Two-Minute Warning
And there you have it: over seven months later, we’ve
completed our read-along survey of Masters
of the Universe print media in the 1980s (don’t think we’re done, though –
far from it – more on that below). If you’ve been with us this whole time, then
hoist the flag, and thanks again for sticking with us. I trust you got to see a
few things you missed growing up – I certainly did.
I won’t presume to try to offer any kind of profound insights
into this body of work; I think that would be unduly pretentious. (The most
cynical will of course say that every last one of these books and comics were
little more than glorified toy commercials, but the way I look at it, Mattel et
al. got my parents’ money and I got a happier childhood: a mutually
beneficial business arrangement.) I will say that the material was more or
less as I remembered it: some of it was great, some of it was terrible, and
quite a bit of it was middling, but I dare say that nearly all of it was
enjoyable. And we saw some fantastic art – from Alfredo Alcala, Bruce Timm, Earl Norem, and others.
I’ll take this opportunity to offer an opinion on a
related matter. As you may be aware, there’s a Masters of the Universe Classics toy line for “adult collectors”
(the figures sell for $20-$30) that began in 2008. On the packaging for these
figures, reasonably serious attempts have been made to try to standardize
everything – the mini-comics, the Filmation cartoon, the 200X cartoon, and
heck, even the New You-Know-What
cartoon – into one consistent canon. On the one hand, this is something of a noble effort, and,
as we’re not exactly dealing with Crisis
on Infinite Eternias here, it largely works, particularly as concerns the
two He-Man and the Masters of the
Universe cartoons and toy lines. But with respect to the earliest pre-Filmation
stories, it gets a little ridiculous.
Let me put it another way: Mattel, you lost me at “Oo-Larr,
the Jungle He-Man.” I’m never going to read those earliest mini-comics and
think, “Oh, this is Oo-Larr, the Jungle He-Man.” I don’t need (or want) Oo-Larr, the Jungle He-Man to make sense of my He-Man world,
just like I don’t need the Goddess and the Sorceress to be two different
entities – some of us remember how it really went down. Plain old regular He-Man, whether
he has a Prince Adam alter ego or not, does me just fine, thank you. Like the
old song goes, you can take this whole world, just give me He-Man.
Thus, because I prefer a little ambiguity to things like
having multiple He-Mans and knowing silly “real” first names for all the
characters, I have ignored the MOTU
Classics backstories, and will continue to do so. If, someday, a
new cartoon were produced using this revisionist continuity, then we can talk
about it; in the meantime, I don’t really see the point.
Further Reading
So we’re done with the 1980s. Did we get it all? In a word, no. There was a great deal of material
published in other languages (some reprints, some original); I’m not including
all that. I’m almost completely certain that we got all the Masters of the Universe books that were
published in the US and the UK (if I missed anything, though, please do let me
know). I know we covered all the comics, mini-comics, and magazines from the US.
But if, somehow, you still haven’t gotten enough, if you
have a fever and the only prescription is more He-Man, here’s a list of
the material that I know about which, for various reasons, we didn’t cover (with
links):
- When Marvel Comics prepared to kick off their run of Star
comics, they put He-Man on the cover of Marvel Age #38 (this was Marvel’s news/promotional magazine) and ran a three-page
feature on it (pages 19-21).
- There were two original comic book series published in the
UK: Masters of the Universe and Masters of the Universe Adventure Magazine.
Both had respectably long runs.
- There were two Masters
of the Universe newspaper strip stories: “He-Man and the Rock People” and
“He-Man and the Snake Men.” Those links have the content, but unlike most
everything else we’ve linked to on He-Man.org, the order of the pages cannot be
readily discerned.
- There were a number of annuals. The vast majority of these
pages are not available.
Here’s one more thing you might find interesting, although it
falls outside the purview of what we’re doing here. In the 1990s, Lou Scheimer
developed a series bible for a proposed cartoon that never came to be, He-Ro Son of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. This is relevant to our interests because it draws heavily from the
mythology already established: Adam and Teela are now King and Queen of
Eternia, numerous other characters return, and at least some of the character
designs are reasonably faithful to the old cartoon, although the whole thing is
extremely nineties (for the record,
this He-Ro is unrelated to the Powers of
Grayskull He-Ro).
The 200X Comics
We’re going to spend the first half of March taking a read-along look at the comics based on the 200X
cartoon. We’ll look at a fair amount of this material in arcs rather than review
every issue individually (for simplicity, we’ll deal with trade paperbacks where possible).
We’re going to look at everything that exists except for the
2002 Promotional Issue, because I don’t really see any point to it. You can
check that out HERE if you’re so inclined.
In these reviews, I’m going to assume a basic familiarity
with the cartoon; that is, the major ways it’s similar to and different from
the Filmation cartoon. Let me just say that for my money, the 200X cartoon
does a substantially better job with every supporting character not named “Orko,”
“Cringer,” or “Marlena,” and that this He-Man is to the Filmation He-Man as the
modern Superman is to Pre-Crisis Superman (that is to say, all things
considered, the new one is pretty cool, but I like the old, more powerful one better).
The New DC Comics
In the second half of March, we’ll look at the comics published thus far by DC in 2012 and 2013. This is a new, grittier mythos – we’ll try to keep an open mind. As this stuff is brand new, the vast majority of this portion won’t, alas, be read-along (yet...I’d be surprised if all of it isn’t eventually archived on He-Man.org). That will take us to the end of March, when we’ll finally wrap this bad boy up.
And so, onward.
