The Sunbird Legacy is a 1983 Masters of the
Universe comic written by Roger McKenzie and illustrated by Adrian Gonzales
and Fred Carrillo. Here, Skeletor his minions attempt to collect the pieces of
an ancient doomsday weapon.
This is an action bonanza: we’ve got ice monsters, lava
monsters, undead monsters, swamp monsters, and snake monsters. This feels like
the Filmation Eternia – a place filled with countless species of monsters and
communities of creatures. The artists do an all-around good job – the
characters, monsters, settings, and action are all solid; whoever colored it
had a few lapses, though. The highlight of the art is the fantastic cover by
Earl Norem, the quintessential He-Man artist (even if He-Man is about to get a
Havoc Staff to the kidney).
The Sunbird Legacy has a noticeably darker, more
mature tone than the other MOTU media from Golden Books. In addition to
Skeletor threatening to drop a nuke on the Royal Palace, there’s also a fair
amount of blood when He-Man decapitates a snake monster, for example.
All things considered, the writing is fairly good. While we
know there’s going to be some type of bungling that lets He-Man cheaply off the
hook every time, it’s always good to see Skeletor doing well for himself. He
gets a couple of very nice villainous lines here, too.
A couple of other notes: Prince Adam and Randor look like
their Filmation versions, but Man-At-Arms and Teela don’t. In a villainous parallel
to the Sorceress that was never seen again in any other media, Evil-Lyn turns
into Screeech. And He-Man offers a less optimistic Eternian take on Matthew
19:26 when he says, “With Skeletor all things are possible.”
In all, The Sunbird Legacy is an entertaining,
surprisingly mature (relatively speaking) He-Man story.
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