OiNK Blog

Comic Introductions, The Sleeze Brothers

THE SLEEZE BROTHERS: iN REAL TiME

8 March 2024 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

This advertisement seemed to take up permanent residence in many of the comics I collected at the time. Even though the first issue of The Sleeze Brothers wasn’t released until June 1989 this teaser saw print from the end of 1988 onwards, and since it appeared in weekly comics (for me in the pages of Transformers and The Real Ghostbusters) we saw it a lot!

With no information to go on apart from a ‘Blues Brothers’ feeling to it I remember eventually thinking, “Alright, enough! Just tell us what this is all about!”. However, it worked. At the end of June the aforementioned comics ran their regular Mighty Marvel Checklist and finally there it was, the big promotion in the range for that week was for the first issue of a comic I’d almost given up on ever appearing (like the William Tell fortnightly the year before).

As you can see it was always intended as a six-issue series, which the comic’s editor Richard Starkings confirmed when I spoke with him recently. What struck me the most as a kid were the two names mentioned in the credits, ‘Carnell’ and ‘Lanning’, namely writer John Carnell and artist Andy Lanning whose work I was loving on a regular basis in the Ghostbusters comic. I was sold and that week my pocket money went on the premiere issue.

I have a distinct memory of being in my Aunt May’s house (who I’ve mentioned before on the blog) and giggling away at the antics of El’ Ape and Deadbeat, the distinctly offbeat story, their awfulness at any form of actual detective work and the gorgeously drawn future world in which they lived. I’m really looking forward to rereading #1 for the first time since 1989. This cover is already bringing back some very happy memories.

At the time it confused me as to why it didn’t have the usual Marvel box in the top corner, but now I know better. Epic Comics was an imprint of Marvel, run by editor Archie Goodwin in the States before crossing over here. It began life as a creator-owned anthology comic called Epic Illustrated (a mini-series revival of which would star The Sleeze Brothers after their comic finished). Commissioned by Richard, The Sleeze Brothers were originally to be a Marvel series before Archie proposed keeping it creator-owned under Epic.

“The Sleeze Brothers was almost impossibly difficult to get approved,” Richard tells me. “All of those books (Dragon’s Claws and Death’s Head) were new territory for Marvel UK. I had launched The Real Ghostbusters very successfully and had earned a lot of trust with my bosses, Jenny O’Connor [Managing Editor] and Robert Sutherland [Managing Director], and all I wanted to do was original material, which was considered very expensive. Sleeze maybe sold 30-60,000 and considered a flop then. It would be a massive success today.”

As a child, The Sleeze Brothers was one of those comics I was destined to read only one issue of

A second comic strip advert (by John and Andy) was created closer to the release of the first issue. Below you can see it taken from the back cover of Death’s Head #5 from March 1989 (well before launch!), although I don’t remember seeing it in my own comics until I’d already got my hands on #1 for myself. These strip ads were a regular occurrence around this time, Richard learning from creating The Real Ghostbusters comic that they could tell a story in one page. We’ve already seen examples of these on the blog for Dragon’s Claws, Death’s Head, Transformers, Doctor Who Magazine and even Flintstones and Friends.

As a child, The Sleeze Brothers was one of those comics I was destined to read only one issue of. As I’ve mentioned before I was allowed a certain amount of comics on order at the newsagents at any one time, and my list was full. So the Brothers were purchased with pocket money and, like Death’s Head before them, I just never got around to buying any more, my money going on a huge variety of comics from week-to-week and I had a short attention span. Hey, I was young!

“Come on, it was a Blues Brothers rip-off!”
Richard Starkings, editor

El’ Ape and Deadbeat Sleeze are clearly modelled on Jake and Elwood from The Blues Brothers and just like the movie they have very distinct characteristics. El’ Ape is the short loudmouth, the forthright and in-charge brother of the investigative duo. He’s street smart, though somewhat lacking in any other form of smarts. The taller Deadbeat is the quieter brother who may not say an awful lot but who makes up for this with his ability to see things more logically.

Richard tells of a time when he wanted to reprint the series. “I wanted to recolour and reissue Sleeze through Image but then publisher Erik Larsen wasn’t interested. He thought it was a Blues Brothers rip-off. Which is was! Although Andy always protested that it was based on his cousins. Which it was! But come on, it was a Blues Brothers rip-off.”

The series ran for its originally proposed six monthly issues (although there was a larger gap between the fifth and sixth), one special and a back up strip in an issue of Richard’s Elephantmen. Thanks to our conversation I also found out there was a prologue. “We recoloured and re-lettered the prologue which was originally to run in Marvel Comics Presents as Death’s Head had previously,” says Richard. “But when Tom DeFalco [Marvel UK Editor-in-Chief] heard it had an Epic contract he nixed it, so I think it only ran in the trade.”

As you can see above I’ve now added said trade to my collection to round things off and we’re ready to go. As per usual I’m sticking with the format of this blog and reviewing each issue on the dates of their original releases. Online there doesn’t seem to be any consistency in those dates with most websites simply guessing from the months on the covers, but I’ve gone back to the source to find out for sure. I’ve flicked through all of the Transformers and The Real Ghostbusters comics from 1989 and checked all of the Mighty Marvel Checklists to ensure each issue is reviewed on the date lucky readers actually got their mitts on them.

But what about that Doctor Who Magazine popping its head above the collection there?

The only creator-owned characters to make the cover of Doctor Who Magazine according to Richard, The Sleeze Brothers made their debut in a strip called Follow That Tardis in #147, which you can see highlights of in the first Sleeze Brothers review on the OiNK Blog on Saturday 16th March 2024. I’ve had all the issues (apart from the trade) on my shelves for a few years now, since just before starting this blog in April 2021 in fact. It’s been a long, long wait but I never gave in to temptation.

So join me in eight days when the most insane Marvel UK series and the blog’s latest real time read through finally begins.

GO TO DOCTOR WHO MAGAZiNE 147

THE SLEEZE BROTHERS MENU

DEATH’S HEAD #5: KEEP CALM AND CARRiON

4 March 2024 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

This striking John Higgins (Transformers, Batman: The Killing Joke, Before Watchmen) cover welcomes us to the fifth issue and, after reading it, the midway point of Marvel UK’s Death’s Head. When I collected together this run of comics I noticed a lot of crossovers with other Marvel characters on the covers, especially in the later issues. No, I never read anything inside (just counted the pages to make sure it was all there), but the covers do reveal a lot of who is to come.

I remember thinking it seemed there were an awful lot of what would normally be seen as ‘event’ stories, perhaps to raise the profile of the comic with potential readers, however I was surprised to see this issue has the first non-Dragon’s Claws crossover character. Okay, so he’s a minor character from one Doctor Who strip but it was still a nice surprise to see the Doctor mentioned again after he was so instrumental in Death’s Head’s own story.

Keepsake appeared in #140 of Doctor Who Magazine (August 1988) when a distress signal lured him to a planet where he originally just wanted to salvage the crashed ship for parts. Instead, he ended up enjoying the actual rescue thanks to working with the Doctor and at the end of the story the Doctor left the rescued medic, Bahlia, in Keepsake’s care. This is where we pick things up.

Oh, and he has a pet vulture who reminds him of his wife.

John drew Keepsake’s DWM adventure and is also the artist for our strip this month, coloured by Nick Abadzis and lettered by Annie Halfacree. You’ll see even more of John’s work soon because he was one of five(!) artists when The Sleeze Brothers made their Doctor Who Magazine debut. Watch out for that later this month. Back to the issue at hand and speaking of Keepsake’s wife it looks like she’s hiring a certain Freelance Peace-Keeping Agent to track him down, promising a somewhat large reward too.

Not that Death’s Head is easily swayed, of course. Meanwhile, Keepsake is meeting with gangsters looking for the second half of a map to the aforementioned gold shipment. Editor Richard Starkings told me, “‘Half the map’ was my idea, as was ‘half the gold’ in Death’s Head #5. Never waste a good gag.” Keepsake doesn’t come across as the smartest of scavengers and is easily double-crossed, so the men make off with both halves of said map.

Death’s Head is very much the lighter-hearted comic of the pair, while Dragon’s Claws can be much darker

After reading the penultimate issue of Dragon’s Claws the contrast between the two titles has never been clearer. Despite being created and written by the same person, and despite the fact this comic has the word “Death” in its title and follows someone whose job it is to kill people, Death’s Head is very much the lighter-hearted comic of the pair, while the one about a game team gone rogue can be much darker. Not what people may expect, and I’m here for it!

Case in point below, as we get a lot of exposition from Thea about how Colt (the gangster) and Keepsake had double-crossed each other in the past over this shipment (hence the two parts of the map) and a seemingly endless amount of further double-crosses involving Thea and her husband, leading to this point. Clearly, no one can be trusted. But it’s Death’s Head’s reaction to this intriguing story that made me laugh, never mind Keepsake’s pet sneakily sampling what they thought was Colt’s water.

With Keepsake easily cheated out of his piece of the map he sits about moping, making him an easy target for our Peace-Keeper, however first of all we get a funny interlude of some of the more rudimentary detective work our anti-hero has to do in order to find his targets. Remembering this is the same mechanoid who helped take down the giant Lord of Chaos Unicron just makes this sequence all the funnier, especially the last two panels; the question mark, the hint at the top of the penultimate panel and the final reveal.

This seems to be a trend in the comic, at least for what makes me laugh the most. Take his name, his appearance and his occupation and you’d expect something completely different than the situations writer Simon Furman consistently places him in.

Death’s Head catches up with the sullen Keepsake and calls in Thea to meet him at the bar, where he’s trying his best to ‘persuade’ his target. Just before this Thea saw Colt kidnap Bahlia outside, clearly as protection against the salvage expert as they dive for the treasure out at sea. It looks like Keepsake’s pet wasn’t much use as protection either.

Our strange little threesome (Spratt is conspicuous by his absence this month, perhaps still recovering from his ordeal last time) soon track down the gangsters not far from the shore in a tiny boat, Bahlia tied up and a gun held on her. At this point I thought Death’s Head would be going alone to take on everyone involved but I was pleasantly surprised to see his plan involved all three of them. I was even more pleasantly surprised to see how well they worked together.

While the old trick of sending in the attractive woman to distract three male idiots wasn’t exactly new even in the 80s, for me the jokes come from how Death’s Head and Thea handle the men after that. There’s one particular guy who won’t be forgetting the impact Thea makes (literally) for quite some time, I’m sure. It’s the perfect example of the comedy-action this comic does best and there’s more to come that genuinely had me giggling.

The first two panels really did have me laughing, the sight of Death’s Head’s daring rescue coming so completely undone so quickly

As they make their way out on a boat to rescue Bahlia and recover the gold, Keepsake hovers overhead in his aircraft, ready to assist. But one previously concealed rocket launcher lends a sinking feeling to the first part of their plan. The first two panels below really did have me laughing, the sight of Death’s Head’s daring rescue coming so completely undone so quickly, and this image of what the notorious hunter of bounties (I didn’t said it!) is reduced to is hilarious.

He then uses thrusters in the soles of his feet to blast off and use his body as a different form of rocket launcher, although clearly the end result wasn’t quite his intention.

So far it’s been a comedy of errors but it’s swung generously in his favour. As the man on the boat desperately seals the hole with pieces of wood and some form of foam glue he doesn’t see Bahlia being hoisted to safety, taking all of the gold with her. Below the surface Death’s Head subdues the remaining divers before taking off again with his feet… right through the patched up hole. So far, so funny, but the page below contains something which didn’t sit quite right with me.

Death’s Head has always honoured his contracts. This was the first of the rules he established in #1, rules he always abides by. They’re part of what makes him and his stories so interesting. Think about when he was fighting Dragon in #2 even though he respected the man. He kept fighting until the exact second his contract with the villain of the story ran out and then he just stopped. That was such a great part of that story and told us a lot about his character (this aspect had already been well established in Transformers). But here a quick whisper in his ear from Keepsake and he chucks his client out the side.

After this, Death’s Head then double-crosses Keepsake and ends up with all the gold himself. That I can live with since Keepsake was a snake and not his client, but Leah was. Even though he didn’t like her, this is so out of character that it undermines things already established in earlier issues. It’s a strange inclusion, that’s for sure.

Again, the cliffhanger is underwhelming as we see a group of apparent mercenaries called Sudden Impact being introduced and recalled from a firefight for “a vitally urgent job”. Last month’s final page introduced another man with a gun called Big Shot but there’s no sign of him this month. Are all of these clichéd, hyper-muscled alpha males going to team up against Death’s Head? I trust Simon’s writing but so far I’m not particularly impressed with these potential adversaries.

So another brilliant issue, even if it was let down a bit by the final couple of pages, but I won’t dwell on them. This feels almost like an interlude story of some kind, especially with the lack of Spratt. In an action-comedy comic series this one leaned more towards complete farce and I was fine with that (until the ending). Enjoyable but forgettable then. I still can’t wait for the next issue though. That’ll be right here on Monday 1st April 2024.

iSSUE FOUR < > iSSUE SiX

DEATH’S HEAD #4: DOG-GEDLY BRiLLiANT

4 February 2024 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

The front cover to this fourth issue of Death’s Head may be drawn by the familiar team of Bryan Hitch and Mark Farmer but inside Plague Dog is drawn by renowned Transformers artist Lee Sullivan (also Havoc (RoboCop), Doctor Who), with Annie Halfacree on letters, Nick Abadzis colouring and Simon Furman writing of course, with Richard Starkings editing. While I love Geoff Senior’s art being in every issue of Dragon’s Claws, I like the mixing of styles here.

Last month we saw Death’s Head’s new office wasn’t the perfect purchase Spratt seemed to think it was, having spent his new partner’s hard earned cash before he’d earned it. This issue sees that picked up and developed into two separate stories, one for each of our main characters. While our mechanoid anti-hero is hired by one gangster to hunt down and kill his rival’s pet mutt, Spratt comes face-to-face with it in their new property.

We kick things off with Death’s Head arriving at Jules ‘Kneecap’ Venici’s birthday party in his usual understated style. A huge birthday cake arrives but Venici has seen this movie before and fills it full of lead. Surprised at finding no one inside he still insists on killing whoever sent it because his own actions have made him look stupid. He then sits down to eat a slice, not noticing the highly conspicuous waiter in his latest in a long line of ridiculous wigs.

Predictably a huge shoot-out occurs between all of the gangsters and our lone hero, although even in this dire situation there’s time for some comedy. Elsewhere, Spratt is checking out their new digs and the lights are out. After we see a clawed hand swiping down in the darkness he lets out a blood-curdling scream and we’re led to believe the hand has made contact, until you read the following caption. Simon once again playing with our expectations.

I particularly like Spratt’s reaction to the sound effect of the plague dog, the alien monster used by Venici to take revenge out on those who wrong him. Last month we saw someone who looked like an undertaker sell the office to Spratt and in this issue we find out he is in fact called The Undertaker, a killer-for-hire whose method of assassination is somewhat gruesome.

But yes, that sound effect. We get all sorts of wording to describe sounds in our comics. Sometimes they’re downright bizarre to say the least. The fact Spratt correctly names this rather random sound effect is very funny and just shy of the character breaking the fourth wall and identifying he’s in a comic. It genuinely made me laugh. Back in the other half of the story, as the issue constantly flicks back and forth between the two scenes, Death’s Head is still at it even when cornered and out of ammunition.

Death by cocktail sausages! As a form of getting back at the bad guys it seems appropriate for this blog. Death’s Head isn’t the only one up against the odds, nothing to shoot with and having to use his ingenuity to get out of a tough scrape. As the rotten internals of the office building collapse around him, Spratt is trying desperately to escape but is hopelessly out of his depth.

In fact, the crumbling of the building saves him on more than one occasion, luck playing a huge part in keeping him alive. He could be learning a thing or two from his new boss though, or perhaps they’re just more suited than the mechanoid realises, because despite his fear (or perhaps because of it) he can’t help making quips.

Slipping out of his boot and shoving it into the monster’s mouth (complete with another joke) he makes a run outside and finds a car parked (well, hovering, it’s in the future after all). This is Spratt’s speciality. Quietly boosting cars is a particularly useful skill that Death’s Head needs him for. There’s a little bit of tension here as Spratt struggles to get inside, panicking as the plague dog bears down on him.

The engine doesn’t immediately kick in either and the tension rises further as the thing makes a leap for him and crashes through the rear window, clawing at the interior, getting closer and closer to Spratt until it finally places a claw on his shoulder. The escape vehicle now seems to have become a death trap. We know Spratt can’t die, but even if he takes off surely the thing’s head and arm are already inside so what can he do? Well…

Just like last month when an accidental slip of the hand by Spratt turned the tide of battle, here his mistake with the gears sends him rocketing backwards, squashing the monster against the building. Fuel tank ruptured, the dog roaring out to his “Foood!” as it starts to push the car off itself, Spratt characteristically can’t help but bask in his glorious victory, no matter how accidental.

The final spread of the issue sees The Undertaker making a phone call, apparently to activate the plague dog at its lair. So are we to assume he actually sold the lair to Spratt? His job also done, Death’s Head makes his way to the office and finds chaos has ensued, although Spratt seems somewhat subdued and not showing off for once. Of course, our mechanoid friend can always turn a situation around when money is concerned and our story ends.

On the next page a somewhat tacked on cliffhanger has The Undertaker hiring someone called Big Shot, a muscly man with a big gun. I can’t help but be a little underwhelmed with this after last month’s ending. Surely having a plague dog lying in wait was the more dramatic cliffhanger. I’m aware I haven’t read the next issue to see how good this guy is with his gun, but I feel this is a bit of a muted ending by comparison and the two should’ve been the other way around.

Head to Head is the comic’s new letters page and there’s an anonymous letter from my home city of Belfast. Although, if this person had actually read Death’s Head’s adventures in Transformers and properly understood them I don’t see how they could think he’s commonly seen as a full-blown villain. Not too sure who “Bob” is that the first letter is addressed to (Richard Starkings is the editor and Jenny O’Connor the Managing Editor) but there’s definitely a lot of high praise here and I agree with it all.

I just wish Lierne Elliot had been right when he said “seems we have a hit here”. Of course, it may have seemed that way at the time, especially since this was a comic based on a very popular character from another Marvel UK title, but alas the sales figures wouldn’t be good enough to make up for the cost of producing the comic, as Richard explained to me in the introductory post to this series.

But let’s not dwell on that, we’ve another six months of this to go!

On the back page is an advertisement for a new fortnightly Marvel comic that would never actually appear. The William Tell TV series was apparently shown on ITV, although I don’t ever remember seeing it advertised. There’s a chance it either wasn’t broadcast on Northern Ireland’s UTV or it didn’t last long before ITV pulled the plug, despite it running for three seasons of 72 30-minute episodes in France and elsewhere, where it was known as Crossbow.

I remember this comic advert alerting me to the TV series and yet I still never caught it in any TV listings magazines. Marvel’s confidence must’ve been knocked as the plan for a fortnightly changed to a Summer Special, an annual and a run of strips in the Marvel Bumper Comic, plus a collected graphic novel, the strips for all of these already created for the defunct fortnightly. This is why I think the show must’ve failed to pick up viewers here in the UK, as Marvel suddenly realised the audience wasn’t there for what they’d assumed was going to be a hit.

You just might see some of it on the blog at some point though, as the Bumper Comic is on the cards for the future, I just don’t know when yet, but you heard it hear first! (As if you’d hear it anywhere else.) For now, that’s us finished with another outing for Death’s Head… well, really more of an outing for Spratt this month. We return to Earth of the far future on Monday 4th March 2024.

iSSUE THREE < > iSSUE FiVE

Comic Reviews, Dragon's Claws

DRAGON’S CLAWS #9: OOH, MATRON!

4 February 2024 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Last month there was a feeling this fantastic comic was shifting gears towards a suddenly imposed ending, which with hindsight we know is coming in #10. At the very end of this penultimate issue of Dragon’s Claws it feels like there’s a rush to finish it all off before the unfortunate cancellation. For the majority of the strip however this isn’t obvious and it’s another belter of a chapter with these sadly short-lived characters.

The issue’s FastFax, normally a way of adding depth to the world in which the comic resides or hinting about future storylines or guest characters, is a more straightforward ‘Story So Far’ page like we’d get in other comics. While the fictional news service would obviously focus on the events in N.U.R.S.E.’s headquarters, it adds to the feeling of the title wrapping things up, when I was so used to this page being used as a way of looking forward. A sad reminder the end is nearly here.

The strip itself is called Treatment and the main focus is Matron’s capture of both Dragon and The Evil Dead’s leader Slaughterhouse. All three of them are linked up to a mind control machine Matron uses as a way of accessing their memories, then torturing them with those same memories. Yes, it’d be much easier to just kill them both and she mentions this at one point, but like all the best James Bond villains she wants to have her fun first.

She’s completely confident in her success and feels the destruction of both teams and the deaths of Deller and Golding are inevitable, so she wants to drag it out and savour it as much as possible. Despite an underwhelming cliffhanger involving Matron last month, the character is superbly written by Simon Furman here, her psychotic nature making me wish we’d seen more of her all along.

We get to see inside the minds of both team leaders, with Dragon being made to watch as his wife Tanya and son Michael confront him before being killed by Deller, which as we know didn’t happen despite Matron’s orders. In fact, I’m assuming their arc will be the final part of the story to get wrapped up next time. In a particularly dark and shocking scene Deller shoots and kills the young boy! We see the shot and then his dead body on the ground in the next panel!

It’s all rather harrowing for a Marvel UK title young Transformers fans may have been collecting after it was heavily promoted in that comic. Outside of his mind we see Dragon curled up and crying desperately, his own insecurities around the ones he loves leading to that scene playing out in his mind, Matron merely triggering them rather than forcing the scenario. At this point I was intrigued as to what resided in Slaughterhouse’s mind!

But first we head back down the building to catch up with the rest of the characters. Matron has seen on her screens that Stenson is dead, The Evil Dead and Dragon’s Claws are about to decimate each other’s ranks and World Development Council ambassador Golding and Deller are trapped in a burning room dozens of floors up from the ground. No wonder she’s confident.

For the unlikely pairing of Golding and Deller there’s only one option for escape, and that’s out the window and back in again to a different room. There’s a pole sticking out from the building which Deller can use to swing out and back in again through another window, then break down the locked door to get Golding out. But first he must overcome his fear of heights!

This is something that hasn’t cropped up before simply because the story has never put him in such a position. It adds drama to a sequence that plays out over a few pages scattered throughout the rest of the issue. In fact, we come back a few pages later to see he’s frozen to the spot and it’s Golding who encourages him to take the leap, to believe in himself after all the humiliation he’s faced in previous issues (albeit by screaming at him).

There’s a definite theme this issue of people from all sorts of backgrounds and from completely different sides coming together to fight a greater enemy. An enemy that’s using them all, that’s creating division and fomenting hatred to turn the populace against each other for their own selfish needs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Dragon’s Claws could easily be released today and be just as relevant, if not more so than it was in the 80s.

Death Nell and Steel’s romantic history gives the story an opening to bring the two teams together to launch a united frontal assault on the upper floors of the building where the majority of security has amassed to protect Matron. As a reader you know it’s coming, even as the opposing sides continue to fight, Mercy in particular sticking the boot in. (Boom, boom!)

On a side note, I was surprised to read Nell saying, “Wise Up!” because as far as my friends and I were concerned this was always a Northern Ireland phrase. Indeed, when I used it myself in Scotland with some friends there in my teenage years it completely confused them. Perhaps we were wrong, but most likely it’s just a coincidence and wasn’t known to be a popular phrase in this part of the UK.

It’s at this point we finally get a look into the mind of Slaughterhouse. I was really looking forward to this and Simon doesn’t disappoint. His memories start off hard with an abusive father hitting him with a baseball bat because Slaughterhouse’s own mum died during child birth. Damn, this goes dark. This was enough to lead him to a life of crime, then once captured the corrupt government experimented on him in return for reducing his sentence.

The side effects included his pointed teeth, his skin colour and blood red eyes and Slaughterhouse, who was very much the victim of his life’s circumstances, couldn’t handle it and he turned on the whole world, the world that had beaten him down so cruelly time and again. But his mind was lost by this stage and he began killing people, seeing everyone as an imaginary enemy, and within just a couple of pages Slaughterhouse’s entire origin story is told.

“We do this my way!”
“The weak way… the stupid way!”
“Let’s just kill ’em!”
“Try it, curly!”
Dragon’s Claws and The Evil Dead

We can only guess if it would’ve been told at this stage (or so quickly) had the comic not been cancelled but somehow it doesn’t feel rushed. In fact, it just makes me lament the fact we can’t see more character development for him now that we (and Dragon) know the truth. The whole chapter is a great piece for both leads. Dragon’s own insecurities while leading his team and in his position in the world could’ve made for a wonderfully deep character too.

As the Claws and The Evil Dead make an uneasy alliance to take down N.U.R.S.E. and rescue their respective leaders, the two men’s minds are thrown into a climactic final battle, one which Matron fully expects will mentally tear them apart, leaving them gibbering wrecks and essentially dead. But she hasn’t reckoned on the power of said minds. Dragon slowly realises he’s in his old Game uniform and tries to convince Slaughterhouse it’s all fake.

He does so through reasoning. Yes, they’re physically fighting of course, we have to have our action in an action comic, but they come to realise they’re flip sides of the same coin, that they both do what they do because they believe in it, they’ve both been manipulated into becoming what they are and they agree giving in now would be the easy way out. But they don’t do easy. For once the hardest thing to do isn’t to fight each other, it’s to work together and they turn their minds on Matron’s.

They start to take her mind down in another physical battle but we’re inside her thoughts now so she’s all-powerful and the two men have to fight side-by-side if they’re to survive. Dragon only wants her beaten, so she can face justice for her crimes in the real world, but Slaughterhouse can’t stop himself. His thirst for revenge is too much and inside the mind machine he slits her throat just as Nell does so to her physical body.

It’s a shock ending but then it all kind of deflates on the next page, the final one of the strip. In just five panels we get a lot of exposition and explanations about what takes place next instead of actually seeing anything. The Evil Dead are let go, Dragon knowing they could never work together, Deller is somewhat redeemed in his own eyes, the team decide what they’re going to do now their employer is no more… a lot happens ‘off-screen’, dealt with through a very quick conversation between the team.

I understand the next issue is the last and it’ll most likely wrap things up for the Dragon family’s arc, but so many other important story arcs just seem discarded far too easily, like one of those final scenes you’d see at the end of an old 80s cartoon. To be clear, it’s only disappointing because of the quality of what came before, not just in this exciting chapter but in the whole run up to now.

The team should be incredibly proud of this chapter though. Writer Simon Furman, artist Geoff Senior, colourist Steve White and editor Richard Starkings are to be congratulated. What the final page lacks is what the other 21 pages do superbly, quickly wrapping up as much of the main story as possible without feeling rushed. Which is why page 24 feels so unlike what we’ve come to expect.

To round off this penultimate review is Digit’s fact-file and more interesting tidbits of information on Dragon’s teammate that would’ve been elaborated on in future issues. These include the fact he’s Scottish, a missing amount of time in his life and just how stable/unstable he actually is. I bet his lost memories would’ve made for some great stories. Instead, we must say goodbye. That’ll happen a little over a month from now. The final issue didn’t go on sale the same day as Death’s Head for the first time, instead it appeared a week later. So watch out for the review of #10 of Dragon’s Claws on Monday 11th March 2024.

iSSUE EiGHT < > iSSUE TEN

DEATH’S HEAD #3: DEADLY FUNNY

7 January 2024 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Alongside Dragon’s Claws #8 the first week of 1989 (and 2024) brought us the third issue of Death’s Head and, while the story inside may be light on plot, it’s aim is to establish the relationship between our mechanoid friend and Spratt. Spratt was the young fella who rebuilt the Freelance Peace-Keeping Agent in #1 after he was nearly destroyed by Dragon and his team, and it seems he’s determined to help Death’s Head navigate this era on Earth, as well as balance his books so he’s never left broke again.

We kick off with this scene setting display below. There’s nothing quite like a good old 80s dystopian future, is there? Mass consumerism, unhealthy food, sex and violence may seem like a clichéd way of depicting the future but it was created in the late 80s and this style was very much in vogue, pencilled by Bryan Hitch, inked by Dave Hine and lettered by Annie Halfacree. Even the basic way in which it’s coloured by Nick Abadzis adds to the overall feeling of grime in the Los Angeles Resettlement. (Resettled why?)

Tracking down a man for information on his target, Death’s Head follows him into a packed club where he uses non-lethal projectiles in the crowded space. Aimed with precision, they end up only affecting the one person. Whether this is because he didn’t want to harm innocents or because he only injures/kills those he’s paid to do so (see his rules in #1) is up to the reader to decide. Once outside for interrogation things take a turn for the worse.

The target grabs Spratt and Death’s Head instantly regrets letting the kid tag along. However, the man makes one big mistake. Spratt tries to tell him this, that he’s made a bad move and the man argues back that he can’t be killed while holding a hostage, so it’s clearly a good move. But this wasn’t what Spratt was referring to. No, in the heat of the moment the man had called our main character a bounty hunter! Oh dear. This leads on to this page below.

This is just the first of several laugh-out-loud moments in this issue and it’s clear writer Simon Furman intends to bring as much comedy as possible to this comic, certainly a lot more than in Dragon’s Claws anyway. They get the information they need but Death’s Head is warned he’ll be no match for his objective, a person named Ogrus, especially if he takes the kid along.

Death’s Head can’t help but agree. While he appreciates Spratt’s help in doing things he’d find difficult, like blending in or stealing a car for example, and he’s good at the accountancy stuff, he’s far too keen to impress and prove himself. As such, Death’s Head inwardly questions why he let him come along in the first place and we get a brilliant flashback to a transport vehicle skimming over the Atlantic Ocean a few days prior.

On board, a hostage situation had kicked off and in the end it was Spratt who had saved the day, albeit in an overly flamboyant way involving an automated rubbish cart, some acrobatics and a lot of showing off. However, what’s so funny about this scene to me is seeing Death’s Head, after everything he went through in Transformers, doing normal things like complaining about the food, or just sitting there watching the whole situation unfold with interest. Maybe it’s just me but I was giggling along to all of this.

There’s some hilarious chemistry between these two already and despite the title character’s protestations he still takes his new recruit to the rendezvous in a rough looking bar and casino. Now remember, this comic was created in the 1980s, the characters have just walked into a bar full of dodgy criminals, the main character is a no-nonsense individual looking for one certain person and has no interest in anyone else there. You know what this means, don’t you? Yup, that’s right, a massive bar brawl.

There are some knowing nods here to this sort of thing inexplicably breaking out in the movies of the day, when one or two punches from people in the foreground somehow leads to everyone in the background laying into each other. Here, it begins with Death’s Head taking out one person who had innocently said something to a dealer at the casino, knowing full well what it would cause, thus allowing him to simply walk up to his target in the middle of the chaos, unchallenged.

The little bits of dialogue on the second page make it feel almost like a spoof of those movie scenes, especially the one about someone’s mother. Outside, Spratt has been ordered to stay in the car he stole (that was graciously received by the Peace-Keeping Agent), but Spratt knows Death’s Head will be outnumbered and can’t help throwing himself in to help. Crashing the vehicle through the casino wall and shouting at everyone to freeze, his diminutive frame leads to nothing but uproariuous laughter. He’s not down and out yet though.

Climbing into a position above Death’s Head’s fight with the mark he questions whether he should get involved or not, tossing a coin to decide. By now it should be clear to the reader that anything Spratt sets out to do will not normally have the intended outcome. Here, he can’t even make the decision to get involved or not without something happening, albeit this time it’s one that distracts Ogrus enough for Death’s Head to start turning the tide of the fight he was clearly losing.

A quick gag or two from the mechanoid and he’s back on top again and a final one-two from the both of them together (Spratt jumping feet first into Orgus’ back as Death’s Head punches him in the stomach) and the battle is won, the contract complete. We close off this chapter’s main story with Spratt joyous that he actually helped and some reluctant praise is even thrown his way.

The “Partners/Don’t push it” exchange perfectly sums up the strange working relationship these two seem to have. Spratt is all in and as far as he’s concerned they’re already partners, he’s just clamouring for confirmation and a rhetorical pat on the back, especially from someone of Death’s Head stature. The fact his apparent partner is so dead pan and doesn’t show emotion easily is just another challenge for Spratt, which makes him even keener.

Death’s Head on the other hand finds Spratt annoying. He gets in the way. He’s too keen. He even wants conversation! Death’s Head would rather continue to work on his own. But he can’t deny the kid has helped with his money problems and has been a good guide to this strange time in Earth’s future, both things he promised he’d help with. Plus, he can get into places inconspicuously, something Death’s Head can’t do. Well, in theory Spratt can, but his wish to show off can hamper that somewhat.

It was only upon finishing it that I realised the plot was so simple, I’d just been swept along with these characters

As the duo walk off with their client’s trophy we turn the page and find ourselves “Elsewhere”. In that final panel above Spratt makes a throwaway comment that he’s managed to secure a new office (since Death’s Head’s previous one is thousands of years in the past), spending their money before they’d even earned it. Well it seems that’s where “Elsewhere” is.

Poor Spratt. His heart was in the right place, but not only has he spent Death’s Head’s reward money, it looks like even this good-intentioned gesture will come back to haunt him too. Poor kid can’t catch a break. Hopefully next month’s story will pick this mystery up as its main thread.

This third issue may be very light on plot but as I said above that wasn’t the point. The point was to establish this (very) unlikely pair as a working partnership. Having the plot as just another simple contract for Death’s Head and using this to show how enjoyable that can be with the two of them working side-by-side was a brilliant idea. It was only upon finishing it that I realised the actual plot was so simple, I’d just been swept along with these characters. I look forward to more sweeping on Sunday 4th February 2024.

iSSUE TWO < > iSSUE FOUR

Comic Reviews, Dragon's Claws

DRAGON’S CLAWS #8: BEGiNNiNG OF THE END?

7 January 2024 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Here we are at the beginning of 2024. Or should that be 1989? I took my Christmas decorations down yesterday (the 5th January is the 12th day as you know, and I like to enjoy that one final day with them), the snow on the blog’s logo has melted and it’s time to kick off the New Year with something not very new at all, the latest issues of Dragon’s Claws and Death’s Head, both available to buy today 35 years ago.

This striking yet funny cover has Slaughterhouse of The Evil Dead taking centre stage and inside they’re very much back in the thick of it. The Fastfax on the editorial page makes another mention of the Miami Bloodbath, this time linking it to this Game team (a dead ambulance crew in London has been killed with the same precision used in Miami). Cue Slaughterhouse and his new cohorts entering N.U.R.S.E. Central dressed as that crew has been described and accessing the upper managerial floors.

After losing three of his men in #2 to Dragon and his team, Slaughterhouse has recruited Hack, Rend and Slash who remind me somewhat of Hook, Link and Sinker, other creations of writer Simon Furman’s in Transformers. This isn’t the first (or indeed the second) time aspects of this comic seemed to contain a knowing nod towards that other title. Not much is made of these three, they’re really just here to make the numbers up, but Slaughterhouse and his true love, Death Nell play major roles this month and not just in administering a bit of chaos.

First we check in on the Dragon’s Claws HQ where Steel, Scavenger, Mercy and Digit are relaxing between missions (Scavenger fixing the hole created by a certain mechanoid in Death’s Head #2) and we find out Dragon himself has taken off after fielding a telephone call from the World Development Council’s Ambassador Golding, who we saw meeting Stenson and Deller last time in N.U.R.S.E. HQ.

Mercy is on top form after her recent run in with Scourge, her copycat from the previous two issues. It seems to have exorcised some ghosts for Mercy and she’s reinvigorated and ready for whatever lies ahead. However, what lies ahead is The Evil Dead. The team are called into action to stop their enemies from slaughtering everyone inside N.U.R.S.E. Even the shadowy Matron (seen above) is uneasy and soon we’re catching up with the people she’s trying to track down.

At the farm in Norwich Dragon is in need of restraining. Who could blame him after what happened with his family? Over a few pages here we get some surprising revelations and by the end of this chapter things seem to be heading towards a climax between the Claws and N.U.R.S.E. I can’t help but wonder if Simon knew the comic was going to be cancelled at this stage already or if this storyline, which I’d assumed would last a lot longer, was just the beginning of what he had in mind.

Geoff Senior’s art is powerful in these scenes combined with Steve White’s bold colours. I think the images he produced of an enraged Galvatron in Transformers are seared into my retinas. I’ll certainly never forget the impact they had on me. I can feel that same rage here in Dragon’s eyes, the powerful anger behind Golding’s and the desperation in Stenson’s. There’s no way you could read these few pages without the characters screaming at the top of their lungs in your head.

But even amongst all this tension there’s always a chance for a quick moment of levity, such is the craftsmanship of this comic’s writer and artist. When Stenson tries to threaten Dragon and Golding by telling them they’re out of their depth it backfires spectacularly, the ambassador seemingly suggesting if he doesn’t cooperate there’s nothing he can do to stop Dragon from killing him, to which Dragon responds by showing he’s more than up to the task.

It works, but you can see as Dragon walks away there’s a cheeky grin on his face. Despite not communicating their intentions with each other it’s clear the former Game player and Council ambassador are in sync with each other and want the same thing. It’s a surprising working relationship and fun to see it seemingly come out of nowhere here, these two men clearly working from the same page.

Meanwhile the rest of the team are taking on The Evil Dead to protect their employer. The three new recruits are making quite the impact but even amongst all the chaos Scavenger still has the ability to make light of things. He’s such a fun sadistic character. But it’s the match up between Steel and Death Nell, who we know from a previous issue used to be lovers, that really heats things up and I don’t mean that in the clichéd way.

We find out in this issue that N.U.R.S.E. is basically running a protection racket on all of the Game teams who were still playing when it was shut down, employing Dragon’s Claws as their enforcers and feeding them disinformation on their targets so they would think they were doing the right thing. This was hinted at when Dragon went up against The High Father in #3 and when another team was desperately worried about a non-payment to someone in #5.

As such, it’s a bit of a disappointment that this was the answer to the mystery all along. I’d guessed it months ago and so assumed it couldn’t be something as obvious, that it was misdirection. As a result I discounted the idea and was looking forward to finding out the complexities behind all of the mysteries. That’s not to say if the comic had continued it wouldn’t have kept developing the plot into something far bigger of course, but for now this seems to be it. Maybe the next couple of issues will prove me wrong.

After kissing him, Nell pleads with Steel to work with her like in the old days. She easily could’ve ripped out his throat with her jagged teeth during that kiss and so this has Steel questioning everything, asking himself if he should believe her and if they’re fighting the wrong people. The reader already knows he should be fighting N.U.R.S.E. but will we see a turn of fortunes for Nell in the remaining issues?

Matron starts cleaning house, eliminating her top managerial team in a Bond villain-esque way before moving on to a much more dangerous target. After containing Golding and Deller in a flaming death trap room, Stenson is the first of our main characters to die as he escapes only to unknowingly step into the same room as Slaughterhouse. However, only seconds later Dragon finds Slaughterhouse unconscious and barely alive on the floor before a voice in the darkness tells him they’re delighted to have the two of them “to play with now”.

Then we turn to the final page.

Okay, look, I know this is meant to be a shocking ending with the reveal of who Matron is but Dragon’s exclamation seems a bit over-the-top. With a name like ‘Matron’ and the glimpses we’ve seen I was expecting a woman in some form of nurse’s outfit (especially with the name of the company she runs) and if Dragon stood up her size isn’t really an issue either. Maybe in the 80s, when times were different this would’ve made an impact but nowadays she looks a bit like a lovely former manager of mine, her facial expression even matching the one my previous boss would pull when telling a particularly rude joke.

As a result, for me personally it’s hard to judge how this would’ve been received by readers at the time. As it stands it’s the first story moment in eight issues when I’ve been left a little disappointed so I can’t complain really. On the opposite page sits Steel’s fact-file with information on his father belonging to the Yakuza so apparently they’re still around thousands of years into the future.

It’s not confirmed here if Steel’s (or rather Ikeda’s) dad was killed so I’m assuming this could be yet another little breadcrumb of possible future storylines if the comic had been a success. Sadly we just won’t know. The letters page is conspicuous by its absence this issue. Not enough coming in? Or perhaps the comic’s cancellation gave them pause in answering questions about future stories?

Instead, two adverts and one of those Classifieds pages we saw all the time in Marvel UK comics make up the remainder of the comic. Marvel’s own promotion for three graphic novels isn’t the most inspired design but gets the point across and on the back page is an advert for a movie I’ve never heard of before, which is surprising given the director and that cast!

Just two issues of Dragon’s Claws remain and that makes me sad. Cliffhanger aside this has been a blast, although there’s a definite feeling of the pace very suddenly quickening and a lot of exposition happening. Only with hindsight does it feel like Simon is quickly trying to move the story towards a satisfying climax. At the time I don’t think anyone would’ve guessed that.

If I’m right then at least that means we should get more answers and hopefully a nice conclusion for most of our characters over the next couple of months. Perhaps some threads planted in earlier issues won’t get elaborated on but if the main ones get tied up instead of the story just suddenly stopping (like we saw with Havoc) then I’ll be very happy, I’m sure. The penultimate review will be here on Sunday 4th February 2024.

iSSUE SEVEN < > iSSUE NiNE

DEATH’S HEAD 2: KiLLER COMEDY

3 December 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

Well this is a turn up for the books, isn’t it? Previously guest starring in Dragon’s Claws #5 and being reconstructed beneath The ‘Pool of Greater Britain in 8162, where he’d been exiled by The Doctor when he bumped into him in the corridors of time, after disappearing from The Planet of Junk in 2007 where he helped the Autobots defeat the Chaos Bringer god Unicron (do keep up), ol’ Death’s Head is now the one welcoming the special guest stars to his own comic

You see, he’s been rebuilt by a Game team looking for revenge on Scavenger of Dragon’s Claws and as always business comes first, so up he pops in as characteristic a manner as ever. First though, don’t forget to subscribe to 12 issues of the comic that would only last for ten. Obviously Marvel UK had much bigger plans for their smaller US-sized comics. A sad reminder of that to kick things off with.

Alongside writer Simon Furman, penciller Bryan Hitch, letterer Annie Halfacree, colourist Nick Abadzis and editor Richard Starkings comes inker Dave Hine (Spawn, The Joker’s Asylum, Will Eisner’s The Spirit), who brings a completely different feel to proceedings, especially to any human characters who seem to emote more and have a rougher, harder edge to them. I approve. I still much prefer the original design of Death’s Head from Transformers though.

So the Freelance Peace-Keeping Agent has been sent to round up Scavenger rather than kill him, and deliver him to the Game team. The first half-dozen pages consist of their back and forth battle involving anything that comes to hand for Scavenger, including Scratch the dog! As ever, Death’s Head keeps his cool and even has time for the occasional quip before he finally overcomes his target.

When the rest of the team show up Dragon spots an “old friend” and they recover Scratch who leads them out into the wastelands towards the Chaney Maximum Security Prison, where criminals the World Development Council wanted to forget were sent. So forgotten were they that when an earthquake destroyed the prison the authorities didn’t attempt any rescue and just assumed all of those within had perished. They were wrong.

At this point we get a little insight into the past of Dragon and Scavenger, specifically how they first met. This was exciting to begin with for me as Scavenger is a favourite character and one I’d like to know more about, but I didn’t think we’d get the chance given the comic’s short lifespan. In the end though it’s pretty inconsequential, Dragon having his life saved seven years previous at the last moment by a silent Game player who disappeared just as quickly afterwards, Dragon vowing inwardly he’d recruit the stranger to the Claws next time they met.

Still, it’s interesting to have a flashback for these characters in this comic instead of their own. Death’s Head finds himself conflicted at this point. The Chain Gang had become agoraphobic from living underground for so long and they’d used Scavenger, a relatively new prisoner at the time, as their gopher to go and fetch food and supplies, tying an explosive device to his leg so he’d have to return. Eventually earning their trust, as soon as they removed the device Scavenger had legged it, and now the team has reconstructed the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter (their words!) to recapture he who had betrayed them.

Death’s Head knows he’d have done exactly the same thing in Scavenger’s case, but money is money and a contract is a contract. However, such distaste does he have for this situation he’s set a timer counting down to the very second said contract expires. It’s at this point, while he’s lamenting his situation, that he meets the technical whizz who recreated him from his scrap parts, and co-star of the strip advert for the comic, Spratt.

Of course we know from the marketing that Spratt will end up working with Death’s Head so it’s interesting to see how this relationship starts. Spratt is basically brushed aside, despite his obvious intelligence and technical abilities. The “eyes on the back of my head” line will come back to haunt our anti-hero before this issue is over, but at this point in the story there’s no indication of how they’ll end up together. I like the build up.

Scavenger’s teammates then turn up and basically all hell breaks loose. As you’d expect, really. But that doesn’t mean the humour has been forgotten about, not even for one page, as Steel finds out in a rather painful way. With the clock counting down on his wrist, Death’s Head even surprises himself with what he’s thinking while he fights.

He finds himself respecting Dragon, something that simply hasn’t happened with a human before. Not that he takes it easy on him of course. Nope, he’s still under contract for another nine seconds and will continue to fight just as hard until that time runs out. Meanwhile, the leader of The Chain Gang, Fox, chases Scavenger through the crumbling prison. However, his wish to kill clouds his judgement and he doesn’t realise that Scavenger isn’t really running away from him.

He’s being deliberately led somewhere but his prey is very convincingly playing the desperate victim, right up until he jumps on Fox, wrapping his whole body around his head and obscuring his vision. It’s all been a ruse and suddenly Fox finds himself in the most terrifying of places. It’s not the prison itself nor the earthquake damaged cells ready to collapse and kill everyone at any moment. No, now he finds himself outside.

Inside, our two title characters are still fighting and Dragon is taking quite a bit of punishment when, with his spiked metal ball raised to come down hard on Dragon’s head, Death’s Head checks his wrist and just stops. Walking away, he apologises for the fight lasting longer than it should’ve and blames his timer for running slow!

It really is the only way this fight could’ve ended; neither of these two could actually win anymore, they’re heroes of their own comics after all. In fact, as the authorities arrive to clean up and arrest The Chain Gang, Dragon looks up and sees Death’s Head looking down from a hill nearby… and waves. This sight of mutual respect has me wishing both these comics had lasted longer because I would’ve loved to have seen these two slowly become friends and even work together at some point.

As for the story itself, Scavenger insists Fox is treated with leniency as he was just looking out for the community he cared for but had just gone about it the wrong way. It all ends with Spratt being the first person to ever sneak up on Death’s Head, and probably the first to offer to be his partner. After all, the mechanoid is from a different time and doesn’t know this world, so Spratt offers to help him with that while handling the business side of things. He’s a free man now and knows a good thing when he sees it. Death’s Head refuses and walks off… then the chapter ends with Spratt following anyway and continuing to talk about his proposition. To which Death’s Head merely sighs. And the reader laughs.

A couple of Marvel UK adverts round off the issue. The first is for Dragon’s Claws and uses the excellent Dave Gibbons cover from the current issue, while the other advert is somewhat more cryptic. For a comic that wouldn’t even turn up until June of the following year, six months hence, Marvel UK were certainly playing the long game here.

I remember this particular promo appearing in The Real Ghostbusters and Transformers comics week after week, month after month. Even at that young age I began thinking, “Enough already, just tell us more!” The Sleeze Brothers, namely El Ape and Deadbeat would follow Death’s Head into the pages of Doctor Who Magazine first but that wouldn’t even be until March. I guess you’ll just have to wait until then to find out more… because yes, The Sleeze Brothers will be joining the OiNK Blog in 2024.

For just the second time we come to the end of an issue of Death’s Head and I really like the fact all of the pieces have taken a couple of issues to put in place. Actually, I’m looking forward to seeing how Death’s Head’s and Spratt’s partnership works out, so I suppose everything isn’t quite set yet. While this and Dragon’s Claws are very natural sister publications, this one is definitely a lot funnier and lighter, despite its title character’s name and job! Great fun so far. The next review will be after the festive season (right after it in fact) so come back to kick off the New Year in style on Sunday 7th January 2024.

FOR DEATH’S HEAD:

iSSUE ONE < > iSSUE THREE

FOR DRAGON’S CLAWS:

iSSUE SEVEN < > iSSUE EiGHT

CHRiSTMAS 2023

Comic Reviews, Dragon's Claws

DRAGON’S CLAWS #7: NO MERCY!

3 December 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

As I mentioned last month the cover for this issue of Dragon’s Claws caught my eye. Finally, I’ve been able to take a closer look at the first guest artist cover and it’s none other than Dave Gibbons. Dave’s work has featured on the blog before, namely in the hilarious Superhero’s Day Off in OiNK, written by Lew Stringer which lampooned the comics Dave would draw. This is a great Dragon’s Claws cover, but does the inside match up to this first impression?

The Fastfax catches us up on the secondary plot from last issue which spills over to become our main story this month, with Mercy stopping herself from falling to certain death by grabbing a power line, nearly dislocating her shoulder and ploughing through a barber shop window! The Fastfax sums up the whole “criminals who operate about the law” Knight Rider-esque vibe of the people she used to hunt and who her copycat is now killing.

We also get a quick introduction to the L.W.J., the League of World Justice which is investigating the World Development Council, the organisation behind The Game and the bosses of N.U.R.S.E. Will the LWJ prove to be just as corrupt in this future Earth of 8162? Will we find out more in the next three months?

For now, Mercy is not as down-and-out as we think as she springs back up to confront her copycat, Scourge.

Simon Furman is paying homage to the Marvel UK series that made him

Hmm, last month in Dragon’s fact-file a previous Claws member was called ’Megaton’ and now this lady is called Scourge. I don’t think these are coincidences somehow, so either writer Simon Furman can’t think of any new names or he’s paying homage to the Marvel UK series that made him, namely The Transformers. Clearly, I think it’s the latter.

Scourge is hunting a villain named Judden, a small, fat slimy guy who reminds me a bit of Penguin. He was cleared of all charges but Scourge is convinced the system is corrupt and that he bought his freedom. (Now we know the Fastfax was laying some groundwork.) Interestingly, it’s never revealed if he’s innocent or not. Perhaps it was to be picked up on in a later issue but his story isn’t the point here.

Scourge is very much a mirror image of Mercy before she accidentally killed an innocent woman and joined the Claws, now fighting from the right side of the law. Scourge even carries the same Black Dagger symbol Mercy used. Meanwhile, while assessing the mess at Dragon’s farm in Norwich, Stenson mentions someone called ‘Matron’ for the first time, giving the smallest of clues to the real boss.

Scavenger’s mutt also gets an easier name to roll off the tongue than ‘Lady Killer’. Scratch will end up playing an important role in this issue’s story, more important than any of the other male members of the team. Then a couple of pages later we catch a glimpse of this Matron person and how the all-important Stenson is really nothing more than another gopher, another cog in the machine.

It’s all very cloak and dagger and I hope we have time over the next three months to get some answers. Having the head of N.U.R.S.E. called ‘Matron’ and wearing what appears to be a nurse-like hat behind the shadows has me intrigued as to the real nature of this organisation. Obviously the Claws are key to her plans but what is this empire she’s built up? What is N.U.R.S.E. really? What do they control already?

Mercy easily tracks Scourge down to the roof of a shopping mall as she’s basically living Mercy’s earlier life. Knowing she’d need a place just like this to rest, recuperate and stash weapons, Mercy reveals she killed an innocent woman during her revenge spree, that she’d become a murderous menace just like those she was fighting against. But it falls on deaf ears as Scourge is just as entrenched in her vendetta as Mercy was.

Accusing Mercy of being brainwashed a fight ensues and once again our heroine finds herself falling off another tall building. At least this time the landing is much easier on her. Meanwhile, the “guest” referred to is Ambassador Golding of the W.D.C., who Dragon’s Claws rescued from a rebel group gone rogue in #4. Back then he got to speak to the group and Dragon promised him he had a lot more to find out.

It appears he’s done so. He tells Stenson while inspecting the Claws’ HQ that N.U.R.S.E.’s independence has come into question, that there are fears of the Game team being misused against their knowledge and he demands to meet Matron. Stenson objects but then Deller pops up for the first time after last issue’s shoot-out, ready and willing to be questioned. I’m finding all of this particularly fascinating but for now it’s just ticking over until it can be addressed further in an upcoming issue (I hope).

Back to the action and the object of Scourge’s revenge is having a night out at a club so the Claws are assigned to undercover protection detail, although Dragon’s more concerned about the whereabouts of Mercy and why she didn’t talk to the team about what’s going on. Distracted, they miss Scourge, who’s easily able to identify the team in their weak disguises and sets off the fire alarms with a smoke bomb.

Among the chaotic evacuation she grabs Mister Judden and takes him to a back corridor to force him to confess to some previous killings. Adamant that he’s innocent, Scourge doesn’t care, she wants a confession to justify what she’s about to do. As I said, we don’t find out if he’s innocent or not but that’s not the point, judgement has come first and the evidence will bend to it rather than the other way around.

After this page comes my only disappointment with this chapter when the final confrontation isn’t even seen! Although, story-wise, I can understand why the fight between Mercy and Scourge happens off-camera (as the phrase goes) it still feels like an anti-climax. The Claws come to her rescue to find Judden saved but Scourge lying dead. Mercy just tells Dragon she’s faced some of her own demons that day and walks off. As she leaves a confused Dragon turns to Steel who simply says, “There but for the grace of God”, pointing out how Mercy could’ve shot to wound.

Mercy’s fact-file essentially ruins all of the drama surrounding the character

A cliffhanger involving the return of a newly assembled Evil Dead takes second place to this temporary (I hope only temporary) end to Mercy’s development as the most interesting of the Dragon’s Claws team. It has expertly answered some questions and opened her up a bit while at the same time leaving plenty of mysteries (and adding new ones) to solve in the future. That is, until we come to the next page in the comic which somewhat ruins that brilliantly written ending.

Mercy is the star of this month’s fact-file and while it starts off with some interesting background, such as her father being of Irish descent and the tragic loss of her mother to cystic fibrosis, it goes into far too much of her own mysterious background which I’ve enjoyed being drip fed in these past two issues, essentially ruining all of the drama surrounding the character. In fact, by the time I finished this page it felt like there were no more mysteries to be discovered!

This feels like a very strange thing for the comic to do. Why give the game away for so much of her character in an extra page separate from the strip? Maybe as a kid I’d have enjoyed getting these insights but all I can think of now is that the intrigue is completely gone. Not through intelligent, enjoyable storytelling like the other characters either, but in a chunk of text instead. It’d also mean any graphic novel reprint would most likely leave readers unaware of these details. Strange, indeed.

On the letters page a reader asks how Digit ended up with a computer instead of a human brain and the answer given is that this will form the basis of a future storyline. Seems rather unfair on Mercy to be honest, unless of course a future Digit fact-file spoils this for us too. Anyway, not wishing to end on a sour note I’ll leave the final words to Mercy who got the whole back page to herself as a nice extra and tell you that the date for the review of Dragon’s Claws #8 will be Sunday 7th January 2024.

iSSUE SiX < > iSSUE EiGHT

CHRiSTMAS 2023

DEATH’S HEAD #1: BACK TO THE FUTURE

5 November 2023 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

This is an exciting one! I’ve only ever read this first issue of Death’s Head. As a kid I originally became acquainted with his time in Marvel UK’s Transformers a year later through reprints in the comic and my friend giving me his back issue collection. However, I’d seen some of the funny comic strip adverts in the likes of The Real Ghostbusters and my Transformers-loving friends raved about him, so I had to try it out. I loved him.

There was a problem though. I was only allowed a few comics on order at any one time and so there was no room for Death’s Head in my reservation list as far as my parents were concerned. I didn’t want to stop any of the others I had on order so instead I bought #1 with my own pocket money and thought I would do so every month. However, a month is a long time at that age, so when #2 came along I’d forgotten all about it and instead that week bought some other random comic with my pennies.

He did pop up in The Marvel Bumper Comic upon occasion but apart from that this was all I ever read beyond Transformers. I rediscovered this issue in my collection about a year later and was really disappointed to learn it was no longer being published and that I’d missed out. Thankfully I have a much better attention span these days so it’s time to correct my oversight. Even this opening spread of pages two and three brings back the memories of reading this on a day off sick from school and all the thrills and laughs it contained. Let’s see if they’re still there today.

One little niggle straight out the gate though. Those tours, often hyped up in the pages of Marvel’s comics, always irritated me as a kid because they never came to Northern Ireland. We were always ignored back then despite us buying their comics. But we’ll move on from that and this issue is made up of three flashbacks told from the perspective of the Freelance Peace-Keeping Agent, which split up scenes of his reconstruction after being almost destroyed by Dragon’s Claws in #5 of their comic (from last month, no longer on sale despite what Head Lines says).

Some interesting bits of information come from his inner thoughts throughout, such as him having an original programmer. This may be obvious to some, but seeing as how he originally came from the story universe of the Transformers I’d always assumed he didn’t have one and was instead a sentient being much along the same lines as the Cybertronians. Sentient he is, obviously, but did he have a human programmer? I think that might be what’s hinted at here, but he killed them anyway so that’s all we’re getting for now.

Why? Well it would appear he was created as a rich man’s plaything, but knew he was destined for more. However, beyond that things are kept a mystery which I enjoy. These flashbacks all see him in his original body and given the timeline of events he must still be in his original gigantic form. After battling Unicron on the Planet of Junk he was zapped through time where he literally bumped into The Doctor who shrank him to human size before being zapped through time again and meeting Dragon’s Claws. These stories are then set sometime before his final story with the Robots in Disguise.

So a Game team called The Chain Gang discovered his remains and resurrected him in order to carry out a contract on someone. The member of their team tasked with this is called Spratt, the same Spratt we’d see in adverts for the comic across other Marvel titles. His own background is also a mystery, all we know is he’s a scavenger and thief and was able to track down the parts needed to repair Death’s Head’s body, make improvements and kit him out with a new set of clothes. Thankfully, his humour was still in good knick.

I particularly like the moment in one of his flashbacks where he disguises himself as a blonde-haired woman in a gangster’s local hairdressing salon and, among his recollections of all the chaos and violence, he laments the fact he had to give the wig back. Setting him up as a new lead comics character for both old and new readers alike, his sense of humour was always going to be key and thankfully this issue has it in spades.

His three stories all address different rules: always honour a contract but never trust a client, make no concessions for age, size or gender and never kill for free but it pays to advertise. All three of these are played out as mini-stories and work perfectly, especially the last one which sees him do something for free, but only because he’s about to go broke and the result of his advertising is a long list of clients eager to hire him after a display of prowess.

His office is the same we’ve seen before on the blog in the High Noon Tex strip advert and plays up to the old fashioned detective/ganster movies writer Simon Furman must’ve been such a fan of. He used these as an influence in part of the Matrix Quest epic in Transformers (on the planet Pz-zazz, although set way back in 1990) and the setting perfectly suits Death’s Head and his peace-keeping business, surrounded as he is by a world that is anything but peaceful but which he ignores unless paid.

I also love how the facade slips now and again, even within his own inner thoughts as he calls himself a bounty hunter before correcting his narration. For the uninitiated, he was very much a bounty hunter but hated the term and so called himself a ‘Freelance Peace-Keeping Agent’, and woe betide anyone who used the wrong description!

One thing that took me by surprise because I’d completely forgotten in the years since was the fact Geoff Senior, despite being co-creator of the character, wasn’t the regular artist on the series. Instead our penciller is Bryan Hitch (The Batman’s Grave, Hell’s Angel, The Transformers including Death’s Head final appearance) with inker Mark Farmer (Slaine, Excalibur, Doctor Who). Colouring the proceedings is Nick Abadzis (Rogue Trooper artist, Vector 13 writer, The Amazing Mr Pleebu creator), lettering is by Annie Halfacree (Knight Rider, 2000AD, Lion) and Richard Starkings is editing as always (Elephantmen, The Real Ghostbusters, Dragon’s Claws).

I’ll admit it took a while for me to get used to the new art style, so sure was I that Geoff would be the artist; the lack of jaggy edges and exaggerated facial expressions is disappointing initially, even though Bryan’s earlier work I’d seen in Transformers was more like that. Only initially though. The first chance the comic has of giving Death’s Head a different facial expression than the one people may assume is his only one (on the cover) I was sold! This happens on only the third page of the strip when he shushes someone he’s knocked unconscious, so I was sold pretty quickly.

His trademark speech patterns return too of course, yes? His ability to talk reasonably and calmly no matter what’s going on around him, almost like he’s enjoying the fact he can remain detached, remains too. I genuinely inwardly giggled when, in the last of these mini-stories, he takes out a robot much larger than him and for a moment his confidence waivers. Just for a moment.

The issue ends back in the world of Dragon’s Claws and Greater Britain as he finally begins to move his apparently non-functioning frame and punches out the member of The Chain Gang who had berated him. Shocked, Spratt asks him why he didn’t move before if he was able to, instead of leading them to believe something had gone wrong with his reconstruction. Death’s Head simply tells him he needed to order his thoughts, which is why we’ve been treated to these flashbacks.

Reliving these key moments from his (distant) past and running over his rules in his head were the perfect way to introduce him. Including the interludes we’ve been treated to four completely different scenarios, meaning the comic can formally begin his adventures quickly with a fully-fledged character in #2 rather than slowly introducing elements as the early issues proceed. It’s a good balance for a first issue, one which would appeal to new readers and those who already knew him. Of course, there’s more to him and the ongoing series, but this is a strong start.

Apart from catching glimpses of his new body (and clothing) in the interludes, the remainder of the issue sees him as we all knew him before now. As such, when the big reveal is made on the last page of the strip my initial reaction is that I much prefer the original look. I’ve a feeling it’ll grow on me though, because this is all about the character himself and he’s very much the same mechanoid he always was, I’m very happy to report.

I mentioned above the disappointment I felt when I found this issue amongst my pile of random comics in 1989, after its unfortunate cancellation with #10. I can remember that feeling like it was yesterday, so knowing I can finally read what I’ve been wanting to read for 35 years is bloody exciting! There’s no Next Issue promo but I’ve seen the cover (and nothing else) of the next edition on my shelf and I can’t wait for Sunday 3rd December 2023 when Death’s Head #2 sees him crossing back over into the world of Dragon’s Claws! Join me then, eh?

DRAGON’S CLAWS FiVE < > iSSUE TWO