Warheads and Grey Knights

[YorkNecromancer]

So this thing called the 90's happened.

I was eleven at the time and just starting my first year of secondary school. Action Force had just been renamed GI Joe for some reason, but we were all growing out of that and leaving it behind us now. Especially since one of my friends had brought in this thing called a 'Space Marine' that was small, came in kit form, and seemed so much more grown up by comparison.

Rogue Trader was two years old, and Marvel comics was conducting a bold experiment in the UK. You see, it had its sights set on tapping into that sweet, sweet 2000AD money that Tharg and his buddies were making hand over fist.

The thing about British Comics, is, well... That they're not like American ones. American comics are full of heroes; bold, muscular white men who reduce the difficult problems of a complex world to simple issues that can be resolved through the relentless application of physical violence.

(In the Dark Age of the mid-nineties, they would do so while wearing a lot of pouches, and the less said about the anatomical impossibility of the ladies the better, but this story is from the early months of that decade, and those sad days were a ways off yet.)

British heroes, by contrast, tend to be somewhat more… complex. Which is a polite way of saying 'f***ing insane'. The longest running British superheroes are, in order: Sherlock Holmes (a social introvert and cocaine fiend who solves crimes through sheer mindpower), James Bond (a rapey misogynist and borderline psychopath), Doctor Who (a space alien who defeats jobbing Rada actors in rubber suits using increasingly unlikely Deus Ex Machinae) and Judge Dredd.*

Judge Dredd, you see, is the closest approximation a British comic has ever managed to make of an American superhero, but he's basically nothing like any of them. In politics, he's probably closest to Batman, if Batman was a clone who used guns and only upheld the law while utterly ignoring the idea of justice... Okay, ultimately, he's not a hero at all. He has no personality, no character to speak of, and is best described as the purest form of fascism imaginable, as written by mildly inebriated, chuckling Brits who find the whole concept of America equal parts ridiculous and charming.

In short, he's pretty fantastic, but he's not the kind of character you can make a whole lot of children's merchandise about. (Gotta sell those Spidey pyjamas!)

Unfortunately for British comics, he's the biggest name we have as far as superheroes go, and as a result, Marvel saw this strange little series with its lantern-jawed, psychopathic lead and thought: "Must be what the UK wants. F*** it: give 'em more of that".

Thus it was that on the very same day I bought my first box of RTB01 Marines, I also bought 'Overkill' issue 1.



'Overkill', you see, was Marvel UK's first real attempt at creating original content. It was part of the greater Marvel universe – although ultimately all this meant was that occasionally Wolverine would have a cameo to boost sales – but being set in England, was largely free of the predominantly New York-based Marvel mythos.

This was because there had been literally no Marvel stories written set in the UK before. Well, none anybody cared about.

Taking this absolute creative freedom from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's American template quite entirely to heart, 'Overkill' was positively epic in ambition. Each week would have four separate strips (copying the model established by 2000AD), each running to a few paltry pages – usually about four a week. However, where Marvel US's characters were trapped in designs influenced by the positively heroic amounts of LSD Jack Kirby must have been taking during the psychedelic 60's, the Marvel UK's characters would be influenced more by the nascent UK rave scene.

Seriously, this is one of their characters. She literally could not be more nineties UK if she tried.



Now, where am I going with all this meandering, you may ask?

Grey Knights.

A brief foray to Lexicanum will reveal this little tidbit:

Aegis Armour is a specialized protective device mounted on the Power Armour of members of the Grey Knights and Ordo Malleus. Worked into their Armour, each Aegis Suit is a lattice of psychoconductive filaments and amulets, wrought into hexagrammic wards and inscribed with anti-daemonic prayers. Aegis Armour allows Daemon Hunters to better combat Warp Entities and Rogue Psykers by protecting them from psychic attack. The technology incorporated into The Aegis represents the most potent anti-psychic defenses in the Imperium of Man.

Grey Knight armour is also significantly different to most other Marine armours. It's famous for being polished steel, with inlaid gold lettering – the hexagrammic wards mentioned above. It also has a high gorget to protect the neck.



So far so "What are you on about? This is a long and meandering load of bollocks."

Well, bear with me.

You see, one of the very first artists to work for Marvel UK was a Scottish artist called Gary Erskine and his work was f***ing fantastic. Seriously, look at this stuff:




All his stuff is this good; that is some amazing art right there.

It's also the very first concept sketches he did for a series called 'Warheads', which would be one of the more successful strips.

You see, the gimmick 'Overkill' had, was that all the heroes were fighting the same villain – or group of villains in this case. They were called MyS-TECH, and were a coven of black magicians who had sold their sould to Mephisto, Marvel's analogue for the Devil, in exchange for immortality. They had then parlayed their skills at magic into science, finance, and political power, to the point that in the Marvel universe, they essentially owned the UK, along with a level of magic-based-science that would make HYDRA crap its fetchingly green pantaloons.

MyS-TECH, you see, weren't content with just having Earth science, and that's why they founded the Warheads units. In a comic series that was basically a far more amoral version of 'Stargate SG-1', each week, readers would follow the adventures of Kether Troop as they journeyed through a mystically-opened portal (generated by Master Key, their psyker) and greeted whatever was on the other side with a hail of small arms fire before nicking all their stuff.


This is them.

They were basically a group of interdimensional D&D Munchkins.

Whatever they brought back would be delivered to MyS-TECH, and they would be paid according to its value. It was quite an awesome idea, but it never really lived up to the promise, running for the equivelant of 12 American-sized issues before dying a sad, unlamented death.

The thing about 'Warheads' was that the art was all. The stories were absolute cack, but Gary Erskine's art was bloody amazing.

Now, how does this connect to Grey Knights, I hear you ask?

Well, do you notice their armour? It's kind of hard to tell in the badly coloured image above, but all Warheads wore a suit of special armour. Here, you can see it better in these concept sketches:



The woman in the middle, Leona, is wearing standard Warheads armour. The other two aren't (Gregory, the chap on the left isn't, because that's a sketch of him off-mission, and Misha, the crazy looking witch-lady on the right isn't because she's mad) so just focus on Leona. All Warheads wore that armour pretty much as standard, and when they coloured it right, it wasn't camoflage or anything. It was polished metal; 'data files' published weekly in the comic revealed it was actually silvered for purity against spirits – MyS-TECH were all about magick, you see. The rituals that sent the Warheads off on their kleptomaniac quests had a tendency to lead them into actual outstretches of Hell itself, where they would frequently be forced to fight off daemo... Sorry, demons. To keep them safe, you can see from the pictures that Warhead armour was also inlaid with gold bands that had a variety of protective hexes and wards carved into it.

Sound at all familiar?

Oh, and it also had a conspicuously high gorget.

The Warheads also had a technique called 'Tempest Formation', which was mentioned in a datafile but never used in a story, where the soldiers in a Warhead troop could form an occult pattern, and the runes on their armour would magically generate a cleansing flame – issuing from the troop commander no less - which could destroy anything, although at the risk of killing them with its perilously warping energies.

Here's the kicker: at the time 'Overkill' came out, Grey Knights looked like this:



Their aesthetic was a lot more 'samurai' than it was 'knight'. It wasn't until 3rd edition that they became the Daemonhunters we know them as today.

So am I saying that the modern Grey Knights are ripped off from an extremely obscure 90's comic that approximately twenty people remember and five still like? No. Of course not. It's an utterly tenuous link, and there's no way you could say the two things are the same. But despite that, I still think it's interesting that the 'Warheads' fluff and designs are so suspiciously similar to the modern incarnation of the Sons of Titan.

Not to mention: look at that f***ing artwork. Gary Erskine is the man.



____________________________________
* Yes, I know that three of those aren't really superheroes in the 'conventional' (i.e.: spandex and steroids) sense, but come on - I'm not going to start talking about characters like The Spider and Captain Hurricane. This is obscure enough without getting into things so occult that only Alan Moore's daughter knows about them.

[Path Walker]

All I can think after reading this is why isn't Misha wearing pants? Misha, you're going to catch a cold.

[swoods]

Not to mention: look at that f***ing artwork. Gary Erskine is the man.

Looks like he was commissioned by GW for some of the Rogue Trader art work too?

EDIT: Although I can't find any reference to it. Perhaps John Blanche, Jes Goodwin et al took their inspiration from him for some of their black and white drawings.

[Christian Møller Hansen]

what a great post,, thank u very much, i will definitely look into that comic!!

[YorkNecromancer]

Looks like he was commissioned by GW for some of the Rogue Trader art work too?

AFAIK no, he never was. He's basically always been in comics, with the occasional commission here and there. I don't necessarily think he inspired Goodwin or Blanche either, but it'd be nice if he did.

All I can think after reading this is why isn't Misha wearing pants? Misha, you're going to catch a cold.

I always thought it stranger that Mischa went barefoot everywhere. They might have teleported to The Planet of Broken Glass and Tetanus for all they knew, and then where would she be?

Tch. The male gaze. Inna final analysis, it never makes sense.

[Blood Shadow]

Geez this takes me back!

You know I was only thinking the other day about how mutants (Marvel & 2000AD style) were a thing in Rogue Trader. At least that's how I remembered it in the book, I'm sure there was fluff for guys with super powers other that psykers.

Anyone else know if this was a thing or not?

[Gotthammer]

[Mr Mystery]

British comic books rule! Deathshead anyone?

I think the biggest influence in the time the GW artists and their contemporaries grew up in. Lots of post industrial and post imperial landscapes.

Good example? I now work in Canary Wharf, also known as docklands. This area was extensively redeveloped in the 80's (possibly 70's?).

In the 1960's, Docklands looked like a vision of post industrial hell. Abandoned docks, rotting warehouses, redundant cranes. Back then, Britain was in the grip of post-Imperialism, and still recovering from the two world wars. Our industry was slipping away as globalisation began to kick in. The goods and technologies that made us the world power were being made cheaper and better overseas. It was cheaper to import them. Communities were losing their livelihoods, and this decline continued to the 80's, and in some instances to this very day (Welsh mining towns for instance).

Yet, we still had the trappings of Imperial Glory. Sights such as this.



You can actually see my office in this photo - right hand side, blue windowed building.

All these mighty edifices built off the riches of Empire, right next to industrial decay. Sound familiar? Here's a photo from 1970's Isle of Dogs, also part of Docklands.



It's quite the juxtaposition. Yes, other areas in the world have similar areas of post industrial decline, but without quite the architectural heritage of Britain.

The whole look of 40k, 200AD etc are understandably influenced by such things

[William Lang]

British comic books rule! Deathshead anyone?

Marvel UK also did some impressive work with the Transformers license.

[The Lemur]

But Grey Knights first appeared in 1989 (in WD114), not the '90s. Also the 2 "samurai" designs aren't the original models.