Review : He Man and The Masters of the Universe issue 1

 He Man and The Masters of the Universe issue 1



THE MOST POWERFUL BOB IN THE UNIVERSE!!!!!

Written by Keith Giffen

Art by: Pop Mahn

HERE BE SPOILERS.

 

Ahhh, Masters of the Universe. Golden memories of summer mornings spent watching the poorly animated treat from Filmation,  followed by going outside to kick a ball around for nineteen hours before bed time. Great days. Great Days. Even as a child I realised (like most people have ) that  MOTU was a shite ,and although  the 2002 reboot was a lot better it didn’t exactly have a lot of staying power did it. I thought we had seen the last of the most powerful man in the universe.

A re-launch of the Masters of the Universe franchise seems like an especially unlikely candidate for a DC book in 2013 given how “New 52” centric the company has become over the last 18 months, and yet clearly the Minis and one-shots must have sold enough to make it seem viable as He-Man and the Masters of The Universe is now an on-going. It’s not so much the choice of licensed property, more the fact that it’s a licenced property at all. I know that DC had the rights to MOTU back in the day and all that, but if you squint hard enough at it you would swear this was an IDW title. Oh well.

Picking up where the six issue mini leaves off (I’m assuming this as I didn’t read it) the people of Eternia are preparing to celebrate the life and mourn the death of the Sorceress, when they fall under attack by the forces of the Horde. The rest of the issue is just a big battle leading to the shocking reveal. The Horde, by the way are  being led by a weirdly sexy Hordak kind of female type thing which left me in a strange place where I found myself finding Hordak kind of hot, and asking myself serious questions about my sanity. Fortunately the final page which reveals that it’s actually She Ra wearing a mask took care of that issue but also raised a second set of different questions about my sanity.

The battle for Eternias' huge....tracts of land.

In tone this finds itself somewhere mid-way between a loving homage to both the original Filmation series and the 2002 re launch, and an Ultimate’s style reboot. It takes the elements of the cartoons that are acceptable to a modern audience and ramps them up. The elements that are unacceptable? Well they get kept too, but made fun of. It’s not exactly reverential to the source material, but there’s certainly enough here to keep the nostalgia crowd happy without out it being a turn off to non-fans.

 

The writing is nothing earth shattering, but Giffen is a favourite of mine and he manages to work in enough of his trademark witty dialogue to keep things moving along at a sharpish pace, and The Jim Lee influenced art by Pop Mahn (awesome name) is super solid, so the whole thing is entirely decent enough that I would be interested to see more. A decent first issue that will hopefully lead to better things down the line.