See my video review of the 2026 Masters of the Universe movie HERE. (Spoiler warning)

I am going to give you a quick synopsis of my thoughts on every iteration of this fiction. Just a couple of sentences before I drop a review of the new movie with spoilers. This might help someone understand my take on things.

• Minicomics generation 1- “Mini-Eternia” or “Miniternia.” These original stories were wonderfully barbaric, with more violence than we would see until the 1987 movie and some truly twisted plot points more fit for adults than kids, but sold to children no less. No Prince Adam. No Orko. No Cringer. I love most of these for their violence and weirdness.

• Filmation- He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was the beginning-of-the-end for Filmation studios…a legendary studio that competed with Hanna Barbara in the more “budget” style of making cartoons with stock images. (Rather than through-drawn like Disney or Warner Bros.) As such, the animation was the peak of that cartoon factory’s life, and was truly wonderful by the time they were animating their final show, She-Ra: Princess of Power. These shows were light-hearted and aimed at a cautious children’s market with a demographic at the time of 2-10 year olds. And this, along with the toys, is where the CORE MOTU fans really are at. Very important when discussing everything else here on this blog entry and discussing the 2026 movie.

• Minicomics generation 2- These really are just smaller Filmation cartoons, but they are more laser-focused on representing current toys on the shelf. This is the nature of how they were made…kind of in the packaging department. So a wave would come out with a few new comics that represented the other stuff in the wave. They all generally kept the schema of Filmation in mind, each having a transformation sequence and most having at least Teela, Man-At-Arms, Orko, and Skeletor.

• Print Media- These are all of the “other books.” DC Comics had a line that was closer to Miniternia. Marvel had a line that was closer to Filmation. The He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Magazine (American) also featured more of a Filmation style. This was more blatantly an advertisement, however. I like looking at these for nostalgia’s sake. Not only is it He-Man centric, it also brings up old cartoons, snacks, movies, etc. in the environment it was printed. (like old comics do). There were storybooks also, and these didn’t have ads! Golden Books, and others. Usually Earl Norem did the cover, which to me was worth the price. They were all Filmation-context, but usually had even more outlandish fantasy settings and problems. There was also a record-with-storybook. I loved the art in this as a child!

• Non-USA Media- I don’t know a whole lot about this, but the regulations overseas (not-in-the-USA) were different, for instance Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles because the word NINJA was banned for children in Britain. For Masters of the Universe, they printed most of the same mini-comics but with localized language. There was an entirely different British magazine, and notably made use of a letters-from-Scrollos column that had a different take on characters that have been folded into the overall lore. Also, Goat Man was a prominent character in a British storybook. If you have heard of Anti-Eternia He-Man, that is from German audiobooks that were read on-air over the radio.

• 1987 Masters of the Universe movie- Sometimes called Masters of the Universe: The Movie. This one is its own thing. It threw out much of the Filmation story and became more of a science-fiction action film. The story wasn’t driven by He-Man so much…to me it feels like the “side characters” of Julie (Courtney Cox) and Kevin (Robert Duncan McNeil) were the leads, followed by Skeletor (Frank Langella) and Evil-Lyn (Meg Foster) and then Gwildor (Billy Barty) and then He-Man (Dolph Lundgren) as points to drive the story forward. It filled a lot of holes that budgets couldn’t address at the time in ways that have a cult following similar to the Mini-Ternia crowd commands. No Orko, so we have Gwildor. Most of the story takes place on Earth…in LA apparently. No Battle Cat. No classic vehicles. There are Star Wars-like Storm Troopers. The villains include Beast Man, Karg, Blade, and Saurod…Blade is pretty cool, and Beast Man is scary. The other two are “just there”. The real gem here is Langella’s Skeletor. You can see a my full analysis from a couple of years ago HERE.

• Masters of the Universe Newspaper Comics- I never saw these “in the wild” as a kid…our news didn’t print them. As an adult, I have the collected edition…and talk about a narrative that is kind of hard to follow. The problem is they have to often stop and remind the reader what is happening…you might have missed the day prior. So there is this slow movement on what happens in the story…it takes awhile to get through an arc. I have read two of these arcs, and I find it tedious and exhausting. However, there are plenty of funny moments!

• New Adventures- As a kid we had a couple of the toys, and the first mini-comic that had Grayskull destroyed and replaced with Starship Eternia. That is all I have to say about it. I have never watched the show ever except for possibly a snip of an episode. Some of the character designs are cool, but those toys were very different from the originals. And destroying Grayskull is akin to killing Optimus Prime.
• Mike Young Productions He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (200x)- There was a long break with no He-Man action after New Adventures flopped out. And this is what scares fans like me. I remember seeing the commercial for this well before it came out, and was completely overwhelmed! But then I couldn’t see it all until it was released on DVD because of the way Cartoon Network scheduled it. It was done in the style of “American Anime” which was a fad for cartoons for awhile. (Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender is an example). The designs were updated to be more EXTREME. I liked the tight continuity…kind of like three or five episode story arcs. And they built out a new map of Eternia with new races and creatures. Of everything, I like this about as much as I do Filmation, but some people criticize it for that forced style. (Hyper detail, hyper sexualized female characters, and lots of weapon twirling).
• Masters of the Universe Classics bios- This was Scott Neitlich’s baby. He tried to pull everything together into a concise story. (In Transformers they call this “aligned continuity”). I feel like he did pretty good, but took a lot of flack from fans also. This was Scott giving everyone his “head canon”, but people like to make up their own…and that is one of the criticisms that his ideas were printed on the backs of official products. But he was successful enough to use this as a platform to introduce new action figures. Some were from “development hell” like Dare (He-Man’s son), and some were new ideas, the best of which had to be Draego Man, and the worst…probably The Unnamed One (Dark Orko). By the way…the current line of Origins figures…these are similar characters…brought about from production sketches, discarded stories, etc.
• Modern Comics- DC had a good long run alongside the Classics line that was its own story. I have this entire collection, and love how they explored the Snake Men and the Evil Horde more in depth. If you see Despara, this is a character born from DC comics. (This is Force Captain Adora remixed into a much darker design). They also began the comics crossovers mostly using the artist Freddy Williams II. Dark Horse has been doing Masters comics for the past couple of years. Several of the crossover series feel a little “bad” to me sometimes, especially the Thundercats one. Dark Horse currently has a new ongoing comic with a new story that begins with “The Sword of Flaws,” which is kind of a story about Skeletor’s sword.

• Netflix She-Ra and the Princesses of Power- I have watched most of a season of this and find it enjoyable. You don’t see many modern “magical girl” shows…this one has Adora saying “For the Honor of Grayskull! (What does that even mean?)” Which sums up the relationship of this show and other Masters of the Universe property. Netflix “divorced” it from the larger universe because of rights issues. You still have Hordak and the Evil Horde. The relationship between Catra and She-Ra is a main story in this show.

• Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation season 1 and 2, and Revolution- What Kevin did was TICK EVERYONE OFF with the first five episodes. First of all, this is the most beautifully animated cartoon of Masters of the Universe. It is like Filmation 5.0, but with no-holds-barred in the fighting. And there is an all-star voice cast, including Mark Hammil as Skeletor and Henry Rollins as Tri-Klops. Oh yeah…William Shatner as Keldor. Making this the first project with Luke Skywalker and Captain Kirk together! But back to him ticking us off. Imagine…the guy who created the movie “Dogma” making people mad…It was like he did EVERYTHING to rub everyone wrong in the first five episodes, including killing off He-Man and Skeletor right at the beginning. And then when the five episodes were done, there was a followup episode where he appears to be high as a kite and gloating about it! (Netflix took that down pretty quickly). There was so much hatred for it, it seems that Netflix paid attention and had Smith rectify a lot of what was done in Season 2. But I have to question the heart of that. If Smith wanted Teela and Andra to be a thing, or for Andra to be the next He-Man, that should have been his creative license. But at the end of the day it is all about the Benjamins I supposed, and making people mad doesn’t sell toys or keep people streaming. The Revolution show…now this was a beautiful follow-up. And it wraps up all of the Filmation/Kevin Smith storyline neatly with He-Man and Tri-Sorceress Teela apparently husband and wife. I have become a fan of Smith’s whole project, and wish he would make more using the cliffhanger of the Horde and Despara, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. One thing is certain, I would purchase figures of the Tri-Sorceress and He-Man in their design that appears at the end. Also, the Sorceress of Havoc is an AWESOME design.

• CGI Netflix show- Never watched it. Ram Ma’am? Orko is a robot? Hard pass on this one.

I have seen the new movie twice as of this writing, and have a review with spoilers coming soon. Thanks for reading!