Death's Head (1988)

Death's Head (1988) was a 1988 American comic book-style series published by Marvel Comics UK. It featured the exploits of a robotic mercenary character named Death's Head. The first of the Marvel titles to bear the name Death's Head, it is sometimes imprecisely called Death's Head I for casual clarity, even though it is technically the only Death's Head title to bear the indicia name of simply Death's Head.

It is of interest to the DWU because it featured a story in which the title character met the Seventh Doctor. It is of interest to the Marvel universe because it — largely by implication — turns at least the Seventh Doctor into a character within the MU.

Title history
Created by Simon Furman, Death's Head had debuted in the MarveL UK Transformers series, and then made his way into the Doctor Who Magazine strip, as well as the prefiguring Dragon's Claws, which led immediately to this solo title.

Death's Head (1988) ran for ten issues, then ended on a cliffhanger due to Marvel US' decision to radically curtail Marvel UK's activities. Despite the reduction in UK-based creative staff, the storyline of this series was resolved in a Marvel UK graphic novel called Death's Head: The Body in Question.

Other Death's Head titles
It's important to distinguish this series from other, following series.
 * Death's Head II was the last gasp of the character at Marvel UK. However, it featured a new version of Death's Head.  This "second Death's Head" was the combination of a living being named Minion and the mind of the original Death's Head, stabilised by the efforts of Reed Richards of the prime Marvel universe's Fantastic Four.  The resulting creature was thus a cyborg, which further distinguished him from the original.
 * The Incomplete Death's Head was a reprint series that featured the original incarnation of Death's Head. Of importance to Doctor Who fans was the fact that the series also contained some new material that "framed" the reprints. The final frames of the twelfth and final issue showed that Seventh Doctor was the reason Death's Head inhabited that part of the Marvel multiverse depicted in the Marvel UK Transformers series. In other words, the closing frames of The Incomplete Death's Head were actually a prequel to Death's Head's first appearance.
 * Death's Head 3.0 was a 2005 mini-series which added yet a third version of the character to the Marvel universe. Though this is the version of the character probably most familiar to modern US comic fans, there is no clear narrative link between 3.0 and the earlier verisions. However, like all versions of Death's Head, 3.0 was created by Simon Furman.

Additionally, there are several other, minor Marvel US characters known as "Death's Head", but none of these lasted long enough to get a solo title or mini-series. Therefore, the term "Death's Head" as it relates to comics is usually interpreted today as meaning one of the Simon Furman creations.

Story of interest to Doctor Who fans
The Seventh Doctor and the TARDIS appeared in issue #8 of the 1988 series, in a story entitled, Time Bomb!. In the story, Josiah W. Dogbolter, head of Intra-Venus, Inc. hires Death's Head to kill the Doctor, and gives the mercenary a new time machine that his company is developing. Attached to the time machine, however, is a nuclear weapon, which Dogbolter can activate remotely. The bulk of the plot therefore has to do with the Doctor finding a way to remove the bomb safely. After that's done, the Doctor drops off Death's head on the top of the Baxter Building, it's distinctive number "4" heralding the fact that Death's Head's next adventure will be with the Fantastic Four.