90’s comic fans may remember Death’s Head, a cyborg bounty hun–… Sorry, Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, known for his tenacity (and interesting speech patterns, yes?) What you may not know is that he originated in Marvel UK Transformers comics, well outside of the normal comics continuity on Earth-120185. So how, you may ask, did he get to the mainstream 616 reality?
That’s where The Doctor comes in…
After literally bumping into the Seventh Doctor somewhere in time, a confrontation that also shrunk D.H. down from Transformer-size to normal human… ish proportions, the wily Time Lord (whose comic-book adventures were also produced by Marvel UK, started way back in 1979) threw him through time and space, eventually depositing him on the roof of Four Freedoms Plaza in one of the Marvel Universes, and launching his adventures in the regular Marvel U. Of course, time-travel and dimensional hijinks have always been part of the Death’s Head schtick (he was last seen crossing swords with Tony ‘Iron Man’ Stark in deep space), but none of the miniseries, guest-shots, knockoffs and gimmick covers would have been possible without the direct, canonical* interference of The Doctor himself. Knowing is, indeed, half the battle…
*Current questions of what is actually still canon in the Marvel Universe are suspended until the end of Secret Wars in a couple of months. But dangit, it WAS canonical!
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And there was also some loose affiliation with Doctor Who in the Marvel UK Captain Britain series by way of The Special Executive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Executive