Head

Creation

Head was created by writer John Ney Rieber and artist Peter Gross in The Books of Magic issue 41, in 1997.

Major Story Arcs

Head is the leader of a group of gargoyles living in San Francisco. He is presumably called Head both because he is the head of the gargoyles and he has two heads.

Gargoyles were once humans, who had too many secrets. They consider themselves as Witnesses--Guardians of Secrets, and must protect their own secret. They work out of a Library of Secrets and must take turns watching over certain people, learning their secrets. They must not get involved with their subjects.

There are rumors among the other gargoyles that Head once lived in Atlantis, which is where he lost his wing, and possibly a previous Library.

One of his gargoyles, Reginald, finds out that Tim Hunter’s putative Other, Molly, is leaving him. Reginald believes Jack Hammer, the other gargoyle keeping watch over her, is going to interfere. He flies to tell Head. They become concerned that if Tim loses control out of anger about Molly, that he might destroy the gargoyles’ Library of Secrets. Head asks Reginald to interfere with Molly but Reginald refuses due to the gargoyle code. Then Reginald joins the other gargoyles to go to spy on Tim and Molly.

Jack becomes annoyed when the other gargoyles, including Reginald, show up to spy on Tim and Molly, but won’t take action. He knocks Reginald off his perch in front of the humans because he “doesn’t like self-absorbed nimrods” like Reginald or Tim, then reveals Molly and Tim's secrets to each other, getting them to fight, which leads Molly to leave--as Jack believed she should.

When Tim yells in anger at her leaving, the other gargoyles fly away. Jack expects to turn to stone the next day, now that he has broken the gargoyle rules.

Tim does get extremely angry, but does not destroy California or the Library.

A similar gargoyle is seen in issue 56.