Dare I say it but could this year’s Beano Christmas Special actually top last year’s? One glance at the supposed author name along the bottom of the cover almost had me convinced before I even opened it! Inside, the lack of more funny gift tags is disappointing but that’s really the only negative I have in all honesty.
Dennis is lumbered with reading a bedtime story to his little sister, Bea as Christmas Eve draws to a close and his mum hands him A Christmas Carol. But of course Dennis is never going to have the attention span to read a whole book so he leaves bits out, retells existing bits and adds completely new parts to liven it all up.
Just like last year, the special is one long story told over various strips starring a collection of the comic’s fan favourites. Dennis, for example, is not only Dennis Scratchit in his retelling but also the first of the ghosts. He’s the narrator and in charge, and it’s Dennis, so of course he’d do this and it’s hilariously brushed aside in the story. Although for me the real star of the piece isn’t Dennis or even Mayor Brown as Scrooge, it has to be Rubi.
Rubi’s Screwtop Science pops up several times across the issue thanks to her dad’s time machine invention. Oh, and her dad is H.G. Wells so you can guess what the machine looks like (and it comes complete with a certain Doctor Who sound effect). You see, the ghosts are all a bit useless and need Rubi’s help in order to carry out their plan to make Scrooge learn the error of his ways and the true meaning of Christmas. But this is the modern day Beano and it all goes completely nuts and utterly chaotic very quickly!
If you thought last year’s tale didn’t let up you haven’t seen anything yet. The team have really outdone themselves. What a team, too! The complete list of writers and artists for this special reads like this: Danny Pearson (who featured in a previous festive OiNK post), Andy Fanton, Nigel Auchterlounie, Laura Howell, Emily McGorman-Bruce, Nigel Parkinson, Barrie Appleby, Steve Beckett, Shannon Gallant, George Cant, Ned Hartley, Mel Prats, Hugh Raine, Alan Ryan, Leslie Stannage, The Sharp Bros. and Wayne Thompson. Phew! Talk about a who’s who of comics talent.
Don’t be expecting this to follow the classic tale that closely. There are moments when it pays its respects but then you’ll turn the page and find the Ghost of Christmas Present has brought Scrooge to the present day of the reader instead of Scrooge’s own timeline, or another has taken him to witness the Bash Street school of the far sci-fi future for no apparent reason, or Bananaman trying to infiltrate a prison before it’s built! Why? That would ruin the surprise.
Every instance of time jumping sees us back in Rubi’s lab and every time this happens she gets more and more frustrated at the ineptitude of the ghosts. Her thunder is almost stolen by the wonderful Dangerous Dan strip and its completely random ending, there are also some lovely nods back to classic Beano years for the older readers, and a delightfully timey-wimey head-spinning Angel Face Investigates. But Rubi easily manages to hold the crown as her pages made me roar every time she appeared.
It should be clear how much I’ve enjoyed this and I’m not even the target audience. Alongside the whopping 48 pages given over to the story there are also a multitude of quality puzzles, games and activities for the kids, all festively wrapped up in a 76-page special (even bigger than last year’s) printed on exceedingly good quality paper with a card cover. There’s no need to balk at the £7.99 price tag either, by the time you’ve absorbed the amount of gags in here and your kids have laughed and drawn and pranked their way through it all you’ll see it for the bargain it is.
It should be readily available in your local shops and supermarkets. I ordered mine from DC Thomson directly through the Beano’s website shop. It’s available there as a single issue or as part of various bundles with the Beano Annual, Dandy Annual and the traditional special Dandy/Beano book. Also, if your child would like to join the Beano fan club they’ll receive this, the summer special and the annual as part of the club! I’ll say it again: bargain.
Grab a couple of slices of boozy fruit cake and a big glass of your favourite festive tipple but be ready to spurt them out several times while you read this. In other words, you should buy it. The only way it could be improved upon is if they’d included more of those tags! Yes, I’ll die on this hill. Hey Beano, maybe next year? Or put them up on your shop. I wouldn’t be alone in buying them, I’m sure. In the meantime folks, grab yourself a copy of the Beano Christmas Special 2025 and you’ll feel like a big kid even more than usual this holiday season. Guaranteed.
This review was originally written for and published on Down the Tubes. As I’m now going to cover these yearly specials on the OiNK Blog I decided to copy this post over too.
As I write this the Christmas issue of Beano (No.4266) is out, however every year publisher DC Thomson also releases a separate festive special in advance of the season. Printed on high quality paper and coming in at an impressive 68 pages, it’s almost like another Beano Annual. No one can accuse the team of not going large for the holidays!
All the usual characters are in place from a plethora of top talent, my personal favourites being Andy Fanton, Nigel Parkinson, Nigel Auchterlounie, Laura Howell and friend of the OiNK Blog, Danny Pearson. Initially looking like a bigger regular issue, as you read you soon realise all the strips are part of one story from different perspectives, without ever sacrificing the quality of the individual strips.
Upon opening you’re met with a page of gift labels. Aimed at kids rather than the present-buyers, that doesn’t mean older readers can’t enjoy them, as you can tell from my photos. The one featuring Harsha from Bash Street Kids was particularly well suited to that gift!
So, Santa has been kidnapped and for once the Beanotown kids aren’t to blame. (This is the first Christmas Special I’ve read but it’s clear there’s a history here). When Mrs. Claus asks why he still delivers there when they kidnap him every year, Santa explains, “It’s only most years, and twice it was more of a misunderstanding.”
However, the kids are blamed throughout in some very funny moments, including by Santa’s reindeer, who immediately pin it on Minnie! I just have to mention Dasher at this point. The personality given to him is just perfect for his name and I laughed aloud when I read this scene in the stables. It’s such an obvious gag now that I’m surprised I haven’t read something similar before.
The big bad behind it all is revealed early on as Mayor Brown, who bears a striking resemblance to Richard Osman and whose voice I read his lines in for the rest of the comic. This is a world away from the Beano I read as a kid and that’s a good thing; it has to move on and evolve for today’s kids after all. As a result, the humour moves at a much faster pace, with more quips and banter between characters and some enjoyable breaking of the fourth wall. It’s a lot more chaotic and anarchic. As an OiNK fan, I love it!
I don’t want to ruin what happens because the joy is in not knowing what’s next; something this definitely isn’t is predictable! Bond villain Brown takes Bash Street school as his lair with his robotic snowmen to ruin Christmas, a scenario perfectly set up by spy strip, Dangerous Dan. From here, everyone gets a crack at teaming up with other characters from different creators and it’s fun to see the various artists’ takes on each other’s creations.
I may have had several laugh-out-loud moments but I’m not the target audience, despite how young I felt reading this. However, my friend’s son is. Father and son subscribe to Beano and read it together, and they’ve a set of criteria upon which they judge each and every issue. I know you’re thinking this’ll be a list of favourite characters but it’s a bit more… comprehensive than that. Kids can have very particular tastes.
They want lots of Angel Face and Minnie the Minx for a start. They weren’t disappointed here, especially with the amount of Minnie content. (On a side note, as a fan of Andy Fanton’s work it’s great to see his Minnie is so treasured.) Next, Yeti and Cousin Agnes should feature beyond their own strip and for a special Christmas treat it’s actually Minnie they mingle with here. Dennis also breaks the fourth wall as wanted and, while Rubi’s latest invention isn’t as ‘Heath Robinson’ as they’d like (no, really) it plays a pivotal role and her mistakes bring plenty of smiles.
Always important to get the target audience’s view, right?
There are also several activity pages such as mazes, board games, pranks etc. They may sound clichéd but each is finished to such a high quality you could never call them fillers. I focussed solely on the comic strip (and the free stickers) but there’s plenty for younger readers to do to get more value out of your money.
Whether you’ve kids of your own or just want to read a new funny comic this holiday season, the Beano Christmas Special 2024 is exactly what you need. It even has snow on the logo, so you know it must be good.
Welcome back to our irregular real time read through of the eight celebratory editions of Beano from DC Thomson’s 80th anniversary box set. Next up is the first issue to have sold one million copies! That’s an incredible achievement on its own, never mind the fact it was back in 1945, not long after World War II and at a time when paper shortages were still in effect. As such, Reg Carter’sBig Eggo fronted a comic of only 12 pages, the smallest it would ever be.
The Beano was also fortnightly at the time, released on alternative weeks to The Dandy so kids still had the opportunity to read some desperately needed funnies every week. I’ve always found this period in the comic’s history fascinating ever since I found out about it in the 50th anniversary Dandy/Beano Fifty Golden Years book I received for Christmas1987, which you’ll see an overview of this year on Boxing Day on the blog. For now though, let’s open up #272 of The Beano, which celebrates its own 80th anniversary today.
What a selection of names and taglines! Talk about being “of their time”. Researching Cocky Dick meant very careful internet searches but I did eventually find out it was originally drawn by Allan Morley and ran in the comic from 1939 to 1947. There’s an air of Dennis about the strip thanks to the cheeky nature of the main character and the colour scheme of his feathers. Nice of the local council to label their water wells too, otherwise how’d we know what it was.
After an absence of three years Good King Coke (surely a 90s movie drug lord name) had returned for another year-long run, drawn by Eric Roberts, and The Magic Lollipops (“Suck ‘em and see”?!) was also drawn by Allen and ran for ten years between 1941 and 1951, with a one year gap in the middle. I don’t think any other page in either #1 or this edition has been such a clear window into a completely different time.
A Christmas strip! Perfect. With The Beano being fortnightly we were only one issue away from the big festive celebrations and Lord Snooty was getting in on the action already. As the season has already kicked off on the OiNK Blog this year I couldn’t have been happier when I saw this, drawn by Dudley D. Watkins. Snooty’s strip ran from 1938 all the way through to 1991, with a few breaks in the middle.
Upon his return after his first break a lot of his original friends above would be replaced with characters from other, discontinued Beano strips and over the course of his lengthy run he was drawn by a handful of other artists, most notably Leo Baxendale and Robert Nixon. Lord Snooty was the only character from #1 I knew as a child in the 80s (through sneaking a peek at my friends’ issues), by that time he was the last surviving character of that first issue.
Along the top of a Jimmy and his Magic Patch story readers are told to turn to a certain page to find out all the details of the special Christmas issue, but it turns out it’s only this small promo in the middle of a Tick Tock Timothy prose story. The main selling point of the festive issue would be a game called ‘Jinko’, a basic dice board game printed on the back cover. Over the page from this promo we find Tom Thumb is still in the comic, albeit as a picture-panel story instead of the prose of #1.
Another character who was still here but whose format hadn’t changed is one of my favourites from the premiere issue, Charles Gordon’sGranny Green. This was actually a reprint from the original run in the first year-and-a-bit of the comic but obviously I’ve never read it. Again, I really enjoyed it. It includes a quick recap of the premise for any new readers and I originally thought Jimmy’s plan in this particular story sounded awfully cruel… until we find out the water is only a couple of feet deep. Hilariously, the names of the friends mentioned still sound like the kind of creations Bob Mortimer comes up with on Would I Lie To You!
On to the back page and two well known names, beginning with Tin-Can Tommy, the clockwork ‘son’ of Professor Lee and Mrs Lee. He first appeared on the back page of the first issue when he was created after the death of their son because they were struggling with the loss. Originally drawn by the Italian Dinellibrothers who disappeared in France during the war, he was subsequently drawn by Sam Fair, Charles Gordon and George Drysdale but my usual expert resources aren’t aware of who drew this episode.
Tommy would reappear in #3185 in 2003 for the comic’s 60th anniversary. Another character who may also be known by later readers of Beano is Pansy Potter. Pansy was a Beano star between 1938 and 1958 (with breaks), then she moved to Sparky in the 60s and 70s before returning to her original home between 1989 and 1993. That’s the time period in which I remember her from, which she followed up with small runs now-and-again (her last appearance was in #3954) and a couple of annual cameos in 2012 and 2018.
Created by Hugh McNeill and drawn by this stage by Tommy’s Sam, Pansy was the character chosen to be the first strip printed in full colour on the back page a few years later. This strip above reminds me of skating at a temporary rink at Belfast City Hall this time of year many moons ago and the amount of people tripping over chunks of broken ice and toppling into each other. The council not wishing to splash out on a Zamboni never stopped us going back though.
Next time, we’ll jump from 1945 to 1951. Our third issue saw the introduction of a certain boy with a black and red jumper so its inclusion in the box set is no surprise. When this series returns, join me as we travel in time again to the year of The King and I, the Stone of Scone returning to Scotland all on its own, a blue sun, the world’s first nuclear power plant and, in keeping with the theme of Dennis the Menace, the year when a young sailor was fined for the menacing behaviour of kissing his girlfriend in public in Sweden. The Beano #452 will be right here on the OiNK Blog on Saturday 14th March 2026.
What’s this? A ChristmasChris HallsAliens cover? Am I late in covering the blog’s logo with snow? Nope, that’ll happen on 24th November (six days from the day of writing) as per usual, in this case Dark Horse International editor Cefn Ridout must’ve mistimed the chilly seasonal cover somewhat. Yes, it’s the December issue but last year Chris’ superb art and pun-filled headline were part of the January issue released on 24th December. This year there’s another issue after this one just before Christmas Day.
Despite this, Cefn still takes the opportunity to wish us all a Merry Christmas and since mine starts as soon as the Christmas tree goes up in a few days I’ll take it! Anyway, there’s your obligatory editorial page with the full credits for this month’s issue.
Contrary to the blurb on the cover, the latest chapter to Michael Cook’sCrusade isn’t seasonal. The alien Queen trapped in a cathedral tower gave Chris a reason for the frosty cover and its church iconography, but in these eight pages we don’t see any aliens. From the ‘previously’ page we learn Channon is the leader of the Minecorp marines and Foston is the male company man, not that the strip itself has ever made these clear. The last survivor of the crashed survey team is Foston’s wife, hence why he’s risking it all even though he’s out of his depth.
Channon has been captured by a tribe who have constructed a whole village out of old vehicles because they don’t know what they are. Sounds interesting but unfortunately it’s just a mess on the page. The ‘jail’ is a camper van with a padlock and inside she finds Foston’s wife. They hot-wire the van and make their escape back to the survey ship where they stock up on heavy weaponry and take off down the egg-infested Thames in what is definitely too small a boat. It just feels right to have two kick-ass women in an Alien story, doesn’t it?
I certainly didn’t expect to get a huge laugh from the Motion Tracker news section! There’s a competition for a box set of VHS videos and it would’ve been right up my street. It’s a shame we don’t get a decent photograph of it, I’d really liked to have seen it closed with the face hugger wrapped around it. The comic also corrects (without mentioning it’s a correction) its previous error of stating Aliens wasn’t filmed in widescreen and I really laughed out loud when I got to the end. I hadn’t paid attention to the photo so hadn’t realised who it is until I read the question!
The 8-page first part of Renegade is written by Chris Claremont (Batman Black and White, Gen13, Wolverine), drawn by Vince Giarrano (Haywire, Terminator: Enemy Within, Manhunter), lettered by Tom Orzechowski (Thor, Ghost in the Shell, Spawn) and coloured by Greg Wright (Deathlok, Ghost Rider, The Punisher) and is taken from the American Dark Horse Comics anthology. It’s a prequel to Deadliest of the Species, a new Aliens/Predator crossover story. This is actually a little bit of Aliens history right here. Because it doesn’t feature any aliens, characters or names from the films this has remained the property of the writer and artist so it’s never been reprinted or collected since.
On a planet rich in resources lives Caleb Deschanel and his daughter, and along with Ash Parnall they’ve built a community at one with nature and it’s making a profit. In lands Commander Javier Milan and EO Moira Delgado of the Descartes Indigenous Self-Defence Forces, protectors of the natural resources, according to them. Their motto is “Unexploited resources are wasted resources”, so defending the planet means exploiting it. The broad smiles and flirting is accompanied with straight-to-the-point statements; they must stand aside or face elimination. The fact the force’s spaceship is called Ransome is a bit on-the-nose.
Caleb is ill and frail and asks Ash to deal with this given her history, whatever that is. In fact, during a conversation Javier asks her how she knows so much about military weaponry and tactics and her response is just as mysterious as this strip; she had a misspent youth and they’ve a well-stocked library. This is the second strip of the issue and the second one with no aliens. A bold move or a poor decision? Truth be told, they’ve both been interesting to read so I’ve no complaints in taking a breather for more character moments.
In the concluding half of Cargo, writer Dan Jolley and artist John Nadeau continue to play to their strengths with a superb atmosphere, even if there’s a key part of the plot that doesn’t make sense. Surely even a criminal such as Vasco wouldn’t endanger the entire planet by importing an unsecured alien just for a bit of revenge? The fact it all happens on an abandoned cargo ship far out at sea doesn’t excuse things, it would eventually run aground or be found. But that atmosphere is palpable, so let’s just go with it.
Having Gerald as the lone human on a huge vessel with one alien has the makings of a truly terrifying tale, so it’s a shame this is a short 16-page strip in total with no time to build suspense. But that’s not where this falls foul, it’s in its overly simplistic ending which amounts to tricking the alien into the mag tube, filling it with water and then electrifying it. Now, that might not sound simplistic, but the fact it all happens in less than two pages makes Gerald’s escape seem very easy. A shame, as the tension in the build up was great.
Extra Terrestrial is a four-page feature written by Terry Jones detailing the cut scenes from Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie. Ridley has never released a director’s cut, he was very happy with the finished film, although he’s released an alternate cut with some scenes and moments replaced by others. The only scenes in this feature that really would’ve added anything new to the film are those above, which for obvious reasons (after the release of Aliens) can never be put back into the film. Ridley has said he never would because James Cameron did such an amazing job with the sequel’s explanation of the eggs.
Colonial Marines is our final strip for the month, coming in at a meatier 11 pages. On Bracken’s World the kelp beds are mysteriously disappearing across the planet and we see this lovely detailed opening of a colony hub on the agricultural world by Tony Akins, Paul Guinan and Matt Hollingsworth. Lt. Henry has explained the situation to the council but they’re angry with his team for upsetting their order, only half-believing him about the aliens.
Still, they demand he help but he can’t without orders, or at least that’s what he says. He’s playing something very close to his chest since the firefight last issue but even his sergeant can’t get it out of him. He won’t tell the council he can’t establish comms with HQ, and just tells his sergeant neither the council nor she need all the facts. This is out of character for him. All we know is that he saw “something” during the fight.
We get more questions than answers when he confronts Alphatech’s supposed “glorified accountant” Beliveau about the bug men having Alphatech weaponry. Aha! He’s convinced Beliveau is a bigger player than he’s been letting on, however Beliveau counters by asking why a new multi-million dollar synth prototype has been assigned to Henry’s babysitting team. Henry has no answers. Conspiracies abound. Intriguing.
Henry buys black market remote bombs and when asked by a different council member to help even though they can’t afford it (the capitalist future of the Alien universe in full effect), Henry says that they’re there until morning, they’ll help until then. This is an interesting, suspenseful and now a mysterious story with great characters and it’s back to full strength after getting lost in a sea of too many characters at once and overblown fight scenes.
There are some moments that hint at aliens attacking ships but otherwise this is again alien-free, concentrating solely on the humans involved in fighting them. So that means three of the four strips have no visible aliens in them whatsoever. In an Aliens comic. You know what? I didn’t even notice until I went back over the issue to make notes for this review. The Alien universe has always been about more than just the xenomorphs, as the brilliant Alien Earth has been expertly proving.
On the letter’s page there’s a brief mention of a new RoboCop comic in the new year, beginning with an adaptation of the upcoming third movie. It would never appear, what with DHI going out of business a few short months later. Marvel UK had also announced a RoboCop fortnightly in the pages of Transformers back in 1990 but that never happened either. He’d eventually pop up on these shores in the pages of Havoc. However, definitely coming next month is a cover drawn by and a strip written by the legendary comics star (and one-time OiNK contributor) Dave Gibbons.
It may have been released a month too early for the Christmas-inspired cover but #18 of Aliens has been a delightful surprise. The fact the stories didn’t need much in the way of alien action for the issue to be compulsive reading (their presence always felt) has ironically made it a highlight of the run so far. I’m intrigued to see what we have in store when the first post-holidays issue hits the blog before the Big Day on Tuesday 23rd December 2025.
This week back in 1990 the editorial in Marvel UK’s Transformers announced the exciting news that Death’s Head was finally back. Not in a reprint of a previous story (something they still liked to hype) but a brand new graphic novel. In reality it collected together his run from Strip comic, and this is the final piece of the jigsaw for the blog’s real time read through of the original incarnation of the character.
Coming in at 68 pages including a card cover, inside is all glossy and beautiful, the paper upgrade allowing artist Geoff Senior (who co-created the character for the Transformers but only drew one of the monthly issues) to return to the character in style and bring us a new level of colouring. Helen Stone (The Sleeze Brothers, The Real Ghostbusters, Knights of Pendragon) joins the team as letterer, Steve White (Xenozoic Tales, Rogue Trooper, The Lost World Jurassic Park) returns to edit and of course it’s all written by co-creator Simon Furman (Transformers, To the Death, Doctor Who), with Geoff (Hell’s Angel, Dragon’s Claws, Judge Dredd) and Walt Simonson (The Star Slammers, Jurassic Park, Thor) teaming up on the cover.
We begin in a strange land that apparently doesn’t adhere to time or meaning, with someone being tracked down and killed, the perpetrator only seen from one angle, their arm looking suspiciously like Death’s Head’s original design from Transformers and Doctor Who. Then it’s back to 2020, where he ended up at the end of his comic’s run and an electrifying chase as the Freelance Peacekeeping Agent hunts down his latest bounty and it’s full of all the usual quips and comedy action.
Rogan accuses Death’s Head of enjoying the chase and this really gets into his head. As he runs he questions himself. Is he really enjoying the hunt more than the profit? At the end he believes Rogan is about to take a woman hostage so he kills him, but he was running to her apartment for safety. She’s his partner and she screams that Death’s Head ran him down like it was sport. He walks away, solemn, trying hard to convince himself that she’s wrong.
Initially I thought this wasn’t going to feature Spratt but suddenly we’re back in 8162 and he’s meeting with his boss’ mysterious love who was hinted at in the monthly. (He doesn’t look like Spratt at all though.) It’s good to see the vulture is still on the team too. So apparently the not-a-bounty hunter is her husband and she has “vengelust” for him. Big Shot is also back and just as angry as ever. Spratt tries to escape, so Nightweaver reads his mind and finds out her love has time travelled. All the while in some void-like world the lookalike looks on. So far, so intriguing.
As in the comic the year 2020 looks just as futuristic as thousands of years into the future and given what actually happened in the world in 2020 maybe this version would’ve been preferred. I don’t want to ruin any possible future you may have in reading this graphic novel, so I must warn you this review will obviously contain spoilers. It should go without saying by this stage, this blog is all about classic comics, but more than any of the monthly stories the shocks and surprises in this are an integral part of the plot and thus the reading experience. To tell you about them would be to ruin the experience for you if you intend to read this one day. So consider yourself warned.
My favourite parts always involve our lead character and his quips, his inner thoughts and biting humour. Such as the moment above. He ends up flashing back and forth between the real world and the void and slowly the identity of the lookalike reveals himself. However, surprisingly this is seen in flashback form inside our anti-hero’s mind. He begins to question his own origin, something he’s never done until now. The same goes for the reader, but I’ll get to that below as it’s the only real bone of contention I have with this.
It doesn’t stop the rest of this graphic novel from being highly enjoyable. For example, despite Death’s Head initially being joyful that Spratt wasn’t there, the banter between the two during action scenes is better than ever. I think he secretly loves it! Or how about another scene when he realises he hadn’t previously defeated Big Shot and he strops like a child, proclaiming it’s unfair while having the huffiest of faces his angular jawline will allow. Then things take a turn when Big Shot says all bounty hunters are the same, that they all enjoy their work. Following up from earlier in the story, this leads us to the main event, the creation of Death’s Head.
Meet Lupex. He’s the fella in the void universe who bares a striking resemblance to the star of the piece and whose catchphrase is also somewhat familiar. He’s a warlord and Nightweaver, known here as Pyra, was his wife; a woman who wanted all the power he had but who was in love with another. Lupex possessed bodies to survive and did so with her lover’s body out of spite. He was also creating a robotic form for himself so he could live forever without the need of new flesh.
But in an act of revenge Pyra finished programming the robot and made him autonomous with a mind and soul of his own. Not just any mind, a business-like mind, a clinical assassin whose only goal was to do the job and get paid. The opposite of Lupex. She thought this would create the only one who could go up against her husband (whose love of killing drove him). It’s a hell of a story but I’m not sure if it fits within the Death’s Head comic for me. It feels too mythical. Then again, he did fight Unicron, the God of Chaoson the astral plane so maybe it’s just that I’m used to the more grounded stories of the monthly by now.
What definitely doesn’t gel for me is the retconning. Don’t get me wrong, I like stories that add to previous ones, that surprise us and take things in new directions or give us previously unknown facts to completely redefine characters and settings. But what I don’t like is when this completely contradicts what went before, and we’d already been told by Death’s Head himself he was created as the plaything of a very rich, very bored individual who he later killed.
However we are told here that his body was subsequently stolen by an unknown party so there’s always a chance the previous origin could be woven in, in the time before his first appearance in Transformers. Did Simon intended to do so or was this was replacing what went before? I’ve convinced myself it’s the former because the rest of this book is so much fun, so full of superb action, great character moments and lots of laugh-out-loud moments that it really is classic Death’s Head.
The story culminates in a chase echoing that from the beginning, only with Death’s Head as the one being chased and taunted. This creature also has control over the land in this realm, which is split into ‘magik’ and ‘techno’ sectors. In each he can realign his powers to shape the ground and use it to attack his victims, and he almost destroys Death’s Head by doing so. However, he cannot control the borders between these sectors or when they change from one to the other independently.
We see Death’s Head almost enjoying each successful escape, leading him to question himself again. That is, until he remembers his one true love. No, not Pyra. He remembers how much he loves money! This is enough to refocus him, and I’ll admit I had a little inward cheer and fist bump when this happened. It’s almost a spoof of scenes in superhero comics when doubts are washed away and the hero emerges ready for battle after thinking about the reasons they’re fighting, their cause for good. Here, the cause is cash.
In the end Death’s Head takes a gamble that Lupex doesn’t know he’d spent so long in 8162 (in his own comic and Dragon’s Claws) and as a result has become much more advanced as he repaired and added to his tech. In the end he’s playing the victim but in reality his computer systems are calculating where a magik zone is about to change into a techno one. We think the final blow is about to fall but Lupex unknowingly tries to use magik as the zone changes and it no longer works. The few seconds it takes him to correct his attack is just enough for our star to use his built-in hidden spike.
It’s a thrilling conclusion. It rockets along but never fails to hit the right character beats as it goes. Lupex feels like a genuine threat for the seemingly indestructible Death’s Head, all the while our hero (I’m just going to call him that from now on, I think he deserves it after all this) quips escalate the more desperate he gets, almost like he’s trying to use humour to keep himself going. After it’s all over he even begins to gloat, but he stops himself. He doesn’t want to end up like his father!
Even the vulture gets a funny moment alongside Spratt before Death’s Head gets to round everything off with his usual blasé attitude, despite the scale of the battle that’s just occurred. While I’m still in two minds over the retconning, the story told here is a fascinating one. If we hadn’t been told something different beforehand this would be faultless. In fact, it near enough is anyway!
What a fantastic send off for one of my very favourite comics characters. Apparently this first incarnation of Death’s Head appeared in Marvel US’ Fantastic Four #338 so I might track that down some day as an extra for the blog, but in the meantime it’s a very, very fond farewell to the greatest Freelance Peacekeeping Agent any world, any time or any universe has ever seen. What an ending! Kudos to all involved.
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