliloquist with the arrogance of Jimmy McNulty. Unsurprising too given this is 30 years later and a successor to the punchiness of creator Simon Furman. All in all relatively pleasing but I'd adore Marvel investing in James Roberts at the wordsmith helm.
As much as I love Death's Head and his place in the history of Marvel and Transformers comics? This is not a great Death's Head story.
Make no mistake, the art is brilliant and probably the best the titular character has looked since his debut decades ago.
But this is not his story. He's been shoehorned into a Young Avengers title. Most of the plot is driven by Wiccan and Hulkling, while DH is more of a plot point than a character in this book. Even more so, Death's Head V is a real "How do you do, fellow kids?" character, appearing as a caricature of what the writer things a young teen (robot) looks and sounds like.
In short it's about what I expected from this book, given Marvel haven't known what to do with Death's Head since the 80s.
I'm not all that big into Death's Head despite his long-running comics career and occasional intersections with classic Marvel Transformers G1 comics. But I was curious to see members of the Young Avengers in this book and so I picked it up.
Revisiting fan favorites Wiccan/Demiurge and Hulkling was pretty fun despite the strangeness of this crossover adventure but things really kicked it up when Kate Bishop showed up to balance things out a bit beyond the more emotional squabbles between the engaged heroes. It's not quite a Young Avengers book but it has good energy.
I knew nothing about Death's Head before reading this, but it turned out to be really fun! I enjoyed it a lot!
Shout out to Kei Zama for being one of my favorite artists to draw Billy Kaplan. Bless you for giving him an alternative aesthetic. I was living for his long, pointy black fake nails. They looked especially awesome when he was casting spells. Plus the inverted cross earrings, the fingerless gloves, the emo bangs... Truly a masterpiece of character design. And the fact that he has an apron that says "Kiss the Witch"? Beautiful!
I've been out of the loop on comics for years now and I wanted to jump back in with a comic about Billy and teddy since they're 2 of my favorite characters but this was so boring.... I don't know or care about death's head so reading his parts were tedious (that's my fault for read a comic about him tho so) and I liked the parts focusing on billy and teddy but the art was so ugly I couldn't fully enjoy it like why does Billy look like a late 2000s deviant art OC
2.5 stars. The writing was convoluted and rushed, and the character writing for Billy, Teddy, and Kate was out of sync with all of their previous stories (ESPECIALLY their recent ones), but if you choose to believe that this is set on an alternate Earth and that these are alternate universe version of them, then it's a fine one off adventure with some cute and funny moments
Ok, this was just absolutely delightful. And also sweet and heartwarming. Howard has Wiccan and Hulking and their relationship down pat and writes them beautifully. And Zama does a fantastic job with the art and page and panel designs to show abstract things like the disorientation of rebooting as a sentient robot perfectly. Just all around a wonderful 4 issues of comics.
A merely functional revival of Marvel UK's Death's Head. Honestly, the story's purpose seems more to team up the Young Avengers with Death's Head, and introduce a separate "young" Death's Head, than to really focus on Death's Head himself. If you're a Young Avengers fan, this might work better for you; but if you're a Death's Head fan, this will likely disappoint. (B-)
This magically ended up on my bedside table after I read the Young Avengers... It was fun, it was pointless, it made me laugh though. I read it, I'll never think about it again probably, but if you speak ill of Death's Head, I'll throw down for him
While nothing universe-shattering happens here, it is a good solid read that introduces characters and shakeups that can definitely be picked up for future stories. Not to be missed by fans of the classic Death's Head comics, with a little nod to Death's Head II.
Eh, didn't do anything for me. Even Billy exploring some of his anxiety and Teddy's theory about his magic, while interesting, seems rushed in this short book.
I enjoyed this more than I anticipated. Billy and Teddy always have the best side-adventures, and I’d read anything about them. Billy and Teddy go grocery shopping? Count me in.