The Rock Warriors is
a 1985 Masters of the Universe
children’s book written by Michael Kirschenbaum and illustrated by Fred
Carrillo. Here, Skeletor creates an army of rock creatures and unleashes them
on the Royal Palace.
This is a perfectly fine story idea, although the degree of difficulty
seems too low – He-Man never has the slightest bit of trouble destroying the
rock monsters, no matter how numerous they become. But the real problem here is
that the story is undone by quite a bit of foolishness.
I mean, how does mining work on Eternia? They’re wandering through
the forest “searching for precious metals.” And then it turns out (SPOILER)
that plain old water not only dissolves the creatures (which are made of stone,
not sand or dirt or mud), but Skeletor’s actual ray gun as well. On page 7, how
is it that Skeletor’s minions are clutching onto the Roton blades (which should
be rotating at a high rate of speed)? And then Buzz-Off, the
one Heroic Warrior present who can fly, gets “trapped by a stream.”
Generally, Carrillo’s art is quite good, both in terms of
figures (with the exception of He-Man’s epic arcing horizontal crotch-punch* on
p. 21) and backgrounds (well, on the pages with backgrounds), although he makes
some interesting style decisions: the palace is done like a Roman villa, for
example, and Snake Mountain is in the middle of the jungle. Earl Norem’s great
cover is also a highlight.
In the end, though, The
Rock Warriors is a good story idea brought down by too much nonsense.
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
Read it HERE
*This punch has “the force of a thousand raging bulls” – I’m
glad we got that quantified.
