Issue(s): Incomplete Death's Head #1, Incomplete Death's Head #2, Incomplete Death's Head #3, Incomplete Death's Head #4, Incomplete Death's Head #5, Incomplete Death's Head #6, Incomplete Death's Head #7, Incomplete Death's Head #8, Incomplete Death's Head #9, Incomplete Death's Head #10, Incomplete Death's Head #11, Incomplete Death's Head #12
Cover Date: Jan-Dec 93
Title:
Credits:
Dan Abnett & John Freeman / Dan Abnett - Writer
Simon Coleby - Penciler
Simon Coleby - Inker
John Freeman - Editor

Review/plot:
The credits above are for the new material only. John Freeman gets a credit for plot and Dan Abnett for "linking script" on issue #1. Dan Abnett seems to have been the sole writer on the remaining issues, although the credits are spotty.

This series is largely a reprint of the original Death's Head material, but it's integrated with a framing sequence featuring Death's Head II. The framing sequence really bothered me when i bought these (not in real time) because i wanted to get the Death's Head issues but wasn't at all interested in the badass-for-the-90s Death's Head II, who seemed to have none of the traits that made Death's Head awesome. But for whatever weird reason, Death's Head II seems to have been a lot more popular than the original (at least at the time these issues were published), so that was just the world we lived in.

I'm more accepting of Death's Head II nowadays. He's not as fun as Death's Head, but he does in fact have a portion of the original's sense of humor, and his book was one of the better Marvel UK books being published at this time. And this story actually fits into what was going on in his own series. At approximately the same publication time, he was trying to find out who his biological body used to be. Having failed at that, it makes sense for him to learn about the history of the cyborg he replaced.

Some housekeeping notes: Death's Head II is just about the most awkward name to type repeatedly that i can think of. Sometimes i shorten it to just Death's Head, which isn't much of a savings, and since this story will be dealing a lot with the original i can't do that without causing confusion anyway. So i'm just going to use DHII and DH as occasional abbreviations. I'll also use IDH to refer to this series. And be careful, because this series starts reprinting the original Death's Head series beginning in issue #2, since issue #1 covers Death's Head appearances prior to the beginning of his own series. So IDH #2 reprints DH #1, etc.. I'll try to be clear in the review, assuming *i* can keep it straight.

The reprinted material was written by Simon Furman excepting the story from Death's Head #8 (reprinted in issue #9!) which is by Steve Parkhouse, and an 8 page Doctor Who story in issue #12, which was by Gary Russell. There were a lot of artists in the reprints; i'll try to point them out as i go through the issues.

Death's Head II and Tuck are teleported - for reasons they don't know - to a strange facility. After dispatching a pair of robot guards, they interface with an archive that turns out to be about the original Death's Head.

The first story is the one page High Noon, Tex story, illustrated by Bryan Hitch. According to notes in the back of issue #1 of this series, the story "originally had been intended as a one-off page to appear in a British comics fanzine called Scan". The way that is phrased, i don't know if it actually appeared in the fanzine (i.e., does ""originally had been intended" modify "one-off" or "appear"?), but the story was apparently published in "various Marvel UK titles" (Wikipedia). What's not said in the notes but is generally understood is that the story was produced as a way to ensure that Death's Head wouldn't be owned by Hasbro, since he was really created to be in the Transformers series that Furman was writing.

While DHII continues to enjoy his "greatest hits", Tuck goes to investigate the rest of the compound. What we get next is an accelerated summary of Death's Head's time with the Transformers. Note that DH was transported to the Transformer's world by "person or persons unknown" and that he was enlarged while he was in there. And note the bit about reconstructive surgery.

There is not much about the Transformers period (one of three main reasons why this is the Incomplete Death's Head). The idea is that the archive is incomplete, but of course it's really for licensing reasons.

While in a final battle, DH was caught in the pull of a "collapsing planet" (Unicron)...

...and this leads directly to his next story, where he has an encounter with Doctor Who (don't tell me not to call him Doctor Who). Art here is by Geoff Senior; this is from Doctor Who #135.

I think it's odd that the Transformers stuff is glossed over but the Doctor Who material is reprinted in full. Obviously Marvel UK still had the license to Doctor Who, but didn't the Transformers situation make them realize that they wouldn't have it forever? This series would otherwise be perfect for collecting into a trade, but with the Doctor Who material that is probably difficult.

DH was still Transformer size at this point...

...but not for long thanks to a "Tissue Compression Eliminator" that Doctor Who got from the Master.

Doctor Who makes a bargain with DH, saying that he'll give him his time machine in return for his life. But instead he tricks him and sends him away to the year 8162.

Which just happens to be the year in which the Marvel UK series Dragon's Claws took place. This is Dragon's Claws #5, with art still by Geoff Senior.

Death's Head's arrival is detected by villains of the series, Slaughterhouse and Death Nell, who decide to try to recruit him. But first some other locals (Incinerator Jones and his "boys") assume that he is already working for the Evil Dead (Slaughterhouse's team), and DH has to deal with them.

The Dragon's Claws team is deployed to respond to the situation.

I don't know anything about these guys, but the Incomplete Death's Head book helpfully inserts a text page in the middle of the issue.

DH is contacted by Death Nell and agrees to work for her...

...which means continuing to fight the Jones Boys. The Dragon's Claws show up but just let him keep at it.

But when they do join the fight, DH sees them as competition.

Note Death's Head's comments about how bounty hunters and peacekeeping agents are the same. Soon after this, DH will begin taking issue with people who call him a bounty hunter (and as noted in the comments this was already the case in the Transformers series). He prefers "freelance peacekeeping agent".

They wind up getting into a fight, and the last we see of DH, he's burnt up...

...and buried in a collapsing building.

At this point Death's Head II's review of the archives is interrupted by an attack from a machine in the compound.

But he's still plugged in to the archives, and they continue. At this point we are into the actual Death's Head series that began in 1988. Issue #1 had art by Bryan Hitch and Mark Farmer. Note Death's Head talk of his programmer.

The story established Death's Head in his role as a (shhh!) bounty hunter. He's hired by what he thinks are rebels to kill a king. But it turns out that he was hired by the king, so that they could lure him into a trap before the rebels hired him for real.

It's with this that it's established that he hates being called a bounty hunter.

He nonetheless goes through with the "contract" and we see his first rule.

The original issue went right from there to this scene.

The reprint does as well, but it changes the narration box slightly and inserts Tuck in an inset.

The above scene and another like it in issue #1 take place in the Dragon's Claws timeline, showing what happened to Death's Head after he was trapped in that fire and setting up a guest appearance in issue #2. But the jumps are odd, which may be why someone thought the insert from Tuck would help.

The reprint then goes to Death's Head II meeting Death's Head in the data stream. Note how the dialogue continues from the original material.

The next page in the original begins the second short story in issue #1. And note the panel - added in the reprint - about Death's Head's memories being at odds with real events.

The second story shows Death's Head outgunned and having to disguise himself.

He then goes after the boss of the gang he was fighting, who turns out to be a little kid. This results in Rule #2.

The third story in issue #1 shows Death's Head sitting in an office, with business going slow. So he decides to fight a robot that is causing trouble in the streets, with the idea that it's a good promotion.

The next story (Incomplete Death's Head #3/Death's Head #2, with pencils still by Hitch but inks by David Hine) has Death's Head doing a job for the people that repaired him. They are criminals operating out of a former prison, and it turns out that a member of the Dragon's Claws, called Scavenger, used to be one of them. DH has been hired to bring him back, which he does. DH finds that he doesn't like his employers very much, but he's agreed to work with them for a period of time. While he's waiting, he meets another member of their group, a kid named Spratt.

The rest of Dragon's Claws follow DH to the former prison. Death's Head respects the leader of the Dragon's Claws as much as he dislikes his employers, so he eventually just runs out the clock on his contract.

And Spratt sticks with him as a partner.

The story is really more of a Dragon's Claws story with background on the character of Scavenger. But Death's Head as a character is entertaining, and Spratt will be a lasting partner (until he's killed off in the Death's Head II miniseries, as we've already seen).

In the present day (so to speak), Death's Head II, still stuck in cyberspace, is able to contact Tuck via a computer screen. He tells Tuck that he's learned that they are on Maruthea.

There are two stories (in addition to the framing sequence) spanning Incomplete Death's Head #4-5. The first story is from Death's Head #3-4, with art by Hitch/Hine on #3 and Lee Sullivan on #4. It shows Death's Head still in the Dragon's Claws time period (8162) with Spratt.

They have a few different adventures while traveling to the Los Angeles Resettlement to set up shop. One problem is that their office-to-be has a monster in it.

And while Death's Head is executing a contract...

...Spratt is getting attacked.

It turns out that the monster is the thing that Death's Head was contracted to catch by a mobster named Dead Cert.

Dead Cert's rival, Undertaker (the monster's owner), hires another mercenary named Big Shot to take care of DH and Spratt.

But more on that below.

The second story in IDH #4-5 is called Keepsake and it's by Simon Furman with art by John Higgins. It's a reprint of Doctor Who #140. It doesn't feature Death's Head but it will feed into the next Death's Head story. The story has a pilot setting down on a planet Ryos and rescuing Doctor Who from a horde of angry locals.

Who convinces the pilot, Keepsake, to rescue a medic (later named Bahlia) who is also on the planet. And she stays with the pilot.

Death's Head #5 (in IDH #6) has art by Higgins, same as in the Doctor Who story. It has Keepsake and Bahlia crash landing near the LA settlement where Death's Head lives.

The Doctor Who story had a bit about Keepsake keeping a vulture as a pet because it reminds him of his wife. In this story, the wife hires Death's Head to find her husband.

She goes into a long explanation of why she wants her husband - which involves some treasure and double-crossing and a third part named Colt - but DH says that he doesn't care about the particulars. She wants a map that Keepsake has.

DH goes searching for Keepsake.

Keepsake is found by Colt, who takes his treasure map. Then DH finds Keepsake, and since he doesn't have the map, he's brought back to the wife and they agree to go after Colt. So basically everyone goes on the treasure hunt, and it ends with more double-crossing.

The vulture winds up remaining with Death's Head, bothering Spratt in the office in future issues.

This is the final page in the original story, setting up the next one.

But that page is left out of the reprint, replaced with this scene which is actually from the original issue #6; the art below is some early Liam Sharp.

In the framing sequence for these stories, Tuck is attacked while the Death's Heads are still in cyberspace.

The attacker is Hob, who we'll see more of in the upcoming reprints. He's got the body of the actual original Death's Head (i.e. not just the cyberspace version) on the ground next to him. Hob later is surprised to see Death Head II's body.

The next two reprints continue the war between Dead Cert and the Undertaker, with the various characters introduced above (Big Shot, Major Mayhem, Short Fuse) playing a part. I'm not going to go into the plots in detail. They are fun characters, and fun adventure stories. I hope the original Death's Head's humorous and violent sides are already clear from the scans i've chosen, and you can see the kinds of adventures he gets involved in. They won't have a lot of impact on the future of the Marvel universe, but they are fun. Death's Head has a mercenary attitude and a set of principles that he adheres to, but he often finds reasons to bend the rules to be on the side of "good", broadly speaking. And the bounty hunter freelance peacekeeping agent set-up allows for a wide range of fun stories. This is all in contrast to Death's Head II, who does have some humor to him but is generally a more serious character, and the stories he's involved in are also more serious (relatively speaking, taking into account that these are comics). So while DH will get hired to find a treasure map, DHII has to save the world from the threats of Charnel and the Sapphire Lotus and goes on quests for identity.

The next reprint is the Death's Head story that was included in Marvel Comics Presents #76 (Hitch on art). It's a Most Dangerous Game scenario.

Death's Head finds another "participant" in the game who gives him info on defeating DH's target.

The reprint kind of annoyingly splits the story in half. Four pages in the back of IDH #8 and four in IDH #9. I don't know why they split it up (or at least why they didn't put the last four pages in the front of issue #9, especially since the story has to fit chronologically before the story in IDH #9). Because this is about it for the period where Death's Head lived in the same year as Dragon's Claws (which is when the M/CP story takes place). The next story has a corporation, Intra-Venus Inc., that has developed a time machine to break the monopoly held by the Time Lords of Gallifrey, and it will end with Death's Head stranded in a different time.

The company is headed by Dogbolter.

This story is written and inked by Steve Parkhouse; it's the only issue of the Death's Head series not by Furman. Pencils are by Art Wetherell.

And here's Hob; he's a small robot that works for Intra-Venus.

Hob is sent to hire Death's Head to kill Doctor Who. Hob is the payment.

As we've seen, DH has a personal reason to go after Doctor Who anyway.

Intra-Venus's Temporal Rocket has some kinks in it, so DH zips around in time a bit before getting to the Doctor.

When he catches up with the doctor, it turns out the Temporal Rocket is about to explode in a nuclear way.

The Doctor manages to get the device off of Death's Head thanks to a "piklok" which has "proved very useful in the past", and they send the device back to Dogbolter and Hob. And then Doctor Who tries to convince Death's Head that he should change his mercenary ways, and leaves him stranded on Four Freedoms Plaza.

And that leads directly into Death's Head #9, which i've covered in its own entry since it took place in the regular Marvel universe timeline.

In the framing sequence, we learn that Hob isn't out for vengeance, exactly. He's searching for Dogbolter, hoping to find a clue to his former master's location by searching through all of Death's Head archives. The implication is that he seems to have snagged Death's Head II and Tuck by accident while investigating DH, but we'll learn that's not the case.

When Tuck suggests that Dogbolter might be dead, Hob gets mad.

As far as the "archives" (reprints) go, after Death Head's encounter with the Fantastic Four, he got sent to the 2020 timeline, which means an encounter with Arno Stark. This is Death's Head #10, the final issue of his series, with Bryan Hitch on art.

Arno plays the role of Iron Man 2020 as a mercenary and a way to relieve the boredom of his rich idle lifestyle. In this story he's been hired to protect Arab emissaries (who doesn't want the protection), but it's really part of a plot by a guy named Chance, a member of a wealthy cabal called the Dicemen. At this point Death's Head has already settled into his role as a freelancer in this timeline, and Chance hires him to fight Iron Man 2020, telling him that the Arabs are terrorists that Iron Man is protecting. Death's Head is suspicious, but takes the job.

But eventually they sort things out and go after Chance, who it turns out was violating the Dicemen's rules by making repeated use of Iron Man and winds up getting taken out by his own assistant.

The issue (again, the last of the original series) ends with Spratt arriving in the 2020 timeline, followed by Big Shot.

This does suggest that the cancellation of the original series came on rather suddenly, although obviously with enough time for the "happily ever after" narration to be scripted in.

In the Incomplete framing sequence, Death Head says that the arrival of Big Shot had something to do with his/their parents (who we saw in the archives at the beginning).

One thing that is a bit frustrating is that there are a couple of references to Death's Head's parents, but they are kind of cryptic, like the scan above or that corrective footnote from earlier. Death's Head's origin, including the info on his parents, was published in an anthology called Strip, issues #13-20. But those stories are not included in this series (they did say it was "Incomplete"), and they're not even summarized the way the Transformers stories were. The good news is that those stories were collected in a trade (although it's not exactly cheap at this point).

DH also brings up the fact that he's been to Maruthea before, something that we haven't seen yet.

And that's because Maruthea is at a nexus of time and space, and Death's Heads "prior" visit hasn't happened "yet". And in fact it's starting now. There he is arriving with a number of other familiar faces.

This is a set-up for a story from Doctor Who #173, which has various incarnations of the Doctor showing up in Maruthea to celebrate the birthday of someone named Bonjaxx.

Also at the party is Death's Head.

And Captain Britain.

(And, as we saw in the framing sequence, many others.)

Back in the framing sequence, Death's Head says that his memory of his time after that is spotty. He recalls having worked for the Time Variance Authority trying to clean up temporal messes (the third story missing from this Incomplete history). Death's Head II then says that he's not interested in that; he just wants to rescue Tuck from Hob. Death's Head explains that Hob either wants him to find Dogbolter or kill him. DHII says that Hob can't kill DH, since DH becomes DHII. DH says that anything is possible in Maruthea, and says that "the time laws are very confusing like that" which segues into the final reprint, which covers She-Hulk #24 in full.

After that, DH agrees to help DHII, saying that he can get them back into their bodies. DH makes DHII promise that he won't let Hobs kill him ("You killed me once. That was bad enough."). Captain Britain wanders over from the perpetual birthday party, but the Death's Heads tell him to screw.

And then they go to battle.

Hob is defeated with no fuss. After the battle, the original Death's Head tells DHII that he can't let him continue to replace him, and they are about to fight, but then Doctor Who shows up again. The Doctor disables the original Death's Head, using the tissue compression eliminator again. He says that preventing the DHs from killing each other and creating an "ugly paradox" was the real reason he's been coming to Maruthea, not Bonjaxx's birthday ("it just took me a while to remember it"). He erases DH's memory of meeting DHII. The Doctor then says that he was the one who sent Death's Head to the Transformer's universe, and has been trying to help Death's Head evolve into a good guy by "shaping some of his adventures".

DHII accuses him of playing around with his life, but the Doctor says that he just made a few "editorial alterations", and that the only thing he's done since he became Death's Head II was bring him here to Maruthea.

They then say their goodbyes...

...and the party starts up again. I bet Apocalypse isn't a lot of fun at parties.

The rating below is only about the framing sequence material, not the reprinted stories. The series is really just a vehicle for the reprints, so it's not fair to expect too much of it. But it's fun to see the Death's Heads interacting, and we do get some minor revelations - namely that Doctor Who was responsible for sending DH to the Transformerverse and has been actively trying to bring out the good side of him. As far as the reprint package, accepting that it's "Incomplete" and that we have to contend with the framing sequence, the one thing that i think should have been included are covers of the original issues, which are really fun, but luckily we have the GCD.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - minor revelations about Death's Head

Chronological Placement Considerations: As noted at the top, this story works well after Death's Head II fails to learn the origins of his biological body, which happened in Death's Head II #12, and in any event it can't take place anywhere between Death's Head #1-12 (the ongoing series) because of dependencies around Tuck. I'm not counting the appearances of any of the characters at the party in Maruthea for my usual time travel related reasons. Death's Head (I) is also here out of time.

References:

• Death's Head became the dominant personality for Minion/Death's Head II in Death's Head II #1 (miniseries). And that's where Spratt was killed.
  
• In their guest appearance in Death's Head #2, Dragon Claws are "hardly back an hour from Canada" as seen in Dragon's Claws #6-7.
  
• Iron Man 2020's fight with Machine Man, from the 1984 Machine Man series, is mentioned.
  
• Death's Head's mention of the Time Variance Authority refers to Fantastic Four #338.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

All these years later I still want to see Death's Head II and Tuck versus the Daleks :)

Yayyyy I'm so glad you've finally covered this! And glad to see you enjoyed it as well. Been championing DH since the late 80s :)

Speaking of... since he comes into "the present" of this story, and is sent off again as an autonomous being (who will return in the Revolutionary War series), shouldn't Death's Head be listed as a Character Appearing?

As i say in the Considerations, i believe Death's Head appears here out of time. I think that's why Doctor Who erases his memory of meeting Death's Head II - to avoid the paradox of his remembering the meeting when they meet in the DHII miniseries. And Death's Head's body goes to Charnel when Death's Head is killed. If i'm right about the above (and i could be confused), then i wouldn't list DH as appearing for the same reason i don't list Rocket Raccoon, etc..

I know it's all timey-wimey, but I thought your policy was that you included time travelers as they appeared to "us," not as they experience their personal chronology. Your rules to bend as you like, though it's weird that these issues wouldn't be indexed as Death's Head appearances at all (and that particular reading of the rules would give you a reason to include them).

I'd have to reread Revolutionary War but I believe the two-Death's-Heads-coexisting-paradox gets embraced; and that was written by Lanning.

My policy is that i don't characters when tagging them would make their own character listing out of order. In most cases that translates to not counting the locals, but i guess it also applies to when characters are time traveling separately from different periods of origin. I guess part of the confusion might be that for characters like Kang, it's usually assumed that their incursions into our timeline also happen in chronological order for them, so it looks like i'm including them as they appear to us.

I had a similar issue with Kristoff in the Spider-Man/Fantastic Four series, but that could be solved with a separate tag for him. In this case i'd really have to create a duplicate entry for these issues to make it work.

I agree it's weird that DH winds up not getting tagged for this entry, but that's what he gets for being a time traveler. :-)

For those who are curious about these things...

The Tissue Compression Eliminator is a particularly nasty weapon invented by the Doctor's arch-nemesis the Master. It shrinks its victims down into miniaturized corpses, which the Master sometimes leaves as a gruesome "greeting card" to let the Doctor know he's lurking about.

The man-frog Josiah W. Dogbolter is a ruthless, corrupt industrialist who owns the planet Venus at some point in the future. He and his sycophantic robot assistant Hob first appeared in Doctor Who Magazine #88, created by Steve Parkhouse & Steve Dillon. After the Doctor refused to sell his TARDIS to Dogbolter, the frog financier put a price on his head, prompting several mercenaries, including Death's Head, to try to collect the reward.

Bonjaxx is a Daemon, a race of ancient, incredibly advanced aliens who visited Earth in the distant past, influencing human development as well as inspiring the myths of magic and devils. Bonjaxx obviously decided to get out of the civilization-building business for a go at bartending.

That drunk blue fluffy fellow is Beep, leader of the Meeps, an adorable & fun-loving alien race who after being exposed to Black Star radiation were transformed into homicidal sadists bent on universal conquest. After pillaging countless star systems, the Meeps were defeated by the genetically engineered Wrath Warriors. Beep escaped to Earth, where he pretended to be a sweet, innocent friend to children. Eventually revealing his true nature, Beep was defeated by the Doctor and the Wrath Warriors. Sent to space prison, Beep has subsequently escaped on several occasions. Beep the Meep was introduced in Doctor Who Weekly #19 and was created by Pat Mills, John Wagner & Dave Gibbons.

Perhaps it was discussed somewhere else before this post but.. Why isn´t The Doctor (Sorry; Doctor Who )tagged?

Same reason i don't tag Clark Kent.

Actually, Death's Head's trend to hate being called a "Bounty Hunter" comes back from his early Transformers appearances. His comment about Peacekeeping Agents being the same thing actually is a weird characterization mishap.

Interesting to note that Death's Head's encounter with Sensational She-Hulk isn't included in this series (and don't tell me not to call her Sensational She-Hulk :p). Incidentally, the reprints featuring the Doctor come from Doctor Who Magazine, not Doctor Who.

Interesting that they change some of the actual facts in recapping the Transformers stuff. In particular, the account of Death's Head's final appearance in Transformers (The Legacy of Unicron - #146-151) is completely different to the original. In that story, Unicron's head had landed on the planet Junk (after Transformers: The Movie), and the Junkions were mentally enslaved to build a new body for him (but had barely started on the shoulders by the end of the story). Unicron's physical body (such as it was) was destroyed by explosives, and Death's Head pushed Cyclonus and Scourge through a time portal, following after them, because it was his best bet of fulfilling the contract on them which had caused him to be involved in said story. So no collapsing planet was involved at all.

And DAMartin is right that Death's Head's insistence on being called a Freelance Peacekeeping Agent comes from his early Transformers appearances. In fact, it first comes up in his very first scene (the very start of Wanted: Galvatron, #113).

@Fnord, i see your point. As explained in the Q&A section, you don't list easter egg appearances of characters from other publishing companies. But Doctor Who was actually a Marvel Licensed Character at the time, just as Fu Manchu or Rom, both of which are tagged in your project...He had his own Marvel series, and he appears in this Death´s Head issues, the same way other Marvel characters such as The Fantastic Four, Captain America, Wolverine etc did before... Maybe i´m wrong but i think that there´s some logic in my Doctor Who obsession ;)

@ Jay Gallardo -

There's always logic in a Doctor Who obsession.

@Jay - It would probably be VERY difficult for fnord to track Doctor Who chronologically since he is always traveling back & forth through time. The Doctor's timeline is so convoluted that it makes keeping track of Rama-Tut/Scarlet Centurion/Kang/Immortus/Iron Lad look simple by comparison.

Yeah, i understand that keeping track of Doctor Who´s history is an impossible task. Maybe just referencing his Marvel appearances would be enough. Sorry Fnord, i for sure don´t want the nineties to be ever more unbearable than they already are...

Marvel Premiere published in the United States Doctor Who in four of its issues in 1980 and 1981, featuring reprints of Fourth Doctor Who comic strips from Doctor Who Magazine (published by Marvel's UK branch).
There was also a "Doctor Who Marvel Adventure Comic", a series of six fourteen-page mini comic books produced concurrently in November 1986 to be given away in multi-packs of Golden Wonder crisps. Honestly, i think that it would be going too far.
With The Marvel Premiere issues, it would be enough in order to include the good Doctor into the Marvel Universe chronology...
Of course, this is just my two cents...

As much as I am an "inclusionist" and always love to push fnord to embrace these edge-cases, and think maybe The Doctor should get a tag here, I can also see why he wouldn't: AFAIK The Doctor (any incarnation) has no other canonical modern-era 616 appearances. Even including this as "modern-era 616" is a bit of a stretch. But the other Doctor appearances, published by Marvel or not, aren't tied to modern-era 616 continuity... even the "Time War" stories, relevant due to the introduction of the Special Executive, don't take place in the timeline or world that fnord is focusing on in this project.

As for the inconsistencies with the Transformers story, that can be chalked up to either expository shorthand, or covered by the "spotty memory" claimed a few times here.

If anyone's interested in the Transformers Death's Head stories, they are reprinted in IDW's Transformers Classics UK 3-5.
You can also read summaries on this comprehensive Transformers UK review blog, The Solar Pool.
I've listed what are (I think) all the issues that include the original Death's Head, though some of the stories span issues he doesn't appear. But all the issues are on the site - nowhere near as visually robust as Supermegamonkey, unforch!

http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/transformers-uk113.html
http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/transformers-uk114.html
http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/transformers-uk117.html
http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/transformers-uk118.html
http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/transformers-uk120.html

http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/transformers-uk133.html
http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/transformers-uk134.html

http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/transformers-uk148.html
http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/transformers-uk151.html

@cullen Hey! It's a crossover with one of the other websites I really like!

I loved Death's Head in the 80's and it's cool to find out about the issue I missed (the treasure hunt issue) because it sold out on the morning it came out (I assume due to the Doctor Who link or the boobs) and the later stuff I couldn't get because we didn't have a comic shop yet.

Fnord, is there any reason you called Dragon's Claws (with an 's') Dragon Claw all the way through?

I had no idea that Hob was in this! I'm a little skeptical about the nuclear bomb being a time nuclear bomb and his survival, but I guess if you're going to go goofy, go full throttle goofy. Hob's (and Dogbolter's) first appearence in Doctor Who is my favourite Doctor Who comic story. This post just made me go all nostalgic in so many ways.

Your dedication is awesome. I read those books, and I could barely make sense of them. I preferred the original, as well.

Quick typo alert: Dead Cert is referred to as Big Cert, just as Big Shot is introduced. Mike Collins illustrated the last story with Captain Britian. If you mentioned that, I missed it.