Masters of the
Universe #2, “Falling Stars,” was written by Mike Carlin and illustrated by
Ron Wilson and Dennis Janke. Here, two factions of living meteors land on
Eternia and encounter He-Man and Skeletor.
So much for that character-development potential we saw in
the first issue; this is little more than a prolonged ad for some
bottom-of-the-barrel toys. Man-At-Arms is horrendously out of character – he is,
throughout, grumpy, insulting, rash, and oblivious. Nobody else is doing
anything development-wise except Orko, who’s learning the same
be-careful-and-stop-breaking-things lesson he learned at least a dozen times in
the cartoon.
This is the third origin of the Rock People that we’ve
looked at so far, and it’s inexplicable. They’re all different in terms of what
happens in the stories, but they all accomplish the same thing in about the
same way. I don’t mind that we’re playing fast and loose with canon for these
peripheral characters, but why are we retreading all this old ground? Connecting
the Meteorbs – a line of completely unrelated Japanese toys that Mattel
licensed – to the Rock People makes sense, but they’re still stupid and
pointless. If we’d wanted that stuff, we’d have gone and bought Transformers,
which at least didn’t all turn into the exact same useless thing.
The art has the same pluses and minuses as the first issue.
Half the comic is an overwhelming flood of ovals, laser beams, and action lines,
but the artists do a good job with most everything else. He-Man transforms in
some kind of weird bodybuilding pose that lets him fit between the other panels
on the page.
This one is thoroughly substandard and disappointing.
NOT RECOMMENDED
Read it HERE
