Here Meer Here

Death’s Head: a character created by Marvel UK in the 80s, originally as a supporting villain in the Transformers comics.He eventually received his own much-deserved series, which started strong and playful, got sidetracked by too many cameos from other Marvel characters, and ultimately collapsed into inappropriately heavy mythology (sadly, at the hands of the character’s creator Simon Furman). The ailing character was then was thoroughly undone by an insipid, baffling revamp as the overtly heroic Deaths Head II. I remain ridiculously angry about that.

Half comical and half terrifying, there’s good reason he retains a cult following of sorts despite having been killed off almost 20 years ago. I miss the original Death’s Head dearly - the UK Transformers comics were essentially how I learned to read, and DH’s still impeccably-realised anti-hero status was probably my first encounter with something more complex than binary good and evil. Yep - a robot assassin with chin tusks, detachable hands and a speech defect was a formative inspiration for me.

The above is a poster original artist (and probably my all-time favourite comic artist) Geoff Senior created for a fan convention last year. It may well be 120% geeky, but it’s something I’m desperate to get a copy of. Can’t find one anywhere, sadly.