Everybody whose a fan of the classic He-Man and the Masters of the Universe line knows that with each action figure came with a 8-10 page mini-comic. But very few know that in the late 80s, MOTU ran as a weekly newspaper comic strip. Maybe the fact that only about a dozen major cities ran the strip has something to do with it. Could also be the sad but inevitable fact, that for the time, He-Man was running out of steam with the kids of the era.
Dark Horse continues it's compendium of all things He-Man in this massive 2017 hardback! When I say massive, I'm not lying. The book weighs about 12lbs. It has over 500 pages. Plus this collection of strip is over-sized, much like a tabloid. I honestly have no idea where I'm going to store this thing as my graphic novel shelves can't hold something this big!
He-Man, Man-At-Arms, Orko and friends battle Skeletor, King Hiss, Hordak and the mutants of Trogg on the far-out future world of Primus . There's also some all-new characters such as a woman named Miranda who wins Duncan's heart. However, due to copyright/licensing issues, She-Ra and her cronies do not appeared anywhere in these stories.
The first 6 or 7 episodes are really well done. The color job on the Sunday strips are so amazingly bold. They look like screen shots from the animated series, only done with crystal clear clarity.
Towards the end of the run, most of the American publications had dropped the strip. But since most foreign nations were still getting 'first run' episodes of He-Man on their national TV stations, the comic managed to survive until the early 90s. While the quality of the strips were good in both story and artwork, the preservation of the strips was sorely lacking.
A total of 1,674 days worth of story were produced. Amazingly 98% of them were able to be retrieved thanks to microfilm preservation of newspapers or the clippings of those lucky few fans who got to read the paper first run. Still, some of those finds weren't of the best quality and they do not translate into high-grade paper very well at all.
As for those missing tales, editor Daniel Chabon and his staff do a great job describing the missing scenes thanks to script notes from the original creative team of Chris Weber, Karen Willson and Gerald Forton; all of which sit-down for in-depth interviews of the creative process throughout.
I really enjoyed this collection. But even more, I enjoyed the kick-butt customer service I got from bellwetherbooks, a seller on Amazon. My collection of He-Man mini comics was missing 30 pages. As a replacement alternative, they gave me this book for free! I'm not saying that you need to take advantage of them or worry that they provide damaged books. But I do recommend them as a company that fixes it's mistakes, has good communication and super fast shipping and good prices! Give them a try!
As for this book- a very good read with some editing issues. Some are Dark Horse's fault. but for the most part, it's due to not being able to find pristine negatives because Filmation and or Mattel decided to trash them.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
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