Transformation 191: Head's You Lose.

8/1/2016

It's an excting three-way of updates today.

First up, Skullgrin lives the Hollywood dream but faces his Mark Chapman in my look at Monstercon From Mars! Part 2.

Second, with the launch of the regular Death's Head comic launching in October of 1988, an Addendum looking at HIS ORIGINAL SERIES.

But what you all want to know is who won the quiz. Well, excitingly it was a draw! With two winners both getting 11 out of 12 (or indeed full marks if you allow the alternate answer to question 11).

Unfortunately, like an idiot, I've accidentally deleted the email from the one winner, meaning that if you recognise that you've got these questions right you'll need to email me your name and contact details again (I remember how your email address ended, so no sneaky opportunists trying to get free books!). Our other winner though is the enigmatic and mysterious Brendocon. You will both get almost the same prizes, except that--as there is only one proof copy--one of you will have to make do with a regular (though no less full of proofing errors, they're just different ones) copy of the book. Who gets which will be decided by a toss of a coin when it comes to posting things off.

The rest of you are, I'm sure, keen to know the answers (and if you haven't played yet, LOOK HERE before reading on):

Question 1: Which Decepticons made their first appearance in the one page promotional comic created for the book in 1988?

Answer: Dreadwind and Darkwing.

Question 2: A prior edition of Ladies Night gave Joy Meadows a skill that helped her in the story of the same name. What was it?

Answer: Learning to drive a tank.

Question 3: What was Grimlock’s location based excuse for having to give up hosting the letters page?

Answer: According to Grimgrams, the difficulty of delivering mail to the moon.

[The explanation given in Robo-Capers—that Grimlock was taking a holiday—is also acceptable even if that was written by Simon Furman and thus fiction rather than the real Grimlock]

Question 4: What aspect of Zarak’s family life from the Headmasters mini-series was left out of the text retelling of the story in the 1987 Annual?

Answer: His daughter Llyra.

Question 5: According to Grimgrams, what do the Sparkler Mini-Bots transform into?

Answer: The famous “Vehicular Modes”.

Question 6: What is the name of the company Ethan Zachery has founded by the time of the return of Optimus Prime?

Answer: Alternate Reality Inc. [Bonus point to anyone who spotted I spelt Zachary wrong]

Question 7: Which unlikely British newspaper accused Transformers (alongside Gobots and Masters of the Universe) of being an example of “White male domination” during 1988?

Answer: The Sun.

Question 8: After being blown through the time portal at the end of The Legacy of Unicron!, which comic did Death’s Head next appear in?

Answer: Doctor Who Magazine issue 135.

Question 9: Other than Impactor and Flame, which named Transformer is not shown to have survived the events of Meltdown!, as they aren’t seen in the final crowd scene and never appear in the comic again?

Answer: Trypticon.

Question 10: According to Combat Colin, what is Bigfoot’s first name?

Answer: Roger.

Question 11: Which long serving location for the comic makes its last appearance during Trial by Fire!?

Answer: S. Witwicky Auto Repair (the various alternate names seen on the sign or something as simple as “Buster/Sparkplug/Spike’s house” would have also been acceptable).

This was the question that foxed you all as everyone put “Mount St. Hillary”. That of course features briefly in Firebug! As we don’t technically visit the volcano in that story I’d have accepted this answer if not for the fact it makes no change to the final result of the quiz.

Question 12: Which classic British film is quoted by both Wreck-Gar in Space Pirates! and, years later, Slag in Still Life!?

Answer: Carry On Screaming.

10 Comments

Alex link

8/1/2016 05:21:46 pm

DH seems to be channelling the Tenth Doctor in his write-up there - "I'm that sort of guy" indeed!

While it was always nice to see Death's Head and the Doctor interact, I've always felt there was something a little off about the Parkhouse issue - there's that little exchange about Death's Head not being 'alive', which is a little daft considering the book he hailed from and also what we discover of his origins in the Body in Question.* Of course said origin also conflicts with what we learn here in issue #1, but ho-hum...**

You're bang on about the Fantastic 4 issue as well - that art, man. I've never really been a fan of Hitch's redesign (it looks a little too camp for my liking - I think it's the ankles!) Senior makes it look, as ever, amazing.

You say Dogbolter potentially dies here - it's been a while since I read it, but is this brought up in The Incomplete Death's Head at all by Hob?

*Though TBIQ also raises the, ahem, question of how Spratt was able to completely rebuild a mechanical body made from a mixture of science and magic.

**In fact his whole origin is a mess - so he was built at human-size, then enlarged and sent to the Transformers universe. So why is he so upset at being 'shrunk' by the Doctor? And is the Scarvix we see here in issue #1 the same Scarvix we saw in Transformers? Gah!

Simon Hall

8/1/2016 08:37:15 pm

I'll bite, Mr Alex as I am a tedious Death's Head bore....

- Hob's cunning plan in The Incomplete Death's Head is to hire DH to find his beloved master. Having survived the explosion, Hob finds himself on the spacestation Maruthea (as featured in DH second DWM appearance) where he decides the best way to do this is to assemble an archive of the original DH timeline, with the intention of plucking DH from his timeline. His work instead brings DHII and Tuck to Maruthea. Once confronted by Hob, DHII blithely mentions that perhaps the reason Hob cannot find Dogbolter...is that he's dead. They're in the midst of a bit of fisticuffs when an alarm goes off...as the original DH arrives on Maruthea (in time for 'Party Animals').

- How was Spratt able to rebuild DH? Well, there is that handwavy line "although this is a mechanoid of incredible sophistication, I'm sure I've made all the right connections." Plus, we can assume the future space-year of 8162 has some advanced tech at its disposal (indeed, the lack of any decent tech and unfamiliarity with 'present' technology is likely why Spratt seeks help from Baron Strucker V when he tries to repeat the trick in 2020).

- Scarvix is indeed one and the same planet seen in TFUK as in DH#1 (and also a recent issue of MTMTE), so its safe to assume the adventure recounted from #1 was when DH was MASSIVE. As for why he was upset, I refer you to the Life & Times Of Death's Head "I mean, there I was, state-of-the-art mechanoid the size of a Ventrux mega-rhino, run into a poorly-dressed Timelord armed with a matter compressor. Next thing you know, it's 'Doc, I've shrunk the freelance peace-keeping agent!'. To add insult to injury, he suckers me into his time machine, then blows me into the space/time continuum."and also the Incomplete Death's Head #1 "Information suggests Death's Head was not displeased with the subsequent power magnification." "***ing great, yes?"

Further thoughts will follow once I've read all the writerings...

Alex link

8/1/2016 08:47:00 pm

That's amazing! And you're quite right - it's easy to forget just how far in the future 8162 actually is.

(I wish I had a copy of "The Life and Times..." That and the collected Body in Question are some of the few bits of classic DH media I don't own.)

Simon Hall

8/1/2016 08:54:01 pm

I prefer 'Life & Times' over the Panini trades for two reasons : the paper stock is much nicer and the reprints are nice and crisp (even if # 1 is totally re-ordered and one of the future scenes is dropped) and for the excellent in-character interviews with Death's Head recounting the adventures they didn't reprint for space/ cost reasons (presumably the £12.99 huge Captain Britain trade of the same year didn't fare so well, so DH got scaled back to a six issue sampling at £6.95). These interview pieces are different to the character/ creator interview featured in Strip # 13. Or possibly 20. I forget which issue that's in. I think its #13.

I would also strongly recommend to everyone to track down the original printing of 'The Body In Question'. Again, the paper quality is better and Senior's art looks amazing in the larger format. Panini's scans are quite murky and horrible looking. Its a lot more vibrant than the Panini print would have you believe.

John D. link

8/1/2016 10:32:45 pm

I couldn't take to Death's Head at all and it annoyed me that this interloper was running about the pages blowing up Bumblebee with one shot and also wiping out Shockwave, who had been vastly powerful up to when he started getting cowardly about the invincible Galvatron. I just didn't get it and felt that it was getting repeatedly rammed down my throat.

snowkatt link

9/1/2016 08:05:52 am

I think it says a lot about the Skullgrin issues when the previous post, could barely get 2 comments which were vaugley positive and the current ones are all about Death's Head.

I loath these two issues and the coming two. And I can't even bring up the venom required to articulate my loathing.

Simon Hall

9/1/2016 11:15:35 am

In keeping with the general enthusiasm I have for this TF story, I rather like this. Its fun and a bit of fluff, and Skullgrin is adorable throughout - and as Stuart has pointed out, this was one of a few stories that cast the Decepticons as something other than needlessly evil thugs. And I think Scorponok was happy for this supply chain to remain as it involves minimal engery expenditure on the part of the Decepticons and there's no need for violence. Really good assessment of a story I've always liked. I don't mind the Roadjammers one comng up either. More bounty hunters, right?

As for Death's Head's own series. Well, I'm not quite seeing it as the mixed bag Stuart does. I can see that its perhaps not has coherent as Dragon' Claws, but I feel it fits his raison d'etre very much. His book should have been an anthology title (which it pretty much is), for the simple reason of him being a bounty hunter and will be encountering different characters and locations depending on where the work takes him. It is a shame that 8162 is skipped out on. It would have been interesting to see where the whole Undertaker plot line was going (especially with that line about "we're about to begin the operation." - not that this is an invitation for anyone to go back and needlessly fill in the blanks *cough* ReGeneration One *cough*

I do like how resilient he is a character. He gets bounced around through time and just carries on doing his job. Unflappable.

Weakest issue for me is #8 and the Parkhouse one. It just feels a bit all over the place and feels very slight. The plot with Dogbolter and the Doctor I didn't warm to, having no familiarity with DWM and its strip at this time. There's some gentle comedy in it which I do enjoy, but it just reminds me that Death's Head is never as good as when Furman was writing him. Or Kieron Gillen (love the SWORD stuff). And whilst we're talking about the Doctor, I'm quite happy to have him try and remove Death's Head from the picture - he was trying to kill him after all. The Doctor, through various incarnations has proven to be a somewhat slippery character at times and you can't always believe he's going to be this paragon of virtue all the time (not that I'd want him to be, that'd be boring).

Best issues for me are #1, # 5 and #7. I liek the Plaguedog stuff in #4, but I've read it so many times the humour's worn off :( What is interesting in a lot of his own stories, is how DH has to do relatively little in pursuit of his targets - his largely human targets, with their own interests placed above all else, seem to get themselves in a mess and killed long before he arrives. No wonder he's time to have a very dry sense of humour and isn't quite the bad ass he is in Transformers - us fleshy ones largely do the work for him.

The back two issues are decent 'guest star team-ups' (not crossovers - a crossover to me is multi-part story that bridges two or more comics to tell a larger story), with the FF one probably nudging it for me. The story is one that's been done to death, but its the interactions between the hero and the anti-hero that create the sparks. Love that shot of Reed Richards' face when Death's Head tells him he kills people for a living.

The Iron Man 2020 team up is pretty good, and again the Dicemen could have been something interesting to explore/ return to had the book not have been cancelled. Which brings me to the closing panels, which hint that the next story in Death's Head's ongoing would have been his origin story, which as we all know, now turned up as The Body In Question. Is this then, the first instance of Furman getting a cancelled story he already had planned into print by other means? See also : Beast Wars for DW and what eventually came out as BW The Gathering for IDW.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

14/1/2016 02:59:05 pm

Skullgrin as a movie star is one of those things that sounds odd when you first hear about it but does seem to work when one gets to the actual story. And the fakeness of Hollywood makes for a good comparison with the Pretender and those around him. But Circuit Breaker really suffers from the roles she gets thrown into over the years, making it hard to keep track of her character development as she goes back and forth in her attitude to the Transformers of the relevant story.

As for Death's Head, I've just reread the whole series and it didn't feel that great. Part of the problem is the comedic element - Death's Head was generally a series near unstoppable force up to this point but now becomes too often a figure of fun. And of course comedy is a difficult thing to cross boundaries - this particular type of dry wit and slapstick isn't the kind to sell too well to the States. This series does feel like an attempt to aim at both sides of the Atlantic, targeting both the 2000 AD and US superhero audience. But when things aim at both sides they often go down in the middle.

And at the risk of sacrilege, Bryan Hitch didn't always get Death's Head looking fierce enough. The redesign is somewhat comical but Senior generally keeps the head the right side of grim comedy. Hitch's head sometimes looks way too silly and other guest artists follow him.

We've previously gone over the question of whether the smaller format was appropriate for the UK newstands but this was also a title that doesn't look that great for the contemporary US market. Most of the standard US Marvels at this time were selling for 75 cents. A few were $1, either due to special properties (including Transformers) or being top sellers with more expensive talent (including all the Spider-Man and mutant books plus a few others) in a rare period of price split. $1.75 for a title featuring a character barely known in the US by creators barely known there was far too expensive to have a real hope of making it big in the US. A more obscure point is that the cover is dated for the UK market and so one month ahead of publication but Marvel US books were still four months ahead. Even with good airmail distribution this book would have looked badly out of date upon arrival in the direct market and unattractive to buyers used to the odd practices.

The DWM strip is an interesting one. This was only the sixth issue and third story with Sylvester McCoy's Doctor, and IIRC Furman had written them all up to now. The early strips for a new Doctor often take a bit of time to settle in and find out just what the Doctor will be like, made worse if the television series takes its own time. Colin Baker's Doctor had pulled weapons to kill foes and there are early example's of McCoy's doing similar - e.g. the end of Paradise Towers where he does a premeditated trap to execute Kroagnon (and Remembrance of the Daleks was originally going to end with the Doctor collecting from storage a special gun to destroy the Black Dalek). So resorting to a gun here isn't completely out of character at the time though there plenty of other ways Death's Head could have been shrunk that are taken from continuity.

(The Panini intros include one myth that Death's Head meeting the Fantastic Four was the first Marvel UK/US "crossover". In fact he was too late by over a decade - Captain Britain had guest starred Captain America then appeared with Spider-Man in the US Marvel Team-Up. By this stage the character was now part of Excaliber and his sister a major part of the X-Men.)

Charles R

26/2/2016 06:40:13 pm

"The altered cover. Wiki correction needed!"

Belatedly done!

Stuart

26/2/2016 06:52:08 pm

You are awesome Sir.

Transformation 191: Head's You Lose.

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