I finally got the Cover B of issue 2, so now I have a complete collection of Masters of the Universe MASTERVERSE comics.
I am going to discuss in a little bit of detail my feelings about these, so there will be spoilers. I am going to leave some dead spaces for your protection, readers!
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So the MASTERVERSE comics start off with a rather weak and throw-away connecting story. Zodac has visited the Sorceress to discuss the balance of the universe, and how He-Man might be unnecessary or dangerous. She shows him the Nexus of Realities, which looks like a portal crossed with some kind of screen, and they watch He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and their consequences across a variety of settings.
Which encapsulates what they have been trying to do with this brand recently, doesn’t it? They are trying to kind of say, “It doesn’t have to be what you remember it being.” The prevailing stories that people have are Filmation and Mini-Comics. I would say the movie, New Adventures, 200x, box art, and others are out there, but not the main stories that people have. Mattel wants to skew this view maybe as marketing, maybe as philosophy…who knows.
Issue 1 is one of my favorites! Prince Adam and Orko have ventured into the forest or something, and they are attacked by Webstor, Batros, and finally Scare Glow. And you keep thinking, “Why doesn’t he change?” It is like he is putting it off, or hesitating. Finally, as Scare Glow has him down, he transforms by saying “By the horror of Grayskull!” into…”Castle Grayskull Man!” What? And then he beats down scareglow and absorbs his soul. The final panel shows Castle Grayskull with shining eyes, and there is narrative saying “The castle must feast again.” or similar.
This is a FREAKY angle. I loved it!
The second story is based on the art and style of Groo the Wanderer. I have never read that comic before, but I could just kind of tell the gist of what it might be like to read it by the cover art. So…This is basically a newspaper comic strip style of story. It is told with slapstick elements…He-Man and Skeletor are just goofballs. It ends with them playing video games together…I mean. I think it is cute. But it just isn’t for me.
Issue 2 both surprised and disappointed me.
The first story, the surprise, is a pirate story. Basically General Adam is leading the ship on a treasure hunt to find the power sword. Keldor is the one who had the king send them, and you can tell he has the king hypnotized. Sending Adam away served two purposes…get him out of the way of the usurping scheme, and then either have Adam killed on the journey, or he comes back successfully and gives up the treasure. This story presents us with Jitsu as a prisoner who knows how to access the island, and we get a sympathetic look at him. This was something different and nice. Essentially a monster destroys the ship and kills everyone on board, but Adam saves Jitsu and swims to shore, dragging him and cursing about the giant metal hand. When he finds the sword, he transforms, and then it is revealed Keldor’s true intentions, for the Power Sword reveals what its potential users would do with it.
The second story is the one that disappointed me. Here is why…Cover B shows a character. It is a noir style drawing, and that is fine. I thought it must be EXTENDAR. Look at what you see there.
That mask looks like Extendar’s mask. And so I thought maybe we would have a rare Extendar Story. Nope…it’s dust Man At Arms. This story presents Duncan as a detective, with Evil Lyn as his lady sidekick/secretary/lover? We get a glimpse that both of them have been exiled from their team of good guys or bad guys. This story doesn’t even have He-Man or Skeletor in it…Orko comes in saying he cast a spell that made Kind Randor disappear, and so he created a fake Randor to prevent alarm. But his imperfect copy says “meow.” Evil Lyn brings him his “tools” so he can collect evidence, and he finds an orange hair on Orko. So of course they go to a bar to find Beast Man. (Of course in this noir style they had to visit a bar). It is Trap Jaw’s bar, and all the bad guys are there, but they don’t seem very healthy, and they are drinking to forget how bad things have become without Skeletor. They also accuse Evil Lyn of being a traitor. So Man-At-Arms kicks all their butts. Evil Lyn chases Beast Man outside where it is discovered that he is high and hallucinating the good ole days from inhaling magic fumes that shouldn’t be there. So detective Duncan figures it out. There are unstable dimensional portals popping up because of “overuse.” The magic fumes were transported to outside the bar from wherevere their origin was. Man-At-Arms figures out that another portal must have done the same thing, causing Orko to hallucinate that the king was missing. And that Beast Man must have been there by accident, wandering between the locations using the portals while hallucinating himself. Oh yes, Duncan also implies that Evil Lyn might have had some hand in that portal being open like that, just so they could get some business. Meaning they are in cahoots flim-flamming people!
Really, a dumb story. The last noir Masters of the Universe story we had was SO GOOD. It was the one where Evil Lyn seduces the guy to get the Eye of Grayskull. Hub City Geeks…look this story up. It is terrific! I believe it was a web-only DC comic, setting up the New 52 He-Man books. That story was one of the best Evil Lyn stories, but also in that black and white style, it was wonderful. The story presented in MASTERVERSE is just dumb.
The third issue was probably the darkest of them all. Story one presents an “end of time” story, where Teela and her unicorn (this keeps coming up…that she rides a unicorn…an artifact from the original minicomics) are lone survivors. That great wars have come and gone, and the world is savage. She happens upon a lynching. Beast Man is tied to a stake to be executed. She starts to not intervene, but then her “ancestor spirits” tell her she must. These include Veena from 200x, and other former sorceresses. So she attempts a rescue, but as she begins to be successful, out of nowhere Savage He-Man attacks her! She comments that they are equal combatives, but she outsmarts him with a headbutt. When she is about to kill him, she is warned that she must not, that he is essential to the survival of the universe. Beast Man came to this world to find her because as a shaman, he also has ancestor spirits that told him to seek out the two of them.
The second story is highly enjoyable. But so dark. I became interested in this artist…David Rubin. He publishes something called “Ether.” This one is a riff on Thor. He-Man is with his drunk viking friends Ram Man, Man-E-Faces, and Stratos. They are adventuring around looking for their next drink, when they happen upon Skeletor about to sacrifice The Temple of Darkness Sorceress in a pit of fire. He is doing this to obtain more power apparently, and holds the Sword of Chaos. He-Man just says, “Oh Well. Not our problem!” though the other drunken masters believe they should intervene. They all set up camp and get into a fight over some beer that Ram Man had stashed in his armor. Obviously He-Man won the fight, and got drunk and passed out. When he woke up, he found the Masters were gone. He followed their tracks back to Skeletor, where he found them dead or dying. They implored him that he must save her! He-Man goes into a black rage and recounts being banished by Randor, (as he was once Adam Randorson,) and then beats Skeletor down and takes the sword. He actually catches the blade and rips it out of Skeletor’s hands, and beats him with the hilt, causing him to fall into the fire he was trying to use for the sacrifice. It turns out that the Sorceress could have left the whole time, as she was an astral projection. This all happened so that He-Man could wield and contain the power of the Sword of Chaos and save the universe.
I like both of these stories, especially the viking one. He-Man and the Drunken Masters of the Universe is a very strange twist for the story. (I mean…it is Thor and the Warriors Three, right?)
And the final issue. This issue doesn’t so much seem like a Masterverse presentation as it is a re-assertion of more recent stories. One thing both stories have in common, however is “We have the power!” I really just can’t bear the Netflix designs, the story pacing and dialogue, the character portrayals…None of it. To me it is just awful. I don’t even want to try and explain it here. I got a headache just reading it, similar to watching “Transformers, Dark of the Moon.” The other is a He-Force story. The He-Force was given to us at the end of the comic series “He-Man and the Masters of the Multiverse.” They are kind of a Justice League made of He-warriors from different universes…Hence “The Multiverse.” It is notable that the first thing we see in this story is He-Sol beating Skeletor in what appears to be a movie accurate Eternia. (He-Sol is basically the African American He-Man). He gets called away from this fight to join the rest of the He-Force to take on a Red Menace. It turns out to be Multiverse Modulok becoming inter-dimensionally present (They even call him Megabeast) as well as his brain, and this is causing everyone to be on his side to take over all universes. The original He-Man, dressed in his New 52 end of series armor, says that the He-Force has to give him his power back so that he can take out Modulok. This happens out of the story, where we see He-Man meet with Zodac and the Sorceress, as Modulok comes in to attack. And it is over pretty much in one punch.
Ok. The He-Force. I am not against it. I think all of the characters in it are interesting. Why can’t we have individual comics detailing each one by themselves?
I’m proud of my complete collection. Now i need to get some of them signed!