Death's Head and Copyright Conundrums

Back in the 80's Marvel had the license to publish Hasbro's Transformers comics. This wasn't something new. Companies often license out the rights to their properties; it's an excellent way to make money from licensing fees while spreading the word about their kick ass products. Simon Furman was tapped to write the books and he decided that Transformers was simply too cool a concept to tread water with. Furman's run on the Transformers is considered prolific nowadays, and it's easy to see why. He set about world building, and fleshing out the characters. A lot of the concepts that are used today in Transformers, such as Primus and Unicron and the Creation Matrix are all ideas created or expanded on by Furman. The trouble is, when it comes to copyright and ownership, who actually owns characters created by writers and artists working for Marvel published in a licensed comic book featuring concepts and characters owned by Hasbro, who, in turn, got the idea from a Japanese toy line? *Phew*

So, let's talk about Death's Head. Death's Head was a bounty-hunter that was introduced by Furman and  Geoff Senior to do battle with the mighty Cybertronian Autobots. Only, Marvel by this time was savvy to the possible copyright conundrums their license agreement could pose, so they pulled a swift one. If Death's Head was initially published in a regular not-tied-to-Hasbro publication, then Marvel could make a strong case for ownership, if the matter ever came up. A hastily put together one-page tale was published in various Marvel UK titles before the character showed up in the pages of Transformers. Pretty clever, yes?

Death's Head would go on to become a great Marvel UK property, stopping off in the year 2020 and meeting Iron man of that era and even bumping into a time traveler known as The Doctor, who shrunk him down to average size before dumping him on the rooftop of the Fantastic Four's Baxter Building. Talk about 6 degrees of separation!

Death's Head has gone on to become one of my personal favorites. The self-styled Freelance Peacekeeping Agent's (though Beast may have had a hand in this particular nomenclature) simply will not go quietly into the night. We've had Death's Head II (aka Minion) and Death's Head 3.0 (who's showed up in everything from Amazing Fantasy to Planet Hulk to Nova) but nothing compares to the original.

He's Death's Head, yes?

frogoat