He-Man at Image Comics

On June 10th, 2002 Mattel revealed at an licensing show in New York that

Mattel, Inc. today announced...that it has granted MV Creations a non-exclusive multi-year contract to produce brand-related comic books, posters, wall calendars, lithographs and wall scrolls. 

...MV Creations joins a growing list of licensees producing Masters of the Universe products for consumers..."Masters of the Universe is truly a mega brand, and we are pleased to welcome two such reputable licensees (ACI and MV Creations) to the He-Man family," said Jeffrey Orridge, Vice President of Boys/Entertainment Consumer Products at Mattel. 

"Working with Mattel on the Masters of the Universe brand is a dream come true for all of us here at MV Creations, " said Val Staples, President of MV Creations. "This is a valued opportunity to apply our passion and dedication to what is already an extremely popular and successful brand, helping to push it into new heights in the world of comics and art." 

Couple days later there were interviews with Val Staples and most of those interviews online showed pin-up images of He-Man, Skeletor, Beast Man and Man-At-Arms.

One early pin-up image I always liked was this artwork by Emiliano Santalucia of He-Man holding on his hand the IMAGE COMICS logo.

It has a very angular style, which Emiliano was asked to draw with his samples for Mattel. The art-style was based on images done by Mattel's Ruben Martinez.
Before trying out multiple styles to draw Masters of the Universe-characters upon the designs of Four Horsemen, Emiliano had a very strong style with heavy use of blacks in his artworks.
Which is why I also like how breezy this artwork looks in comparison. The colours by Val Staples give it a nice quality and I wouldn't have minded seeing these sorts of images on merchandising back in the day.

2002 Comic-related merchandising

When MVCreations got the gig to do the comicbook Masters of the Universe, licensed under Mattel, they also had rights to do related merchandising like posters, stand-ups and wall-scrolls.

Here's one image drawn by Emiliano Santalucia for a Wall-scroll with He-Man standing in front of Castle Grayskull. I love this artwork for He-Man's battle stance and the overall mood in the piece.

The background also seems to have on lower left-corner the stone-marker that is found in the MYP Background-art of Castle Grayskull. Or maybe it's just my personal belief it is the same thing.

From what I know, there is also a wall-scroll of Skeletor standing in front of Snake Mountain, but I don't know if the wall-scrolls were ever actually sold through MVCreations' website. Possibly some were sold on ebay later on.

If anyone has the image of Skeletor wall-scroll, I'd appreciate any help. 

Comic Cover homage #1

Couple days ago I showed the He-Man.org exclusive variant comic cover for Volume 3 - Issue 1 of the Masters of the Universe comicbook.

If you thought that it seemed familiar in some way, you'd be correct.

The artist Nathan "Baena" Baertsch paid an homage to vintage comic-covers.

Mainly the booklet that came with said toy: "The Power of Point Dread!"/"Danger at Castle Grayskull!"

It is really great to see these elements in the updated cover. Skeletor looking menacing as ever high above He-Man, shooting a magical-blast from his Sword. He-Man ready with his shield and Powersword on the ground.
Personally I would have also liked seeing Castle Grayskull in the background on the updated cover-art, but the mountain-backdrop helps gear the eyes at the characters themselves.

There was also a mini-comic cover that is similar to the booklet ("The Power of... Point Dread!") but when comparing the covers, my bet goes to Nathan paying homage to the booklet-version. 
Below is the mini-comic version for good measure. :)

Pony-tailed Ancient

More MVCreations goodness this week!
In Volume 1 - Issue 2 of the Masters of the Universe comic, the Sorceress tells He-Man, Man-At-Arms and Orko about the Shard of Darkness and how it was part of the Shakarran Crystal.

In the panel we see six Ancients containing "a powerful evil" inside the Crystal. On the far-right is a pony-tailed Ancient who actually is a nod to Eric "Cornboy" Mayse of the Four Horsemen, toy-sculptors for Masters of the Universe-line back in 2002. 

This interestingly marks the second time Cornboy has made an cameo-appearance in the comics done by MVCreations.

Fantastic render of Serpintaur

When MVCreations studio was handling the Masters of the Universe comicbook in 2002-2004, they featured some great variant covers and gave some talented fans a chance to help out with the comic.

One of those fans (also a professional freelance artist) was Nathan "Baena" Baertsch, who did coloring on couple comic-covers as well as illustrated some himself.
The one I'd like to feature today is from Volume 3 Issue 1 He-Man.Org exclusive variant cover. Featuring Skeletor on a Serpintaur against He-Man.

The details especially on Serpintaur are really awesome and I wish Nathan could have illustrated more "monster-art" for the comics. I would gladly buy a print of this whole image.

There is a great deal going on with the Serpintaur's face alone. The wicked smile accross its face, lot of details with the small horns and an expression that is purely malevolent. Also I just like to think that this creature was harnessed by Skeletor himself, without the aid of Beast Man, whom we saw controlling these creatures in Mike Young Productions' season 1 episode "Dragon's Brood".

Missing Havoc Staff

In the season 1 episode "Trust" we have a chance to witness bad guy having to work with a good guy as Stratos and Trap-Jaw are trying to locate Eternium-mineral in the Ice Mountains. It is also the only episode we see He-Man wearing his Ice Armor.

At the end of the episode there is an animation error with Skeletor's Havoc Staff with amusing results.

The Staff is computer-generated in the scene and in US broadcast-version at Cartoon Network, the Staff is completely missing as Skeletor lifts it up and shoots at the Kulataks. Thus allowing us to see "through" Skeletor.

When the episode was released on DVD, the animation was corrected to include the cgi-animation of the Havoc Staff. This would be one good occasion when it came to cgi-weapons... -But that is another post for another day.

Exclusive Interview - Voice Actor GABE KHOUTH

Gabe Khouth is a canadian voice-actor who did the voices for Orko and Mekaneck in the 2002-2004 He-Man series by Mike Young Productions. I was very lucky to get a hold of him via Twitter and Mr. Khouth answered some of my questions.

#1: Can you tell me about yourself and about the projects you've worked on in the past?

In 1989 at the age of 16, I got into High school theater & signed with a Vancouver based Agency. I co-starred in a Canadian Film "Terminal City Ricochet" with Punk legend aka: Dead Kennedy's Jello Biafra & Peter Breck.


#2: How did you end up working at MYP for the He-Man cartoon?

I auditioned early '01 & did not hear back for months until the show was greenlit. Began recording in Nov '01 and I just remember wanting the part of Orko that the 4-month wait was excruciating.


#3: You voiced Orko and Mekaneck. Which character was more fun to voice?

Orko is like jazz, lots of fun & improve. However, I don't usually play a big strong guy like Mekaneck so I really cherished that role!

#4: What was your favourite Orko and Mekaneck episode?

Orko's origins episode "Lessons" was great & Mekaneck really only had one good episode "Mekaneck's Lament". I was disappointed that the writers didn't really want to honor Mekaneck's character that much. I guess they wanted [to introduce] New Heroes & Villians!


#5: If you could choose, what character besides Orko and Mekaneck you would have wanted to play the voice?

I would have loved to play He-Man of course, especially in the New version as Adam was more of a teenager & then transformation voice.


#6: Michael Donovan is credited as the voice-director. How was it working with him?

He-Man was my first series cartoon regular so I learned a lot from Mr.Donovan & cast. Scott McNeil taught me the most.


#7: What have been your latest projects and where can people find more information about you?

I am Herman the crab on ABC KIDS "Shelldon" cartoon. I am involved in a couple of cartoon series just gearing up & Dead Rising 2 video-game.

Thank you very much for this interview!

Thx for your creative questions & interest. Cheers!

Revealing titles...

I've mentioned in the past how title-translations fascinate me.

From what I've found out, Germany and Italy had episode-titles translated onscreen and I've been lucky to get some fantastic screengrabs of the German-titles from Alec77 and Polygonus.

This example comes from season 1 episode "Sky War".

"Sky War"-episode in itself was a great follow-up to "Courage of Adam" in depicting the tension between Buzz-Off and the Andreenids against Stratos and the Avionians. During the episode Skeletor manages to get a hold of Ambrosia that the Andreenids have in their catacombs and after eating a piece of it, gets a new armor (modelled after Battle Sound Skeletor figure).

The german title is "Ambrosia für Skeletor" which translates into "Ambrosia for Skeletor".

It is an interesting translation, one that sets up the idea that Skeletor will get a hold of Ambrosia sooner or later. Also it shifts the focus to the B-plot about Skeletor going after Ambrosia, while the main plot of the episode was the tensions between Stratos' and Buzz-Off's people.

Skeletor's cape...

Skeletor confronting Randor at Evergreen Forest in "The Beginning"...

Skeletor fighting He-Man on the Drawbridge of Grayskull for the first time in "Lessons"...

Skeletor overpowering heroes with his dastardly plan in "The Council of Evil"...

When I think about those pivotal moments, I see Skeletor wearing his cape. The cape was a great addition to certain episodes for Skeletor to wear. Adding a bit of mystery, regal and overall awesomeness as far as I look at it.

The cape rocks - and I'm glad it wasn't overused in the Mike Young Productions cartoon.

DVD Menu Screens - Finnish

The He-Man series by Mike Young Productions got its DVD-debut in 2004 for the European market. Germany, Netherlands and Finland got varying amounts of episode-releases to DVD.

Finland got the entire first season released on DVD with 4:3 ratio and one thing I found interesting was the menu-screen for the DVDs.

This screencapture is from DVD Volume 1 that contained the first three episodes of season 1. There are no extras and only finnish-dub is available. But the background-image used in this menu-screen was very familiar-looking...

It actually is a cropped version of a Wallpaper-image from He-Man.org, done by Emiliano Santalucia. I don't know for sure if the webmaster over there or Emiliano were contacted about using the artwork. I certainly hope so.

On the DVD there is no credit given to He-Man.org website, but what I also found fascinating was that whoever decided to use this artwork on the DVD used it propably because the cross is the familiar symbol for He-Man.

However in the cartoon by Mike Young Productions, He-Man doesn't wear a cross-symbol on his harness so the reference is lost to any new fans. Instead the cross can be found on Prince Adam's belt-buckle.

Stratos' miscolored face and beard

When the new He-Man series began in 2002 by Mike Young Productions, they aired a pilot-movie "The Beginning" that later was split into the first three episodes.
Around the third act of the movie, He-Man has saved the Defenders of Eternia and in a bit of an akward piece of writing, gives them a new title "Masters of the Universe". In the panning shot we see all the warriors and end up with Stratos on the far right.

But as the pilot movie aired as three separate episodes, I noticed something with episode 2.

At the end of "The Beginning - part II", we get a series of shots from the upcoming episode as we hear the narration "Next time, on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe!".
There is the same shot of heroic warriors when He-Man turns to face them, but for some reason Stratos' face and beard are miscolored.

Don't really know why or how this happened, but again one interesting difference between the movie-version and episode-releases.

Wallpaper Week #7 - King Grayskull Statue

Some of you have asked about MYP-related wallpapers so I decided to dedicate an entire week to them!

For the last day of this Wallpaper theme-week, I present a larger version of the King Grayskull-statue!

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Wallpaper Week #6 - Group shot of Heroes and Skeletor on his Throne!

Some of you have asked about MYP-related wallpapers so I decided to dedicate an entire week to them!

In honor of saturday, here are actually 2 Wallpapers!
A group shot of the Heroes!

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And second one has Skeletor sitting up on his Throne with Panthor by his side!

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Wallpaper Week #5 - Planet Eternia

Some of you have asked about MYP-related wallpapers so I decided to dedicate an entire week to them!

Here is a great shot of the Planet Eternia!

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Wallpaper Week #4 - Castle Grayskull

Some of you have asked about MYP-related wallpapers so I decided to dedicate an entire week to them!

Today we have Castle Grayskull!

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Wallpaper Week #3 - The Sands of Fire

Some of you have asked about MYP-related wallpapers so I decided to dedicate an entire week to them!

Next we have the Sands of Fire!

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Wallpaper Week #2 - The Royal Palace

Some of you have asked about MYP-related wallpapers so I decided to dedicate an entire week to them!

Next one is The Royal Palace!

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Wallpaper Week #1 - Snake Mountain

Some of you have asked about MYP-related wallpapers so I decided to dedicate an entire week to them!

First up is Snake Mountain!

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From concept to cartoon

Here is a comparison image of Teela by the Four Horsemen and how the Mike Young Productions translated from that concept-artwork (by Eric Treadaway) onto animation.

The Four Horsemen considered Teela to be roughly 16-18 years just like Prince Adam is depicted as 16-year old. I always loved the concept-artworks by Four Horsemen and Teela is no exception.

Captain Randor and Keldor

One aspect I always wanted to know more of, was the relationship between Randor and Keldor.

In the cartoon by Mike Young Productions they never said it on-screen that Randor and Keldor were brothers. They gave small mentions here and there and story-editor and writer Dean Stefan has mentioned in an interview at Masters of the Universe Chronicles-podcast, that one idea they wanted to execute; was a flashback with young Randor and Keldor.

It would have shown Keldor being the "bad seed" of the family with possible attempt at poisoning their father, Miro. Now that flashback sounds like a great concept.

Also the people at MVCreations were planning to do a prequel mini-series comic that would have highlighted young Captain Randor VS Keldor. The story would have been written by Marv Wolfman and artist Andy Tong was attached to do the pencils. 

The prequel would have been four issues, published in early 2004. Marv Wolfman has recollected at a Baltimore Convention in 2005 that he had lot of fun writing it and proud because it was a character-driven story. Unfortunately he couldn't remember a lot about the story as he had misplaced the scripts.

Apparently 3 out of 4 issues had been written before the project was ended. First issue would have started with a six-month year old Prince Adam, as Randor was off to "do his thing", which possibly means fight in the war against Keldor.

Artist Andie Tong has stated that:

"Sadly [I] did not receive the script, nor know the main jist of the story. Was just told what to design. Started designing but it was canned shortly after. So didn't even really get into designing the characters proper. 

Never got to do any of the interior pages." 

Hopefully one day the scripts by Marv Wolfman could be located so fans would get a glimpse of the prequel-story...

The Mystic Wall in ruins...

In season 1 episode "The Beginning - part I" we learn how The Sorceress and Man-At-Arms had formed a Mystic Wall that kept Skeletor and his henchmen on the Dark Hemisphere. The Mystic Wall in itself was no new idea but it was great to see how the 2002-cartoon handled it.

During the episode Skeletor manages to destroy the Mystic Wall and we don't really see it afterwards.

Which is why I find this panoramic-view of both halves and ruins of the Mystic Wall in the middle terrific. It is a great image that shows the scope for the Mystic Wall that should have been featured more in the series.

With Masters of the Universe comic Volume 1, Issue 2 we see He-Man embark on a journey to the Dark Hemisphere and Man-At-Arms and Orko travel with him up until the ruins. Once again the ruins look really interesting and it is a shame it was not visited again in the comic either.

The whole idea of a giant magical wall separating a planet in two halves is a fascinating idea and I would have loved hearing more about it in the 2002-cartoon.

Title Differences #1

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe pilot-movie "The Beginning" aired on August 16th, 2002 at Cartoon Network. The movie was later used as the first three parts of the animated series.

The movie-version has only been released to DVD as a store-exclusive (Target) when purchasing the BCI-produced Volume 1 of the DVD-set.

For some reason I'm fascinated with episode-titles and how they appear on screen. Was looking at the movie's title and noticed the quotation-marks...

With the US broadcast-version, the quotation-marks are more curvy and what I consider more natural-looking as they are mirrored around the text.

In the DVD-release however, the quotation-marks are narrow, straight quotes (also known as "dumb quotes" from what I've understood).

Why this small change, I don't know. The latter became the norm for the titles in the middle of season 1 with US-broadcast versions and apparently ended up on the DVD-releases.

Trap-Jaw homage #2

I already showed you one Trap-Jaw homage last week and here's another one that comes courtesy of MVCreations, the studio that worked on the Masters of the Universe comic during 2002-2004.

The people at MVCreations were fans of the original toy-line and cartoon/comics so they included lot of easter-eggs and homages during the comic's run.

In a special Target-exclusive 2-pack of He-Man and Skeletor action-figures, there was a comic packaged in. The comic showed one panel where He-Man bends Trap-Jaw's mechanic arm.

This is an homage to Filmation series where in season 1 episode "The Diamond Ray of Disappearance" He-Man grabs Trap-Jaw's Lasertron weapon-attachment and bends it.

So you see how Trap-Jaw paying homage exceeds in both cartoon & comic. ;)

"Evil-Lyn's Shadow Warrior!"

Here's a page from issue 1 of the UK's Masters of the Universe comic by Toontastic. It reprinted the Volume 2 - Issue 1 story of the MVCreations' comic-story "Dark Reflections".

Though the cover for the comic featured cartoon-versions of He-Man, faded image of Skeletor and at top-corner Man-At-Arms. The comic was geared more kid-friendly as is evident by this page where Evil-Lyn has made shadow-versions of the characters and one does not match.

Somehow the idea of a "Evil-Lyn's Shadow Warrior" amuses me, because in the first season episode "Lessons" we see Evil-Lyn use her magic and become a shadow when she visited the Faceless One and even later at Castle Grayskull. I'd like to think the people working on this comic knew about it, or it just might be a happy coincidence.

Also I enjoy seeing these model-images of the characters. What I find interesting is the inconsistency of the artwork having cel-shade. He-Man and Mekaneck are basic flat-colors but Man-At-Arms, Teela and Ram Man are given cel-shaded shadows.

Familiar looking kid.

While the Filmation series for He-Man was known for their re-use of animation-cycles and model-sheets for multiple characters, the Mike Young Productions version of the cartoon did not shy away from re-using character-models.

In season 1 episode "The Island", Man-At-Arms is injured while visiting his mentor Dekker alongside Teela and Prince Adam. Man-At-Arms asks Teela to remember her lessons and we cut to a flashback of a Younger Teela sitting in a class-room that was being taught by Duncan.

Behind Teela, we see a black-haired boy who doesn't look all that excited to be in the class.

While looking at the episodes recently, I noticed that in the moral-segment for season 2 episode "Of Machines and Men", the same black-haired boy appears again.

In the scene the boy is saved by Ram Man and doesn't have any dialogue just like in the flashback with Teela. This re-use of a background-character is of course no big deal when comparing the reused material Filmation did, but personally I thought it was interesting to discover that this kid either had time-traveling abilities or simply hasn't aged at all.

Menacing Skeletor...

Oh how I wish there would be an blu-ray release of the He-Man series by Mike Young Productions. The cartoon would look really great in all its widescreen-glory.

Here is a panning shot of Skeletor pointing his Havoc Staff at He-Man, from season 1 episode "The Beginning - part III".

Click to see full-size and use it as Wallpaper. :D

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How does the Transformation look to an outsider #1

In first season episode "Lessons", we get for the first time a glimpse of how the transformation-sequence from Prince Adam to He-Man looks like, as imagined by Mike Young Productions.

Prince Adam and Man-At-Arms have tracked down Evil-Lyn, Beast Man and Trap-Jaw to the Ruins of Zalesia and as Evil-Lyn emerges outside with the Ram Stone, Prince Adam is ready to transform and we don't hear the magic-words or theme-tune, only this wide-angle of how the transformation plays out.

Out of nowehere in the sky a green circular energy is building up and shoots down a blue streak of lightning..

Then as the lightning has struck down, the green vortex grows a bit more in size and disappears eventually.

Personally this was a fascinating way for the animators at Mike Young to showcase how the transformation might look like.

Though I wonder how this works when Prince Adam is indoors. If the magical lightning strikes through buildings...