Comic Book / Warheads

"Warriors across space and time!"

"We’re Warheads. We search and retrieve - maximum risk, maximum profit."

— Colonel Liger, Knights of Pendragon (vol.2) #8

Warheads is a Marvel Comics series, published as part of the Marvel UK brand in 1992-1993.

The series centers around Kether Troop, a squad of ‘Warhead’ mercenaries employed by Mys-Tech, a sinister corporation run by a group of immortal sorcerers.

Ten years ago Mys-Tech devised a way to temporarily open artificial wormholes. Their destination is essentially random: it may be another world, another time or even another dimension.

Kether Troop are one of several teams sent through these wormholes to bring back information and loot for their employers. The Warheads’ discoveries are then weaponised, monetised or both. Several Marvel UK characters have origins or powers linked to things recovered by Warheads.

The Warhead programme as a whole is overseen by Mys-Tech board member Rathcoole, who’s often at odds with the others.

The job’s just as dangerous as it sounds, and Kether Troop lose many members over the course of the series. The other squads seem to fare even worse.

Despite working for the villains, Kether’s Warheads (or, at least, the core cast) are, at worst, morally grey rather than bad guys (unlike some of their comrades in other troops) and eventually rebel against the corporation to become heroes in their own right.

The main cast consists of:

• Colonel Liger, leader of Kether Troop. Ex-British intelligence, badly scarred and the wielder of a scarily effective sentient gun.

• Misha, the team’s psi-scout, who’s guided by a voice that shares clairvoyant visions and prophetic glimpses of the future.

• Perez, the team medic, who joined the Warheads because he wanted to make the world a better place. Low-level psychic abilities also allow him to act as a translator.

• Stacy, who wears a powered exoskeleton, carries a very big gun and has some suppressed telekinetic powers.

• Gregory, gunman and wannabe ladies’ man. He’s often a bit of a jerk, which takes a darker turn when Mephisto binds him to a demon.

• Leona, a new recruit, who joins the troop in the first issue.

• Che, sole survivor of another troop, is transferred to Kether midway through the series. He’s a martial artist who’s immune to magic.

The series was initially Edited for Syndication in the UK, where it was serialised in the anthology title Overkill. Early issues were structured in a way that allowed the guest stars to be completely edited out when they were reprinted, on the basis that UK readers would be less interested in costumed superheroes.

After the initial ongoing series ended, the Warheads returned in a miniseries, Black Dawn, which dropped Kether Troop into an alternate, vampire-filled Manhattan.

A second miniseries, Loose Cannons, was almost completed but never published (although the artist put it online to read for free). It centred around a different Warhead squad, the all-female Virago Troop.

Liger and Stacy also went on to join the Marvel UK team book Dark Guard, whereas Che became part of another team, the Shadow Riders.

Many years later, when the Marvel UK books were celebrated by the Revolutionary War event, Liger returned as one of the main characters.

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Tropes included in Warheads and its follow-up series:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Beneath the Museum of Pagan Antiquities. Bad Hand’s S.H.I.E.L.D team breaks in through them.
• Accent Interest: Cable picks up on a French lilt in Colonel Liger’s accent.
• A Death in the Limelight: Played straight with Perez. Although he’s one of the core cast, he gets no focus and very little dialogue. The tenth issue of the series gives him a relationship reveal, mentions that he’s got a secret plan and then promptly kills him.
• Adventure Towns: The series runs on this trope - they’re mercenary adventurers who jump through wormholes to other times, planets and dimensions.
• Air-Vent Passageway: The Museum of Pagan Antiquities has a few. Leona ends up crawling through them to recapture an acid-spitting escaped alien. Afterwards, Rathcoole makes a mental note that he needs to add better security to them.
• All There in the Manual:
  • A list of the other Warhead squads, their cover identities and their commanders was published as a profile page in Overkill. A guide to Warhead slang and terminology was published in the same way.
  • Full names for some of Kether Troop are revealed in profile pages and never used in the comic itself (e.g. Misha and Gregory’s surnames).
• All Witches Have Cats: Aeish has giant cats as her servants, and there’s a feline theme to some of her magic.
• Alternate Universe: Downplayed. Kether Troop usually end up in other times, other dimensions or on alien worlds. It’s possible some of these are alternate universes as well, but the only time it’s clearly the case is Black Dawn, where the alternate Manhattan is overrun by vampires.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: Played with. Sentient gun Clementine can still do an awful lot of damage up close, but her full power - which can level cities - needs a safe distance. And she’ll refuse to use it when the target’s too near.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Rathcoole loses a hand after his attempt to kill Mephisto
  • Duncan loses his right arm on one mission - it’s replaced with a cybernetic arm. Then he loses his left arm on the next mission, which happens to be their last jump for Mys-Tech. He doesn’t manage to find a second prosthetic before Black Dawn.
• And You Thought It Was a Game: Bad Hand leads a S.H.I.E.L.D squad into the Museum of Pagan Antiquities via the sewers. They surface in the Warheads training area, in the middle of a “no firearms” exercise - Kether Troop immediately assume they’re training simulations.
• The Anticipator: In Revolutionary War, Liger cautiously approaches Master Key’s safe house, aware that it’s been many years and the magician’s been living there in secret and isn’t expecting company. Master Key opens the door before he even has a chance to knock
• Applied Phlebotinum: Their role as Mys-Tech’s gatherers and scavengers means that Warheads are essentially phlebotinum miners, bringing back plot fuel for the whole Marvel UK line. Much of that’s developed in other books, rather than in Warheads itself, and not all of it’s due to Liger’s Kether troop, but it’s a recurring theme.
  • The Sapphire Lotus, a major plot point in the first arc of the Death’s Head II ongoing series, is recovered by Kether Troop. Although Death’s Head promptly steals it before they get back to earth.
  • Psi-Key, which empowers Digitek, his enemies the Bacillicons, and Mys-Tech’s Harpies (later known as the ‘Slaughterhouse Six’), was found by Warheads.
  • In Gene Dogs, Q7’s Automaton is a reprogrammed robot retrieved by Warheads. Villainous businessman Otomo is also an ex-Warhead and his company’s success is built around technology he stole in those days.
• Artificial Limbs:
  • Rathcoole gets a cybernetic hand after Mephisto removes the original.
  • Duncan has a cybernetic right arm fitted at the start of the final issue. And then zombies tear his left arm off.
• The Atoner: Keller, freed from possession by Killpower and the Psycho-Wraith at the end of Revolutionary War, tries to atone by helping Liger to find the rest of Kether Troop.
• Atrocious Alias: When Mr Grant is possessed and empowered, the resulting superhuman entity names itself “Audit, the Cosmic Accountant”.

• Badass Normal: Initially seems to be true of most of the team - they’re just very competent mercenaries with guns and hi-tech equipment - but some of the revelations and misadventures start to change that.
• Bad Boss:
  • Mys-Tech in general, and Rathcoole in particular.
  • Mr Grant. A flashback reveals that he had some previous Kether Troop members executed because their injuries would take too long to heal.
  • The final issue of the original series reveals that Mys-Tech killed the Warheads’ predecessors, who learned too much about their employers. And that Warheads who don’t keep making wormhole jumps will sicken and die. Mys-Tech knew - and possibly even engineered it - but didn’t tell them.
• BFG: Several of them, including Liger’s gun Clementine.
• Body Horror:
  • What happens to Johnny Heaven when the shadow-world things touch him.
  • The sorceress Aeish, with the heads (and, beneath them, bodies) of her three baby daughters embedded in her own neck and shoulders.
• Boom, Headshot!: Liger promptly repays Gregory’s betrayal in Revolutionary War.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The male Warheads and X-Force members who fall under Aeish’s magical mind control.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Probably applies to the Warheads as a whole - after the Dark Guard miniseries, Marvel UK imploded, and none of the characters were seen again until the Revolutionary War series, many years later.
  • Leona is infected with vampirism and left behind in another world at the end of Black Dawn, but still returns to the troop in time for the final battle against Mys-Tech.
  • Perez is killed in action, but the flashback in Revolutionary War shows that he reappears in the final battle against Mys-Tech.
  • Stacy is left amnesiac at the end of Dark Guard, but is back with Kether Troop in time for the final battle against Mys-Tech.
  • Che is killed by Porlock’s Mys-Tech guards at the end of Shadow Riders, then resurrected in monstrous form by Vorin. He’s back with Kether - alive and human again - by the time of Revolutionary War.
• Cain and Abel: Liger's brother Lynx is the Cain when they meet in Black Dawn. Then again, he's been through a Face–Monster Turn, and doesn't entirely have free will as a vampire.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: Aeish’s wand, stolen by Leona.
  • Rathcoole reforges it into a sword to kill Mephisto.
  • The remaining crystal shards store enough magic to rescue Liger and Misha from a closed wormhole.
  • The last of the shards reappear a few issues later, used to break the demonic spell on Gregory.
• Colonel Badass: Colonel Liger’s leading a small squad, not a regiment, but he does fit the description. Colonel seems to be a standard rank for Warhead troop commanders.
• Combat Hand Fan: Misha is seen using these as a weapon.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Played with. Leona and Perez are trying to steal from their employers; Che has been a mole from the start; Misha decides not to tell anyone that Iron Man has infiltrated the team; Liger has moral lines he won’t cross and will lie to Mys-Tech to cover up those decisions; Gregory’s loyalties are divided after he’s merged with a demon. Kether Troop are efficient, but certainly not the most loyal underlings.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Liger first steals Clementine, the sentient gun identifies his language as “616” English.
  • The Cherubs serving Rathcoole are minor Bane spirits from Knights of Pendragon
  • When Kether Troop are caught inside Wolverine and Psylocke’s dreams, Wolverine’s mindscape replays the classic Weapon X storyline while Psylocke’s shows part of the Jaspers Warp saga.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: Mr Grant. What we see of his replacement, Mr Lee, suggests that he’s more of the same.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front: Well, for some value of mundane. Pretty much all of their covers are whimsical or unusual in some way.
  • The Warheads’ UK headquarters is the Museum of Pagan Antiquities.
  • Kether Troop’s travel to wormholes around the globe is as part of the ‘Cirque de Chaos’.
  • Other Warhead squads apparently use covers such as search and rescue, a travelling fair, a film crew and a satellite recovery team.
• Cruel Mercy: After Grierson, Evone and Prizzi go rogue on Arakne, Liger - who normally shoots to kill - subdues them and says that returning them to Mys-Tech alive will be worse.
• Deadly Training Area: The Rehearsal Room. Everything from basic exercise equipment to robot opponents and corrosive cleaning sprays.
• Defiant to the End: Beetle, a new recruit who’s just joined Kether Troop, gets one of these when captured and killed by Genghis.
• Drama Queen: Master Key. Leona, as narrator, calls this out in his very first scene.
• Dream Land: When one jump goes wrong, the Warheads end up trapped first in Wolverine’s dreams, then in Psylocke’s.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Liger hits the bottle pretty hard after losing so many friends in the final battle against Mys-Tech. He’s an alcoholic sleeping rough in London when Keller and Wisdom eventually find him.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Gregory gets reprimanded and fined for not using codenames on an early jump. Codenames are never used again in later issues, though.
• Economy Cast: Two other Warhead troops (Cesad and Kockmar) are supposedly sharing the same cover story (travelling with the Cirque de Chaos), but we never see their members interact with Kether Troop.
• Eldritch Location: The realm of shadows, which telepathically responds to Kether Troop and manifests creatures based on their fears.
• Escaped from Hell: Perez, at some point before Revolutionary War.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Master Key is a job description, not a name. Although it’s not so obvious until a different Master Key appears with Malkuth Troop in Shadow Riders. He eventually gets a name in Revolutionary War.
• Every Scar Has a Story: Seemingly averted. Nobody in the original series comments on Liger’s facial scars. A flashback shows that he didn’t have them when he first clashed with Wolverine, but we don’t see him at the end of that brawl - it’s not directly stated that Wolverine gave them to him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Warheads may work for the bad guy, but Liger has zero tolerance for squad members who cross the line into needless slaughter. Kether Troop’s also prepared to leave valuable technology behind if it can’t be looted without causing deaths (and Liger’s prepared to lie to Mys-Tech about that afterwards, too).
• Evil, Inc.: Mys-Tech live and breathe this trope.
• Evolving Weapon: Clementine, a Swiss-Army Gun who is regularly learning new abilities.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Grierson’s a typical recruit in his first appearance - he doesn’t get to do much before Iron Man knocks him out, but he leaves on good terms with the troop. When he returns in Knights of Pendragon he actively ignores orders and eventually allies with the demonic Bane.
  • In the original series, Gregory is often a jerk, but isn’t actively villainous except when he’s temporarily sharing his body and mind with a demon. He joins the rest of Kether Troop when they eventually defect from Mys-Tech. In Revolutionary War, he’s the traitor who betrays them to Mys-Tech before the final battle.
• Feral Vampires: The vampire horde seen in Black Dawn.
• Foreshadowing:
  • An early issue mentions Che as the sole survivor of Malkuth troop. When he eventually joins Kether Troop, he’s the only new recruit who both survives and becomes a recurring member. A flashback story in the Shadow Riders series later reveals what happened to Malkuth - and is key to another character’s origin.
  • There are several references to the wormhole mapping rituals being gradually automated by computer. Leona and Perez eventually take advantage of this to try to steal a copy.
• Funetik Aksent: The Golem haunting Mr Grant, which seems to have an oddly German accent.
• Geas: Applied to Kether Troop by Rathcoole’s magic, for his second plot to kill Mephisto. Mephisto simply dispels it.
• He's Back!: Liger, in ‘’Revolutionary War''.
• Heel–Face Return: Kether’s Master Key. At the end of the Warheads series, he wasn’t seen rebelling with Kether Troop. When we see him in the Warheads Revolutionary War story, in flashback, he’s directly backing their final attack on Mys-Tech.
• Her Heart Will Go On: Perez is abruptly killed off in the same issue that reveals he’s in a relationship with Leona, and almost immediately after saying he loves her.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Most of Kether Troop in the final battle against Mys-Tech, in Revolutionary War. They know they’ll be trapped in hell, and they’re determined that Liger will be saved from that fate.
• Holographic Disguise: Iron Man uses this to replace one of the squad’s new recruits. They’re both in sealed armoured suits, so it works pretty well.
• Home Base: The Museum of Pagan Antiquities.
• I Call It "Vera": Liger’s sentient gun, Clementine.
• I Can Rule Alone: After his initial attempt to end his immortality and die, Rathcoole’s plans evolve into this. How much was actually Blackheart’s mental influence is never entirely clear.
• If Only You Knew: After Grierson survives a jump and saves the team, his comrades comment that he must be made of iron. The real Grierson’s been unconscious and missed the mission entirely - they’re talking to a disguised Iron Man.
• The Imp: The Cherubs. Putting them in charge of the potentially deadly ‘Rehearsal Room’ doesn’t usually work out well. And then there are pranks such as swapping live grenades for duds. By the time of Revolutionary War, after the fall of Mys-Tech, they’ve moved into Master Key’s safe house.
• It Has Been an Honor: Misha and Leona to Liger when they make their last stand in Revolutionary War.
• Ki Manipulation: Che was trained by "a Shaolin priest" to channel his chi into super-powered blows.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: In one of Revolutionary War’s flashbacks, Gregory makes the mistake of gloating about his betrayal of Kether Troop. While he’s still standing next to them. Liger doesn’t give him an opportunity to finish the speech.
• Killer Rabbit: Pellis Globus, the ridiculously cute “fur ball” pink bunny-thing that Gebu Troop bring back. Beaker mentions that they’re considering cloning it for pets. And then they find it spits corrosive poison…
• The Mole: Che, who’s been infiltrating Mys-Tech from the start.
• Mr. Exposition: Misha, who relays a lot of information from her psychic “Voice” to the other characters (and the reader).
• Mythology Gag: The Revolutionary War flashback shows that Kether Troop’s been joined by a woman named Bo, “a refugee from Virago troop”. Liger’s narration notes that “I still shed a tear for what happened to them. They were so close to being the best of us.”. This is Bo’s first canon appearance - but Bodecia ‘Bo’ Kildare and Virago Troop would have been the protagonists of the 1993 Loose Cannons Warheads miniseries, which was cancelled by Marvel shortly before publication.
• Narrator: Frequently used in early issues. Liger, Perez, Stacy and Leona all narrate at various points, sometimes via retrospective journal entries.
• Noodle Incident:
  • When Gevurah, Malkuth and Omega troops appear in flashback in Revolutionary War, in the final battle against Mys-Tech, they are said to be “fresh from the genocide on Lionheart”. Lionheart was an alternate (or, possibly, future) world seen in other Marvel UK titles, but hadn’t appeared in Warheads.
  • The fate of Virago Troop and the reason why Bo ended up with Kether Troop in Revolutionary War. Which doubles as a Mythology Gag.
• No-Sell:
  • Che is immune (and invisible) to magic.
  • At one point Gregory shoots Cosmic Entity Master Order in the face with Clementine, on maximum power. It’s mildly irked, but utterly unharmed.
  • Audit turns its power on Gregory with absolutely no effect. As Mephisto has bound his soul to a demon, he’s already “balanced”.
• Not What I Signed on For: Why Perez tries to steal the wormhole mapping tools from Mys-Tech. He wanted to make the world a better place, but his employer’s aims turn out to be very different. His co-conspirator Leona’s edging towards this as well, although she mostly signed on for the money.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • The Battle of London Bridge and the fall of Mys-Tech. There’s a glimpse of it in Revolutionary War, but that’s all. Mys-Tech’s board were the Big Bad of the Marvel UK line - immortal, powerful sorcerers and blessed with gifts from Mephisto. Defeating them was not a small thing.
  • Perez escaped from hell itself.
• Off with His Head!: Shrike uses a chain to decapitate the vampire Big Bad at the end of Black Dawn.
• Omniglot: Played with. Perez has low-level psychic abilities which allow him to understand the meaning of speech in almost any language, if not the exact words. In practice, most entities the Warheads meet seem to speak English, so this doesn’t come up much.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: Kether Troop end up on different worlds, in the past, in the future and in other dimensions. But until Black Dawn they don’t seem to visit any of the alternate worlds seen so often in other Marvel books such as Exiles and What If?.
• Patricide: When she was thirteen, Stacy’s telekinetic powers ran out of control at a seance, killing her abusive father.
• Percussive Therapy: After having to shoot a colleague who was infected and transformed, new recruit Leona works through her feelings by ranting at a robotic training simulation of her boss, Colonel Liger. And then shooting it.
• Plot Armor: Despite the high death rate around them, the core Kether Troop cast seem to have this through the original Warheads series. Only Perez actually dies - and even he (eventually) gets better.
• Poison Is Corrosive: The cute but deadly poison-spitting Pellis Globus. One of the medics attending Beaker asks if there’s a way to save his eyes from the poison. The other one says there’s not much point, as it’s already dissolving his skull.
• Power Copying: Clementine learns new attacks from the ones used against Liger and Kether Troop.
• Pragmatic Villainy: A flashback story shows Kether Troop stealing Liger’s sentient gun Clementine from the corporate city of Numeropolis, killing dozens of guards in the process. The corporation eventually identifies the thieves and hires Death’s Head to deal with them... instructing him to tell Liger he’s welcome to keep the gun as long as he pays the outstanding fees. Things only get violent when Liger declines.
• Precautionary Corpse Disposal: After the vampire victim the troop find at the start of Black Dawn reanimates and kills De Tosca, Liger makes a point of burning the bodies.
• Red Shirt: Most of the new Warheads who join Kether Troop mid-series are treated this way. Either they make deadly mistakes, or they’re simply killed off to show how dangerous the current enemy is. At least one doesn’t even get named.
• Relationship Reveal: Perez and Leona. Shortly before Perez dies.
• Remember the New Guy?: When we see the last battle against Mys-Tech in flashback, in the ‘’Revolutionary War'' Warheads issue, Kether Troop has recruited Bo from Virago Troop, who didn’t appear in the previous stories. Doubles as a Mythology Gag.
• Revenant Zombie: The original Warheads in the final issue, returning to kill Kether Troop after their incorporeal ghosts are driven off.
• Screw Destiny: Attempted on a couple of occasions. Both involving Wolverine:
  • When Kether Troop jump into the past, Draft tries to kill Wolverine and change history. It fails.
  • On a later jump, they encounter a Weapon X era Wolverine and a demon-tainted Gregory tries to kill him. They’re not actually in the past, though, so it doesn’t work out as planned.
• Sole Survivor:
  • Che, who’s transferred to Kether Troop after his entire troop is wiped out.
  • As seen at the start of Revolutionary War, Liger was the only member of Kether Troop to escape hell after the final battle against Mys-Tech.
• Stable Time Loop: The time jump seen in the first issue, which brings them to the X-Men’s headquarters in Australia. Two years later Wolverine meets and warns a younger Colonel Liger; at the end of the jump itself, Liger asks Wolverine to warn him.
• Staking the Loved One: Or shooting the colleague, anyway. Leona has to kill Johnny Heaven after he’s corrupted and transformed.
• Stripperific:
  • Misha wears a lot of skintight outfits, and sometimes it’s hard to see what’s actually clothing rather than skin.
  • To a lesser extent this trope also applies to Leona, who sometimes prefers bare legs to armour.
• Surveillance as the Plot Demands: Initially averted and later justified. In early issues, their superiors are completely unable to monitor the squad when they jump through a wormhole. Later, they integrate a dead Warhead’s brain into a scrying device and start monitoring the team without their knowledge.
• Tagline: Initially “Mercenaries across space and time!” - later updated to “Warriors across space and time!”
• Take Me Instead: Leona’s offer to Mephisto after one of his demons kills Perez. Mephisto declines.
• Talking Weapon: Clementine. Especially after her personality shift.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Spider-Man and the Pendragons at the end of the Knights of Pendragon “Crawl-Space” arc. The Warheads are raiding the other-dimensional world of Arakne, Spider-Man and the Pendragons are trying to defend it. But they’re eventually forced to ally against the Bane and three renegade Warheads.
• Tested on Humans: Ghengis, the Wizard Magistrix, kills three of the Warheads he’s captured just to test how their equipment works. And because he can.
• Time Stop: Rathcoole’s gift from Mephisto. Limited by the fact that it’s an automatic defence mechanism, not something he can invoke at will.
• Traumatic Super Power Awakening: Stacy.
  • Her telekinesis first surfaces as a teenager when her father violently disrupts a seance. She suppresses it again afterwards.
  • It reappears after the sorceress Aeish telepathically roots through Stacy’s memories - and this time it stays active.
• Training Montage: Directly lampshaded when Wisdom and Keller retrieve Colonel Liger and kickstart his recovery via a biotech tank at the start of Revolutionary War. (“It was either this or six months of rehab followed by a training montage”).
• Treacherous Spirit Chase:
  • Misha’s “Voice”, which offers her advice and visions through the first ten issues, is the demon Blackheart, manipulating the Warheads to escape from its infernal prison.
  • Misha appearing to Liger in Revolutionary War, asking him to save Kether Troop from hell. It’s implied the voices Master Key hears are carrying the same message. They’re actually tricked into opening a portal for Killpower’s demonic army.
• Trigger-Happy: Some of the less sympathetic Warheads fall into this category. It tends to get them killed. Out of the core cast, Gregory goes this way once he’s bonded to a demon.
• Two-Faced: Gregory, once Mephisto welds half of his body and soul to a demon. He gets better.
• Unexplained Recovery: Stacy, Leona and Che are all back on the squad in Revolutionary War’s flashback to the fall of Mys-Tech. When last seen, Che was killed and resurrected in a monstrous undead form (in Shadow Riders), Leona was a vampire abandoned in another world (in Black Dawn) and Stacy was a lost amnesiac (in Dark Guard). Perez also returns, but the story acknowledges that he’d died and mentions that he escaped hell and returned to life.
• Vampire Episode: The Black Dawn miniseries, where Kether Troop end up in an alternative world overrun by (mostly) Feral Vampires. It goes badly for them.
• Vengeful Ghost: The original Warheads who return to haunt Kether Troop in the final issue. Initially they just want vengeance on Mys-Tech, though, not the deaths of their successors. But then Duncan shoots them.
• Villain-Beating Artifact: Discussed and played with. Rathcoole recognises Aeish’s crystal wand as an Atlantean artifact and has it reforged into a magic sword that can actually kill the immortal demon Mephisto. Unfortunately, as Mephisto points out, Rathcoole misidentified the wand - so the sword doesn’t work.
• Villain Has a Point: Rathcoole is a Bad Boss who treats the Warheads as utterly disposable. This is reinforced when he instructs Mr Grant to execute Che because he’s sole survivor of his troop. As the reader discovers (much) later, he was right to be suspicious - Che was The Mole. Too bad Mr Grant disobeyed the order.
• Viral Transformation: Johnny Heaven guns down some shadow creatures at short range and gets touched and splashed. Within seconds he’s corrupted and transforming.
• Weaponized Offspring: Aeish’s monstrous daughters seem to fall into this category.
• We Hardly Knew Ye:
  • Cale, Corey and Draft are introduced as established members of Kether Troop at the very start of the series. They’re all dead by the end of the first issue, and only Cale’s ever seen or mentioned again.
  • One of their replacements, Johnny Heaven, only lasts until the second issue. This sets the tone for new recruits in subsequent issues.
• Wetware CPU: The secret behind Mys-Tech’s new ability to scry on Kether Troop’s jumps. They wired dead Warhead Cale’s brain into the machine, using her feelings for Liger to lock onto him.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: One story introduces a Mys-Tech employee, Bysshe Meadows, who’s promptly possessed and empowered by an item Kether Troop retrieved. Liger and Leona have to subdue her, and Mys-Tech are very happy to acquire another super-powered minion, but she’s never mentioned in Warheads again.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The stated motive for Rathcoole’s attack on Mephisto.
• Wolverine Publicity:
  • As with many of the other Marvel UK titles, there were a string of high profile guest stars, including Wolverine, X-Force, Death’s Head, Psylocke, the Silver Surfer and Iron Man.
  • The appearances of the Hulk (a training room robot), Doctor Strange (a demonic illusion) and Captain Britain (seen within his sister’s memories) exemplify this trope.
• You Can't Fight Fate: In the first issue the team jump into the past and Draft, who’s becoming a bit unstable, decides to kill Wolverine and change history. He fails and it sets up a Stable Time Loop.
• You No Take Candle: Misha’s spoken English sometimes strays into this.