Monday, December 17, 2012

HE-MAN AND THE ASTEROID OF DOOM by John Grant and Robin Davies



He-Man and the Asteroid of Doom is a 1986 Masters of the Universe children’s book written by John Grant and illustrated by Robin Davies. Here, Hordak seeks to control an ancient power source in orbit around Eternia.

It’s 1986 and Grant’s still making the same fundamental mistakes: here we have Grayskull-as-headquarters and Zodac-as-evil-minion. Ah, well, at least he’s consistent. This is one of his better stories, though, as the three-way rivalry works quite well. It’s a shame, however, that a fundamental part of the story turns on Skeletor being too dim-witted to realize that bringing a giant exploding asteroid down on top of Snake Mountain might not be a great idea. But on the whole, this is a pretty enjoyable story (one factor may well be that we expect quite a bit worse from Grant and are then relieved not to get it).

Davies’ art surpasses all his previous He-Man work. His characters and backgrounds look good in most cases, and his space scenes are excellent, particularly because of the use of color. The Fright Zone and Horde ships are done very faithfully to the Filmation style – that’s a nice, if unexpected, touch. The only real criticism here is that what’s described as a “great metal ball” looks confusingly like a natural satellite.

It’s a pretty solid book in any case, but in nearly every way, He-Man and the Asteroid of Doom is superior to all the Grant/Davies collaborations of previous years.

RECOMMENDED

Read it HERE