Set in the shared Marvel Universe, it's a Sequel Series to Death's Head II: The Wild Hunt, the limited series that originally introduced the titular Death's Head II (a Legacy Character who is not usually referred to as Death's Head II in-universe).
Death's Head is a cyborg built in 2020, an almost unstoppable warrior who's assimilated the knowledge and combat skills of over a hundred elite targets. As told in The Wild Hunt, the last of those targets was the original Death's Head — which led to an Assimilation Backfire when he uploaded Death's Head's robotic mind. That original version of Death's Head is now the dominant personality in his successor's shared consciousness.
Allied with the organic replicant Tuck, he's now defeated the enemy that he was created to fight - the demonic sorcerer Charnel — and is looking for a new direction in life. Life, as always, has other plans.
The first issue was released on October 13, 1992. The series ended with issue #16, which was released January 25, 1994.
The Death's Head II ongoing series contains the following tropes:
- Aborted Arc: A Clue from Ed. mentions that the Ten-Sec limited series will feature more of the Light Brigade and explain more about their mission. No such series was published, though.
- Artifact of Attraction: The Sapphire Lotus inspires obsession in those who study it. And it's also a Monster Magnet drawing minor supervillains into the area.
- Back to the Early Installment: In "Payback Time", the prologue to the "Birth Rites" arc, Death's Head and Tuck travel to 2020 to discover more about his creation. Or, at least, they try to - the Light Brigade intervene to stop him interfering with his own past, so they're trapped outside while Minion and the original Death's Head robot battle inside the building.
- Bad Future: The distant future where humanity is extinct, Death's Head is dead, the Milky Way galaxy is believed entirely lifeless and only the alien Chronozone, last survivor of his race, still lives.
- Brain Uploading: Death's Head has to use his syphon a couple of times, although neither adds an entirely new personality to his Mind Hive.
- A destroyed Liger golem gets what's left of its mind assimilated, to help establish how the androids are being created.
- In Chronozone's Bad Future, Death's Head assimilates the memories of his own future corpse so that he can prepare for the invasion and Set Right What Once Went Wrong once he returns to the present.
- Clarke's Third Law: Discussed and played straight. Methinx, the dreaded necromancer of Annwn, is secretly an alien using very advanced technology - on the Evil Luddite world of Lionheart, it's easy enough for him to masquerade as a wizard. Death's Head figures that out pretty quickly and calls him on it, though.
- Copied the Morals, Too: The golems of Kadagar and Tuck both turn against Alkemist, acting as the original people would.
- Evil Doppelgänger: Antibody, the UnEarth's copy of Death's Head. His color scheme is inverted (red chest, blue hair) and he has Color-Coded Speech bubbles, with white text on black.
- Fusion Dance: Once both halves of Charnel are reunited, they merge back into one being. Which is bad news for everyone.
- Humanity's Wake: The human race is extinct in Chronozone's Bad Future. As is the rest of the galaxy.
- Impostor-Exposing Test: Pilgrim Kadagar's duplicate points out that Alkemist's golems have no sense of taste. Death's Head later uses a bitter drink to check that Tuck is really herself.
- Long-Lived: Kite. Doctor Necker casually notes that, like many mutants, he seems to have an extended lifespan. She should probably have paid more attention to that.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: Wrathchilde starts as an incompetent c-list (at best) villain who can't walk and rant at the same time without walking into a pillar. Once he taps into the power of the Sapphire Lotus he's capable of fending off Death's Head and the X-Men, growing into a potential planet-wrecking threat.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Death's Head averts Chronozone's Bad Future by Brain Uploading his future self's dead mind, using its memories to learn how the alien race exterminated humanity, and then returning to the past, pre-warned and able to thwart them.
- Shout-Out: Death's Head II disparagingly refers to the Light Brigade's cyborg centaurs as the "My Little Pony squad".
- Time Police: The cyborg centaurs of the Light Brigade are tasked with protecting the timelines from tampering.
- Tomato in the Mirror: When Captain Hutch crushes Kadagar's wrist he suddenly realises that he's not the real Kadagar. He's an artificial 'golem' copy and the damaged wrist reveals wire and circuits, not flesh and blood.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- The Antibody, UnEarth's Evil Doppelgänger of Death's Head, manages to escape into the real world at the end of their battle. Despite its desire to kill and replace Death's Head, it's never seen again.
- At the end of the "Golem Program" arc, on 21st century Mars, Crowe refers to the offer he made Death's Head the last time they met, which is still in Death's Head's future. The series doesn't get time to show that encounter before it's Cut Short.
