Monday, February 18, 2013

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE #11 (Star, 1988)


Masters of the Universe #11, “Whose Enemy Am I Anyway?” is by Caragonne, Wilson, and Bulanadi. Here, He-Man and Hordak lose their memories, then team up. Now featuring characters from the She-Ra cartoon!

Are we sure Mike Carlin didn’t sneak back in to write the first few pages of this issue? Hordak has an absurdly vast invasion force – which is easily thwarted by bumbling jive-talking caricatures of heroes.

Once the story gets going, however, we do somewhat better. Amnesia is a tired old plot, but making enemies team up is a reasonably fresh take on it. Hordak gets some good character development here, even if there’s an obvious parallel between him and Darth Vader. We also get He-Man reaffirming the value of life, which is always nice. (And unrelated to the plot, Caragonne makes Battle Cat contemptuous of Cringer, which is a curious decision.)

Solid work again from the regular art team, although on page 20 it kind of looks like Man-At-Arms might have landed his ship right on top of some people. And between the beginning of the issue and the end, letterer Jack Morelli forgot that “Grayskull” is spelled with an a.

This one’s the weakest of Caragonne’s contributions to the comic, but it does more good than bad (if barely).

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT

Read it HERE