He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Magazine #11 is
the Summer 1987 issue – and, as you’ll note from Dolph Lundgren’s shaven thighs
and absurdly large one-handed laser rifle on the cover, it’s the movie issue as
well.
With the cancellation of She-Ra:
Princess of Power Magazine (which featured regular prose stories and no
comics because…girls are smarter?) after only six issues, She-Ra now becomes a
fixture in these pages. In this issue, that means a three-page prose story
featuring as many She-Ra action figures as could be crammed in. And the He-Man of the Issue has been discontinued, as the Princess of Power analog wasn’t brought over.
In this issue’s ridiculous comic story, “Blast from the
Past,” Skeletor retrieves his army of gun-toting dinosaurs from the past but loses
because he doesn’t keep the Cosmic Key with him, all the new henchmen from the
movie show up – including freaking Karg, and the colorist turns in a very
sloppy performance.
Aside from the movie characters being thrown into that story,
there’s actually very little going on movie-wise: a page and a half of photos
and a couple of paragraphs summarizing the plot and lauding the production
values in an attempt to whip readers into a movie-going frenzy.
There are a number of interesting ads here: a Garbage Pail
Kids movie I don’t remember at all; a twentieth-anniversary Star Trek commemorative plate featuring
Bill Shatner sitting in a pile of tribbles; Lorimar selling single episodes of
various cartoons for $15 each; and a Jif ad with an eyeball-destroying amount
of color (and dignity-destroying outfits).
Evolving from the previous issue’s feature on dinosaurs,
this issue features two pages of summer factoids that have nothing whatsoever
to do with He-Man – if you saw these pages on their own, you wouldn’t have the
slightest clue what magazine they came from. And one of the few activities here
isn’t He-Man-themed either! Man, we’re really going downhill.
This issue’s Norem poster (there’s only one) features He-Dolph
fighting Blade, with movie versions of everybody. It’s pretty darn faithful,
although Norem’s interior illustration of movie He-Man doesn’t look anything
like Lundgren.
You know what? After this issue, I’m just thankful they didn’t
put Snout Spout in the movie.
Read it HERE
