"The End" Week: Death's Head II #16!

I've said before, talking about Marvel UK; that there was an unfortunate stretch in the 90's, I think pre-bankruptcy, where the once expansive and all-encompassing Marvel universe was more siloed off, broken down into little subgroups like the X-books, the Spidey books, Marvel Edge or the Ghost Rider/magic type books, etc. The intent was to maybe keep some of the more popular guys from being used all willy-nilly, but it also seemed like if you wanted to use Spider-Man for a guest-spot then you had to go hat in hand down to his editorial office. I mention that because this feels like a silo that was closed off unnecessarily; or maybe a field left to go to seed. From 1994, Death's Head II #16, "Origin of the Species" Written by Dan Abnett, art by Henry Flint.

Death's Head II gets dragged to a distant, distant future, by the alien Chronozone: humanity had destroyed all other life in the universe, so he wanted DH II to go back to the late 19th century, and kill humanity while still in its proverbial cradle. DH II resists, and while freaking out a little over being so far in the future, alone; he discovers Chronozone's bone depository, which included his own skeleton! (Why Death's Head II has a skeleton...or horns for that matter...I couldn't say. Also, while some of the skeleton doesn't appear organic, that doesn't explain the serrated edges on his pelvis, which looks painful as heck, for him!)

Activating "syphon configuration," which resembles Dreadstar's sword to me, DH II sucks his own memories out of his skeleton, and realizes the truth: humanity wasn't the bad guy there, Chronozone and his race had tried to conquer the universe, and only those pesky humans stood up against them--those pesky humans, and Death's Head II. It ended with everyone dead, except Chronozone. With his past memories to guide him, DH II is able to beat Chronozone down, and force him to send him back: those memories would also prevent that future from ever coming to be, since he would make sure the humans weren't taken by surprise. Chronozone is left, crying and alone, the last living thing in his universe.

Holy--per the Wikipedia for Marvel UK, when Death's Head II was cancelled, "distributor Capital only sold 7,400 copies." (This copy in hand was, of course, from a dollar bin; and not so minty that I feel bad about putting it in the scanner.) One, of probably several errors of the period, was that while the X-Men and other Marvel characters guest-starred in most of the Marvel UK books, how often did Marvel UK characters get to guest in regular Marvel titles? Like maybe once: Motormouth and Killpower's guest spot in Incredible Hulk #409. (And that's largely because their original artist Gary Frank was the current Hulk artist!) This is why you need a proper Marvel Team-Up or even Marvel Comics Presents, to keep characters out there even if they can't carry their own title at the moment. Death's Head II and Dark Angel probably would be far better known today, if they had maybe got a reciprocal visit or crossover with proper X-books. A ball dropped, probably.