Trash Mutant Back Issues: Marvel UK's "Warheads" ('92-'93)

- by Señor Editor, 15 July 2012

REEEEEMIX! I'm gonna be honest with you: this is a remake (of the good kind!) of a post I did a long time ago on my obscure blog. Why am I spending time remaking some old stuff for Back Issues when I clearly have a large stock of both crappy and good old comics to talk about? Because "Warheads" is a series that's not very well known at all, and it's a good one. And because I can now do it a lot better, add stuff and expose more people to this title, and maybe later on write some more about the other Marvel UK's hits and misses. Also, I wanted to make Greedo shoot first. Just kidding, honestly. So let's go back to Marvel UK line in the early '90s!

Those covers were also the only image in my old imperfect article, so there!

A few years ago, while shopping for comics online, I bought a whole run of books that I knew absolutely nothing about. Because I take risks like that. And because they were dirt cheap (and I think they still are). The series was called "Warheads" and it was published by Marvel UK from '92 to '93, back when the UK branch didn't just do reprints of the American stuff, but put a whole lot of titles of their own. It wasn't a lot of comics - the complete run was 14 issues + a 2 issue mini series. It wasn't even that the covers drew me in, because honestly I don't even think most of them look especially great. It took a long while before I got to reading them, but when I did, it turned out that they're actually pretty damn good. And if nothing else, definitely a whole lot better than a whole lot of the "proper" Marvel comics from the early '90s that I own and wouldn't dare to read now.

Let's get down to the basics. The Warheads are mercs working for a shady corporation called Mys-Tech (a common villain throughout most of the Marvel UK titles from that time). By means of a combination of technology and magic, they travel through time, space and other dimensions to retrieve technology or magical artifacts that their employers can use for producing new and advanced weaponry. Naturally, they are also all British, if you were wondering.

They are led by a scarred and ridiculously named guy called Colonel Tigon Liger (get it?). He's a guy with a ugly, scarred mug (the way he got the scars is pretty interesting and revealed right away in #1) and a voice-operated, sentient gun called "Clementine". Other prominent Warheads include Misha - the team's "psi-scout" (basically a telepath of sorts, she's responsible for quick recon in the new worlds they visit) and Leona - the rookie we meet at the end of the first issue. Most of the other members of the unit change from issue to issue - the idea is that they're expandable soldiers and pretty much every issue somebody dies. It's a bit like "Suicide Squad" or "Thunderbolts" (and also the early "Exiles"), but unlike those two teams, the Warheads volunteered for their jobs and came to regret it later. Usually, such a high death ratio among the team would mean that there won't be time to develop interest in them and the relationships between them, but this isn't really the case here. This is a pretty diverse team (naturally, featuring some cliches, but taken with more than just a grain of salt) and the characters are fun to read about. You never know who's gonna take the bullet, new characters don't obviously have a target painted on them and that's something I like a lot.

Colonel Liger.

What's always fun about reality-hopping teams are the various worlds they get to visit. Unlike the "Exiles" series that would become popular a few years later in Marvel, the worlds the Warheads are sent to are not just some different versions of Earth. They're sometimes just travelling in time, but most often they visit some psychodelic magic-based worlds that don't resemble Earth at all, weird alien planets with strange civilisations occupying them, or places where just surviving for the few hours required to pull off the missions (the Warheads get to the various worlds via "wormholes", then they have some time to finish the mission and catch the wormhole when it re-opens or forever remain wherever they ended up) may be very hard. The second issue does a really good job of conveying the weirdness of it all, when the rookie Leona has to shoot the team-mate, due to some unexpected circumstances.

From issue #2. Johnny here won't be returning to the team. He's the 4th or 5th Warhead we see kicking the bucket.

This series had 5 artists, which is a lot for a short run, and the quality of art changes a lot sometimes from issue to issue. When it gets bad though, it doesn't HORRIBLE or anything, rather just generic in that "very early '90s" way. The best artists on this title were Gary Erskine and Stuart Jennett, and their style fitted the dark/moody atmopshere of the book really well. The other pencillers ranged from "not very good at all" to "okay" (matter of fact I've grown to enjoy some of them since I first wrote about "Warheads", but I may be biased by now), but what's most important is that it's a well written series. The writing credits go to Nick Vince, John Freeman and Craig Houston, and when art fails that good writing is what still keeps you reading and enjoying this book.

One other thing you'll notice when checking out the covers of those books, is that there's quite a lot of "guest appearances" from the "American" Marvel heroes popular at the time (X-Force, Wolverine, Iron Man, X-Men and more). While I usually hate that type of stuff, it's actually used reasonably well most of the time and doesn't follow the tired "heroes meet, have a misunderstanding, fight each other and then team up" tradition. Half of the guest stars only show up for a moment and the other half aren't even the REAL heroes, just some dudes impersonating them! Thank goodness for false advertising!

Because that is a good thing - the "guests" don't get in the way much, and that's how it should be. There's plenty of stuff going on as it is, with all the Warheads, their evil bosses, the world-hopping and the toll things take on the team. Also, the issue that features Wolverine is a really great one and uses him in an interesting way, and that's something that didn't happen often by that time in the early '90s anymore.

From "Warheads" #1: When Wolverine was actually still interesting.

Marvel UK realeased a ton of titles in the early 90s and most of them are easily available on eBay. Most of them were actually very well received in the US too (some rightfully so, some not at all), and the reason they were cancelled after the first year or two was that there were just too many of them, basically flooding the market in a time when it was already oversaturated. It seems like there's an ad for 2 new Marvel UK series in every issue of "Warheads", so I can't say that surprises me.

This was a good, quirky and very enjoyable series. It has a flavour that's unlike anything the US bullpen was producing at the time. Since I first checked it out, I became interested in other UK titles, both from the early '90s boom and before that. Some of them are really good and original, some of them were trying too hard and feel like the standard "EXTREME!!!" fare. I didn't get to read everything yet, but I sure am exploring this niche whenever I have some time. If you're interested in reading more about the Marvel UK titles than let me know in the comments and we'll see what can be done! Meanwhile, I recommend "Warheads". Even if you end up not liking it, I'm sure you won't spend a lot of cash on all the 16 issues released.

Liger is already looking pissed in that little window.

Tagged: comics, Back Issues.

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