Not comics: Skeletor Has No Friends

Regardless of the quality of this summer's new Masters of the Universe movie, it definitely ushered in a flood of related merchandise. And given that the film is based on a toy line, one suspects that doing so was likely always a part of the point of producing the film in the first place. While I have long since grown out of the demographic to play with or collect the toys, I did find this one tie-in of interest: Writer Robb Pearlman and artist Andrew Kolb's picture book Masters of the Universe: Skeletor Has No Friends (Mattel Press; 2026), with its intriguing title and its cover image of the franchise's villain rendered in such a way that he is at once abstracted while some of his attributes are exploded.

What grown-up fan of the 1980s toy line-turned-cartoon could resist finding out what sort of story might lie beneath a cover like this?

As it turns out, Pearlman and Kolb present He-Man's archenemy and would-be tyrannical world-ruler Skeletor not so much as a villain or even a bad boss, but more of a bad friend, in a story which filters the familiar characters and settings of Eternia through Kolb's highly simplified and stylized art style.

Pearlman's word choice continually couches this actually gentle story about the virtues of being nice in the language of villainy, so that the narration, and Skeletor himself, both sort of insist on their overall badness, in a humorously defensive, "thou doth protest too much" kind of way.

"One gloriously gloomy day on Snake Mountain," the book begins, "the Evil Warriors were passing the time in between their evil schemes by playing a relaxing—yet evil—game of UNO."

Do note the reference to Skeletor and his allies as "Evil Warriors", with capital letters, just as they were traditionally denoted on the back of the packaging the action figures originally came in...and on the backs of the little storybooks and comic books that were boxed with them. 

Also, it was on this first spread, with its first-page mention of UNO and second-page image of Skeletor and his warriors all sitting around a stone table with UNO cards in their hands (below), that I flipped back to the title page to see if UNO, like Masters of the Universe, was owned by Mattel. It is.

Those warriors, by the way, are Beast Man, Evil-Lyn, Trap Jaw and Mer-Man...and Panthor, Skeletor's purple panther mount (the plastic toy of which was coated in fuzz), is seen napping in the corner). The designs, as you can see, are all great. 

While the toy line gave all the characters one of two basic body shapes (one for the male characters, another for the few female characters), Kolb's designs here are all quite different from one another, from a Beast Man who is pretty all torso and arms, with a tiny little head set in the middle of what looks like a spiked carpet draped over his shoulders and teensy tiny little legs, to a big-headed, skinny Mer-Man (I'm actually kind of surprised to see Mer-Man in here, as he wasn't in the movie, like the rest of the Evil Warriors here. Oh, and speaking of Mer-Man, note that in the image above, all of the characters have empty glasses in front of them...and Mer-Man has five, one imagines due to his aquatic nature. That's a nice, subtle detail). 

Skeletor has but one card left in his hand and is thus on the cusp of victory. He has only to wait for Beast Man, who is spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about which of his many cards to play. Beast Man eventually lays down a "Draw Bajillion" card. (I assume this isn't a real card, as I don't think "bajillion" is actually a real number. But then, I haven't played UNO since high school.) 

"This is an outrage!" Skeletor shouts, using his Havoc Staff to flip the table, blast everyone out of their chairs and send the cards flying. "How dare you keep me from my triumph!"

Evil-Lyn argues with sore loser Skeletor—"You can't keep expecting us to play with you, or follow you into battle, if you're mean to us," she says—before eventually leaving with Beast Man. There's a page with a three-image sequence in which Skeletor asks Mer-Man and Trap Jaw if they are leaving too, and they take turns telling him off. (Kolb subtly changes the expression on Skeletor's...let's say "face"...in the sequence, as he goes from confidently angry to somewhat surprised, even hurt.)

This leads to a passage in which Skeletor is forced to realize what it's like not to have any friends/henchmen, as he tries (and fails) to right the heavy stone table by himself, tries (and fails) to make "a deliciously evil grilled cheese!" and so on. He even has a plan to use a "Destructive Device" to "unleash chaos on Eternia", but is unable to activate it, as it requires pushing two launch buttons on two different computer consoles on other sides of the room. 

He then magically remembers "happy memories of him and his friends" which, amusingly, are a series of memories of times in which he ran away, leaving his "friends" in peril. Here's that spread, which, like the image of the UNO game above, I swiped from Amazon:

Due to some further magical shenanigans, the others see him admit that he's sad without them. "I like being evil," he says. "But I don't like being evil alone. I...I wonder if they'd come back if I promised to be a little nicer?"

They decide to give him another chance, and he struggles for several pages to be a bit nicer and more welcoming, even catching himself from calling them "fools," changing it to "fine folks" in mid-sentence. 

Once all is (temporarily...?) forgiven, Skeletor asks, "Now, would you all like to go capture He-Man...together?"

And thus we get a great double-page splash ending (this is from Kolb's website, and is thus missing the words that appear on it in the book proper):

Skeletor and his Evil Warriors are depicted charging from the right page at He-Man and his allies—Man-At-Arms, Teela, Orko, Ram Man and Battlecat—charging from the left. This is the only appearances from the good guys, but Kolb's versions of them are also quite fun. He even, and I am shocked to be typing these words, manages to make Orko look genuinely cool. 

The final words impart the moral: "That day, Skeletor learned the only thing better than being evil, was being evil with others by his side."

So yeah, no matter how bad a bad guy you are, it pays to be nice. 

Two of my nieces and my nephew are now too old for this book, and my other niece is still too young for it, so I don't have any little kids to run it by. But it sure seems to be a perfect example of that double-address one finds in all of the best all-ages works, with the basic story directed at younger readers, but with irony and meta-jokes there for the adults who will be reading the book to their kids (Perhaps, if their kids like it well enough, every night for months). 

I certainly enjoyed seeing Kolb's inspired, storybook take on the characters. 

And I hope whoever makes the next Masters of the Universe cartoon or feature film sees his long, lithe, creepy Orko, and uses that for inspiration...

*******************

You can see a few more pages from the book here at Simon & Schuster's website.

Or, better yet, here at Kolb's website. Do take some time to click around his site, as he draws a lot of comic, cartoon and video game characters. And if his name sounds familiar (or his art looks familiar), well, he drew a couple picture book tie-ins to past Spider-Man movies. I wrote about Spider-Man Swings Though Europe here and Spider-Man's Very Strange Day! in this post.

A relatively brief review of the Masters of the Universe movie from a critic who got the Castle Grayskull playset for Christmas in 1981:

In 1987, I went to see a live-action Masters of the Universe movie in the theater with my family. I was 10 years old and, by that point, I had been a fan of the franchise's toys, cartoon and other iterations for more than half of my short life. 

I did not care for it. I was baffled by the creative choices that were made and supremely frustrated by how far it strayed from its source material. 

At the time, of course, I didn't understand movie budgets, which I imagine explains why so much of it was set on Earth rather than Eternia, and why there were new characters like Blade and Karg* serving as Skeletor's henchmen rather than, say, Mer-Man or Trap Jaw. 

I also didn't understand the idea of audience or address, and thus had the studio made the argument that maybe that He-Man movie wasn't meant for me, a He-Man fan, I wouldn't have been convinced.

The new Masters of the Universe movie sure looks an awful lot more like what 10-year-old me would have appreciated in 1987. I saw a Monday afternoon matinee of it though and, to my surprise, the main audience did not seem to be middle-aged men who were fans of the franchise in their youth (although there is a lot in here for them, including Dolph Lundgren and most of the musical choices, outside of the one made due to Internet tomfoolery). Nor did it seem made for the next most obvious audience, today's 10-year-old boys. 

So, what is the audience? Well, last week I asked a twenty-something co-worker who sees lots of movies if she was going to see this one, and she said yes, and was quite excited. I asked if she had seen any of the past cartoons, of which there have been a few since the 1980s original, and she said no, but she knew and was interested in the franchise from its memes.

I suppose that's who they were going for here. 

The movie, quite oddly, seems to awkwardly attempt to both embrace and parody the source material, most of the comedic elements taking the form of the movie trying to preemptively laugh at itself. There's a, well, not serious, but at least sincere movie in here somewhere, but it is drenched in irony, so that no reference to the toys are cartoon can ever be made without a wink, nod or elbow to the ribs, to make sure that we know that they know how silly this stuff might seem, or that there's a more adult, sexual meaning to a particular character name or the villain's interest in the hero and so on.

It's fairly exhausting, and seemed, at least to me, more as embarrassment than deconstruction.

In an Eternia that looks like Middle Earth by way of Marvel Studios' Asgard, 10-year-old Prince Adam is shunted off-world while the kingdom's heroic defenders attempt to thwart an invasion by Skeletor's army. On Earth, Adam grows up (off-screen) to be something of a man-child, and, once he is finally reunited with the magic sword, he embarks on a hero's journey with comrades Teela, Duncan/Man-At-Arms and an off-model Roboto (who looks more Star Wars than Masters of the Universe). 

The story that unfolds is basically a power fantasy for little boys and/or man-children, one of the film's few clever conceits being how integral Adam's background in the Human Resources field serves him in a war between good and evil for the sake of the universe.

Jared Leto's Skeletor seems imported almost directly from the cartoon—in fact, with a CGI face, he essentially still is a cartoon character—and much of his dialogue, from his alliterative insults to his maniacal laugh, sure sound like things I would have heard as a little kid watching the, in retrospect, quite shoddily made cartoon. (I thought this Skeletor's voice was far too deep, though, and it took me a while to warm to all the bass in his voice; he might not have a face, but he certainly still has vocal cords.)

This film certainly makes better use of the catalog of characters available than the 1987 film did although, somewhat frustratingly, while there are dozens of faceless, nameless extras among the armies of good and evil, there are relatively few "name" character employed, and some of them are rather poorly used.

Among the good guys, in addition to those already mentioned, we see Ram Man, Fisto, Mekanek and, briefly, Moss Man**. (I have a feeling they were mostly chosen for the relative ease in translating them to live-action, as earlier characters like Stratos***, Man-E-Face, Buzz-Off and so on were left out). Oh, and a woman named Dian. Ram Man, Fisto and Mekanek are all named by Adam, and they initially balk at these childish nicknames, which they insist aren't their real names, and the in-movie explanation for them is that Adam calls them by those names because he was a little kid when he thought them up (Although, from personal experience, I think 10 is getting a little old for MOTU; that's around the time I started to lose interest).

Of course, their real names are so unimportant that they are never actually given; in fact, none of them are defined beyond the single trait that young Adam focused on, like, for example, that the guy he calls "Fisto" has a big fist. 

 Among the bad guys, the only one aside from Skeletor given a real name is Evil-Lyn. Trap Jaw's name, like those of most of the heroes, is a nickname given to him by Adam, and Beast Man, the other "evil warrior" with the most screen time, is referred to simply as "The Beast" in passing by Skeletor. As for the others, they are Tri-Klops, Spikor, Karg and, for some reason, a big red guy with horns that I didn't recognize from the toys or cartoons, but who the credits listed on IMDb identifies as "Goatman".

Why viewers are supposed to think of "Skeletor" and "Evil-Lyn" as serious names, while "Beast Man" and "Trap Jaw" are meant to be too silly to be believable, I don't know.

Even the name "He-Man", that of the star of the movie, is held back until the very end of the movie, as if it were a climactic punchline all the other name gags were leading up to.

Speaking of the characters involved, like the 1987 film the new one chooses faceless crowds over all the interesting and/or deeply weird characters from the toy line, so that rather filling the heroic and villainous armies with characters as recognizable as, say, Spikor or Tri-Klops, the good guys mostly just look like the Rebel Alliance from the latest Star Wars trilogy, while Skeletor's army looks a lot like Lord of the Rings' various orc armies, albeit with some of them wearing skeletal "uniforms." 

Even the character who do appear tend to get short shrift. For example Tri-Klops, whose defining feature is that he has three big eyes on a rotating visor on the top half of his face, each eye having a different ability, never reveals the fact that he has more than one eye, or that his visor spins, until a split-second before he switches to an eye that fires a beam, and only then because it then malfunctions in a way that takes him out of a fight. 

I liked the movie's Skeletor a lot. I know it's not cool to praise Jared Leto, and I suppose his involvement does deserve a bit of an asterisk as, even his voice has some effects added to it at various points, so that, combined with his CGI appearance, it's impossible to tell where Leto ends and the computers begin.

I thought both Nicholas Galitzine and Camilia Mendes, who play the adult Prince Adam/He-Man and Teela respectively, did a fine job carrying such an overblown special effects IP exploitation film, and they both seemed quite game to throw themselves into the mishmash of characterizations and tones they had to navigate from scene to scene.

My favorite part by far, however, was the soundtrack, particularly the overblown, over-the-top, '80s guitar rock instrumentals that dominated. It reminded me quite a bit of the 1980 Flash Gordon (And, come to think of it, one of the three pop song needle drops in it is a Queen song). 

I was also quite pleased that the film eschewed two aspects of the original cartoon series I hated—one a character, one an ongoing plot point—elements that, even as a six-year-old in 1983 when the show first debuted, I thought were dumb and childish...but then, in the last minutes, both elements are introduced. They are, of course, presented as jokes making fun of the cartoon, but still, I groaned.

Of course, the movie isn't really meant for me. 

*Full disclosure: I had to look up what those guys' names were, as I didn't remember them as anything other than some randos on hover boards from my viewings of the film, the last of which was probably over 20 years ago at this point.  

**He is treated similarly, but even worse, than he was in that Kevin Smith Netflix series. And Skeletor's joke about him here isn't as strong as that in Smith's show. 

***Late in the film, there is a brief reference to an "Avion village"; Stratos is from Avion. 

DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #6: Let's never speak of any of this ever again.

Don't get excited. That is not the cover for the sixth and final issue of DC's thunderously disappointing DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe crossover series, nor is it a cover for an upcoming issue of DC's ongoing He-Man and The Masters of The Universe series. Rather, it is simply a pin-up that artist Stewart McKenny drew, and which I noticed on his Facebook feed the same day I happened to buy the previous issue of the DCUvMOTU series.

I post it here simply for contrast. If you're familiar with the characters (i.e. you grew up in the 1980s), then you'll notice that they are a) slightly tweaked versions of the characters as they appeared in the, let's face it, pretty terrible animated series, based on toy line (McKenny's Skeletor is much thinner, almost skeletal, and Evil-Lyn's neckline plunges deeper than I remember from the cartoon, but otherwise, they look like an artist filtering the original designs through his own style) b) the core line-up of the villains, Skeletor's "Evil Warriors" (well, the core line-up, plus Stinkor).

Of those eight villains on the image, only Skeletor and Evil-Lyn actually appear in DCvMOTU, and then in severely redesigned, you-might-not-recongize-'em-form. It seems inconceivable to me that you would do a miniseries based on the premise of a clash between these two worlds and not even include the obvious encounters that occurred to toy makers years ago*...

...but hell, what do I know.

I guess what I found so incredibly disappointing about the series is that I tend to view these sorts of crossover stories as once-in-a-lifetime sorts of exercises (Think JLA/Avengers or Marvel Vs. DC), and therefore I expect them to be both very good and to get in everything a fan might want to see happen. It's hard, but not impossible. Marvel Vs. DC isn't a great example, but JLA/Avengers is...I'm pretty sure writer Kurt Busiek and artist George Perez worked in every member of every team ever, all of their villains, all of their supporting characters, chunks of their history and every available location.

This is nowhere near as ambitious, perhaps because Giffen plotted it to simply be another chapter of the ongoing DC He-Man and The Masters of the Universe comic book DC is publishing, which has set about redesigning the characters costumes just as severely as the New 52 initiative redesigned DC's superheroes, and rather radically altered the status quo.

Seen that way, I guess it makes sense this is really just another terrible story arc of a terrible ongoing comic book series, and wasn't approached as anything special or historic or something-somebody-somewhere-might-conceivably-give-a-damn-about. And, unlike those DC/Marvel crossovers mentioned above, I guess there's no reason DC can't publish another, better DCU/MOTU crossover at some point in the future.

I'm fairly certain that they can't publish a worse one those, as comics don't get much worse than this.


COVER:

The third cover artist to contribute to this six-issue series is Mikel Janin, regular artist for Justice League Dark, who is not exactly doing his best work ever here. That big, toothy pile of color effects in the background is "Dark Orko," the villain of the piece, while various members of the Justice League and the Masters of the Universe line-up rather asymmetrically on either side of the cover, Battle Cat doing the best job of hiding himself in shame from the readers' eyes (He's mostly obscured behind the UPC symbol and creator credits).

Wonder Woman's head, neck and raised fist, and at least half of The Flash, are still visible behind the tagline, reading "FINAL BATTLE! DARK ORKO VS. EVERYONE!"

While there is a sort of George Perez, Anti-Monitor vs. the DC Universe homage panel near the climax, "Everyone" here is a lot less ambitious than one might expect, given that two entire universes full of characters are mentioned right there in the title. In truth, the "Everyone" refers to the eight characters from the Masters of The Universe universe and maybe two dozen DC characters max, only a relative handful of whom actually do much of anything, or even get lines of dialogue.

For the final issue, the creative team re-falls apart a bit. Keith Giffen is responsible for the plot (Boooo!), whereas the script can be blamed on Tony Bedard (Boooo!). The art is mostly by Pop Mhan, who badly draws 14 pages, while an Eduardo Francisco draws six pages. There are two colorists, but they don't split their page assignations to correspond with that of the artists.

If you've forgotten where we left off, or succeeded in blocking it from your memory because it just hurt too much to think about, let me remind you of what has come before. Orko discovered the magic evil skull of Hordak's dad, and it turned him into "Dark Orko," a big, evil, monster version of himself; he conquered his home dimension of Trolla, turned all the other Orkos there into scary monsters, and then sent Skeletor to the DC Universe. There, the redesigned New 52 Skeletor teamed up with Black Alice, who was apparently just there to give Skeletor someone to talk to, and placed 12 magic siphons all around the world; these draw magic from the DCU and will channel it to the Orko, destroy Earth-New 52 in the process (So I guess that means we should root for Orko and Skeletor...?).

To keep the heroes off his back, Skeletor possessed the Justice League and pit them against He-Man and other arrivals in this dimension from Eternia, the first battle seemingly ended with He-Man stabbing Superman through the torso and making the Man of Steel disappear (In actuality, he was simply teleported to Trolla).

As of last issue, all the heroes were finally all on the same page, and they decided to team up with Skeletor to stop Orko. In retaliation, Orko possessed all of the super-people in the DCU and sent them to the House of Secrets to fight Skeletor and whoever was un-possessed. Why not just possess everyone via this global mind control spell? Because...

Because...

....

...Okay, I can't think of a good reason.

Anyway, let's read the last issue of the most disappointing comic book story of my life!

PAGES 1-4: According to Skeletor, "Orko sent your world's mightiest beings to destroy us!" These consist of Blue Beetle, Firestorm, Orion, Cheetah, Black Manta and a bunch of Batman villains—including The Joker (again), although I'm pretty sure that's an(other) art mistake.

This motley crew, visually identified as mind-controlled by the red lightning rising out of their eye-sockets, are meant to take out The Eternians, Batman and the Justice League Dark line-up. In order to cut off Orko's power supply (an save the world), Skeletor sends various teams of the un-mind-controlled to attack the siphons.

PAGES 5-8: Prince Adam, which we all know is He-Man before he says "Shazam!" and gets all big and muscular, has tried sneaking into Trolla in order to rescue Superman. After he exchanges some words with Orko, Adam shouts his catch prhase, turns into He-Man and cuts the magical shackles imprisoning Superman.

Orko sics "a billion" Trollans on them.

PAGE 9: We see four of the teams who have gone to destroy four of the siphons, each of which is apparently guarded by a mind-controlled DCU character. In Greece, John Constantine and Evil-Lyn are faced with Wonder Woman. In Egypt, Man-at-Arms and Madame Xanadu are faced with Black Adam. In Cambodia, Stratos and Deadman-in-Battle Cat are walking around (Not sure why Deadman is in Battle Cat; this version of Deadman doesn't need to possess anyone in order to speak to the living the way he did before the reboot). And, finally, in France, Roboto and Frankenstein fight Cyborg.

PAGE 10-11: Skeletor is fighting the mind-controlled Deathstroke, Batgirl, Scarecrow, Clayface, Bane and Killer Croc, but by "fighting" I simply mean he is posing and talking, while they are posing in his direction.

The rest of the page is devoted to Batman giving Black Alice a pep talk: "You have the ability to tap into the powers of those you've been in contact with," he says incorrectly (She has the ability to tap into the power of any magic-user, whether she's met them or not). At Batman's urging, she uses her power to borrow some of Orko's magic.

Now, the neat thing about Black Alice is that when she does this, she generally gets a one-time costume redesign, appearing in a generally scanty, goth version of a costume worn by a DCU magic user.

So one might expect her to appear, for at least a panel, in a naughty goth Orko get-up. This does not happen.

Instead, she just appears as a pair of eyes in the sky, breaking the mind-control spell, thus sparing Man-At-Arms from having his arms ripped off by Black Adam and Constantine and -Lyn from being similarly dismembered by Wondy.

PAGEs 12-14:

Superman tells He-Man he's "not much good against magic," so He-Man lends him his Sword of Power. They don't have to fight long though, as Orko opens a portal in Earth in order to collect the power he's had siphoned—but Skeletor jumps through it shouting "It's Mine!!"

While they wrestle, Superman and He-Man fly through the portal back to Earth, and Skeletor and Orko stumble after.

PAGES 15-16:

Dogpile on Orko!

This is the page that reminded me of that pretty famous COIE cover by Perez.

Although now that I look at them both at once, the Perez image is a little more detailed and dynamic, huh...?

PAGES 17-19:

Using his X-Ray vision, Superman sees the evil Hordak's Dad skull inside Orko, and hurls He-Man's Sword of Power at it, impaling it and instructing He-Man to "Get ready to light him up!"

He-Man intuits that this means to shout "By the Power of Grayskull!" This causes lightning to SHA-KOOM the sword-impaled skull, which...shatters the skull and doesn't something bad to Orko. Skeletor jumps on Orko's back, still shouting about the Power and that he must have it.

Constantine then snaps his fingers, and SWHFF the two villains disappear.

"Where are they, Constantine?" Batman asks, to which the mage responds "Gone, Batman. Forever, if I got it right."

Man-At-Arms isn't so sure; he cooly regards the closing vortex and says, "Let's hope so...But if there's one thing I've learned about Skeletor, it's that he always comes back."

PAGES 20-21: And then, Man-at-Arms and company suddenly react completely differently, raising their arms into the air and cheering at the defeat. He-Man and his mom hug (Oh yeah, He-Man's mom was in this, if you forgot. She's a lady from the DCU, and is somehow cursed so that she can never return to Eternia).

The best part is Teela and Man-at-Arms pondering their next move. "What do we do now? " Teela asks. "I mean, we did come here hoping to recruit Skeletor in our war against The Horde."

"We'll just have to find a different way to liberate Eternia," Man-at-Arms responds. The Justice League and a handful of superheroes from the DCU, who just accepted He-Man and company's aid in saving their world from Skeletor and Orko, not only don't volunetter, but Madame Xanadu and Constantine immediately open up a portal to Eternia and say "Godspeed to you all" and "Don't forget to write."

Nice heroing, a-holes.

At the bottom of the final page, there's a tag saying "Don't miss the origin of She-Ra starting in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe #13!" but, if you somehow made it through all six of these awful issues, I can't imagine you would be at all interested in following the Eternians on to their next adventure. Or the heroes of the DC Universe on to any of their further adventures. Rather than serving as some sort of incentive to sell the He-Man comics to DC readers or DC comics to He-Man fans, this miniseries was basically a strong argument for never reading any comics featuring any of these characters again.

But don't judge all of the DC line of comics by this miniseries! While it's true many of them are not very good, and most of them are mediocre, few if any that I've read have been as poorly made as DC Universe Vs. Masters of the Universe, which we need never speak of again, and can, in fact, now being consciously trying to forget.

Or should we instead keep it in the back of our mind at all times? Well, I don't know that we should, but certain comic book publishers, editors and creators should think of it as a good example of how not to do a cross franchise story. After all, those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it, and therefore I assume that those that forget DC Universe Vs. Masters of the Universe are doomed to repeat it, and nobody wants that...


*In addition to an Aquaman Vs. Mer-Man two-pack set, Mattel also produced a Superman Vs. He-Man, a Lex Luthor vs. Skeletor, She-Ra Vs. Supergirl, Green Lantern vs. Zodac, Bizarro Vs. Faker and Hawkman Vs. Stratos...that last match-up is the only one to actually occur in the comic book series, aside from the He-Man and Superman fight. Is it even worth pointing out that the toy lines have the characters in their classic looks, rather than the New 52 redesings of the DC characters and the updated looks of the MOTU characters? For the most part, it looks like the designs from the Super Friends or Super Powers show doing battle with the designs from the original He-Man cartoon...with the Bizarro and Supergirl hailing from Superman: The Animated Series.

DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #5: Just one more issue, and then we can forget this ever happened.

This week DC shipped the penultimate issue of their big event series pitting some of the most powerful characters from two alternate universes against one another, in the pages of Forever Evil #6. It wasn't very good, nor was it terribly interesting in any way. But it could have been worse. It could have been the penultimate issue of another DC event series pitting some of the most powerful characters from two alternate universes agains one another: It could have been DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #5.

As you'll recall if you're reading the series, or just reading my series of blog posts about the series, one-time court jester and created-for-the-dumb-cartoon-series comic relief character Orko, tired of being laughed at, became an all-powerful monster wizard guy, so powerful that Eternian Big Bad Skeletor now works for him.

He sent Skeletor to the DC Universe, specifically, Earth-New 52, where Skeletor enlisted teh aid of Black Alice, who has yet to use any magical powers of her own, or do much aside from occasionally sass Skeletor. They set up a bunch of magical "siphons," their intent being to drain this world of all its magical energy, destroying it in the process.

To keep those pesky superheroes in the Justice League out of the way, Skeletor had them all possessed (except Batman, who could not be possessed, because he's Batman) and sent them after He-Man, He-Man's mom, Teela and Evil-Lyn, who have journeyed to the DCU to stop Skeletor. At one point, He-Man impaled Superman on his magic sword, causing the latter to disappear and, because everyone in this book is an idiot, they assumed that meant He-Man murdered Superman.

The remaining Justice Leaguers, plus some of the guys from Justice League of America, the team in a book that DC launched exclusively to tie-in to "Trinity War" and Forever Evil and are will therefore soon cancel in a few months, go after all the good guy Eternians, which now include Man-At-Arms, Stratos, Roboto and Battle Cat, who have arrived looking for He-Man and friends.

Then the members of the third Justice League, the Justice League Dark, show up with Batman and break up that fight.

And, that's pretty much where plotter Keith Giffen, scripter Tony Bedard, artist Pop Mhan and the pair of colorists splitting up random chunks of the book to work on—Veronica Gandini and Tony Avina—left off.

So once more into the breach, dear friends...

COVER:

This is the first cover of the series not drawn be Ed Benes, an artist who I think I've made pretty clear in the past that I am not a fan of. This one is drawn by Bernard Chang, who is a pretty good artist, but it's hard to tell based on this terrible cover. Maybe this project is just cursed?

Just as this storyline has completely squandered the scores and scores of characters and settings that combining not one, but two fictional shared-setting universes have to offer, this cover ignores the 20 or so characters involved to present just two: Superman and, well, you might not be able to tell, but his name on the cover should serve as a pretty good clue that the abstract, vaguely skull-like shape in the background is Skeletor.

Superman is being beset by monstrous versions of Trollans, the native inhabitants of Trolla, Orko's homeworld in yet another dimension. The colorist, whom I think is Chang himself as no one else is credited, saw fit to make their blue skin and the red lightning auras about them almost the exact same shade as the red and blue of Superman's costume, so it all blends together into one big, ugly mess...with a little neon yellow trying to peek around the text and figures in the background.

"Trapped in Skeletor's Grasp," the cover says, despite the fact that, as we saw last issue, Superman is actually on Trolla now, trapped in Orko's grasp.

PAGES 1-4:

He-Man, his mom, Teela and Evil-Lynn arrive at the bottom of a rocky hill dotted with bare trees, the top of which is occupied by a shack that the caption tells us is The House of Secrets, which is where Skeletor has been holed up for much of the last four issues.

Inside, Skeletor is pretty happy about how well the magic power siphons are working—for evidence, we see that it has made Black Alice's legs and one of her arms very, very skinny. Black Alice is kinda sorta magic, I think—at the very least, she has a super-power which allows her to temporarily steal and use the magic powers of magic-powered DC characters—although I don't think that's been mentioned at all in this series yet.

Orko appears as a wall of fire with angry eyes to tell Skeletor about He-Man and mom are closing in, and, rather than leaving it to Skeletor to handle, Orko casts a spell that is variation of the one Skeletor used "to enslave the so-called 'Justice League'...Of course, my version is much bigger."

PAGES 5-7:

To emphasize how much bigger, we see the planet earth in long shot, surrounded by a red aura, while big, bolts of red lightning emanate from somewhere in North America, streaking all over the globe.

Meanwhile, in Gotham City, Man-At-Arms and his posse are staring down Batman and his posse, having apparently agreed to come to team-up since we've seen them last. "Then it is decided, Man-Of-Bats, we join forces against Skeletor."

Batman politely declines to mention that Man-Of-Bats is a different guy in a bat costume.

Suddenly, Constantine shouts "INCOMING! and FWOOSHes a spell to protect them from "some bad mojo" that "felt like mind-control, but on a massive" scale.

A message "squarks" in Batman's cowl: "To all who heed the master's call: Proceed to the encolsed coordinates. The Master's enemies must die!."

"That's the Justice League's global emergency frequency," Batman says, "There's o telling how many heroes might be receiving this." Really, notorious control freak Batman who builds secret backdoors into all Justice League technology and operating systems? No way of telling how many heroes are on the global emergency frequency?

Page seven is broken into an eight-panel grid, each showing a different meta-human, none of whom I think would be on that emergency frequency, but, as Constantine says, that spell will likely bring "every bleedin' metahuman" to the House of Secrets. Those shown here, each with glowing red eyes indicating they are being mind-controlled, are Black Canary, Killer Croc, Black Manta, Firestorm, Cheetha, OMAC, Blue Beetle and Orion.

PAGES 8-12:

He-Man and Evil-Lyn storm the front gate of the House, and while Evil-Lyn attempts to betray He-Man, Skeletor stops her, and immediately launches into a completely un-provoked three-page expository story, recounting some of the events from that terrible six-issue He-Man and the Masters of The Universe mini-series DC published a while back.

It goes like this. A long time ago Hordak killed his dad, Hordak Prime, and took his skull, which became a super-powerful, super-evil artifact. Skeletor used it to take over Eternia in the previously mentioned shitty miniseries, and Orko had attempted to stop him by destroying the skull, but, because Orko sucks and his spells always backfire, he instead absorbed all the evil power in the skull. "All his life Orko wanted to be a great wizard," Skeletor says, "Now he is a mad god."

Apparently a very distracted mad god, as he was just monitoring the situation in the House of Secrets, but now doesn't seem to be listening while Skeletor plots with He-Man to stop him.

PAGES 13-15:

Maybe he was busy playing with Superman, who he has held in unbreakable magical bonds on Trolla. He messes with Superman a bit, in the process showing Superman the evil magic skull and wear he keeps it. I wonder if that will come back to bite Orko in the ass later..?

That's a rhetorical question. Orko doens't have an ass.

PAGES 16-19:

Batman and Man-At-Arms' team are now at the bottom of the hill that He-Man and his gang were at the bottom of on the first page.

When Man-At-Arms, shown clutching an Eternian dildo gun, asks about the rather-humble House—on Eternia, after all, Skeletor hung out in a mountain fortress called Snake Mountain, with a giant snake carved into it, a waterfall pouring out of its jaws like it was eternally vomiting— Batman tells him "It's a dimensional nexus—undetectable by technological means. The Secret Six used to hide out here."

This is interesting because this is the first mention, so far as I know, of a Secret Six in the New 52 continuity. And this story does take place in the New 52 continuity, as the costuming is a pretty dead giveaway, as is the presence and make-up of the Justice League of America and The Justice League Dark.

The thing is, I don't think the Secret Six existed in The New 52. The team changed quite a bit over the years, but it was originally formed by Lex Luthor during the events leading up to the out-of-continuity Infinite Crisis, in the also-out-of-continuity Villains United.

Some of the original Six—Deadshot, Catman, Scandal Savage, Ragdoll II, Cheshire and a Parademon—still exist. Of those, I think Catman is the only one who has yet to be re-introduced into the New 52, but, of the others, they all seem pretty different (I've seen Ragdoll pop up in Arkham War, and there was a DC Comics Presents arc about Vandal Savage and a daughter; was it Scandal?). In fact, I'm not sure that the Parademon could be on the team, since they seem to be robots now...? (At least, The Justice League sure slaughtered them like they were completely artificial creatures).

The line-up rotated pretty much constantly, with only Deadshot, Catman, Scandal and Ragdoll sticking around for each incarnation, but a few of 'em don't seem to have existed yet—Jeanette, Knockout—and a few of them have been introduced, but in forms that it's difficult to imagine them in that particular team (Bane, for example).

And, of course, all of their adventures in Secret Six and the Villains United stories were tied into DC continuity no longer existent, so pretty much all of those events would need to be chucked out if the Secret Six did still exist in The New 52.

I imagine this was just a mistake on Giffen and Bedard's part though. Otherwise, the Secret Six, like The Justice League (only less so, given their much shorter life span), would be one of those teams wherein they supposedly had all the same adventures, just radically different, the differences of which DC doesn't know and won't tell readers.

Anyway, Skeletor meets them all at the door, and between he and Queen He-Man's Mom they convince the newcomers that they all need to team-up to fight Orko and save the DC Universe...and that before they got there, Skeletor snuck He-Man into Trolla to try and free Superman.

PAGE 20:

This is just a short, three-panel page, in which Deadman interrupts everyone to tell them that "pretty much everybody" is in the process of attacking the House.

The figures are in long-shot in the second panel, so it's sort of difficult to make some of them out, aside from those already shown as being mind-controlled, like Black Manta, Blue Beetle, Killer Croc, OMAC, Cheetah and Firestorm. There's also Batgirl, Bane, Hawkman, Deahstroke, a second, female Firestorm (New 52 Firehawk?) and...hey, whose that guy in purple with green hair...? That's not...

Oh shit, it is! That's The Joker, completely with his New 52 sliced-off face—the one I thought The Joker's Daughter was currently wearing on her face—like a mask.

(In fact, there was an ad for that gross Joker's Daughter one-shot in this very comic. Did you guys check that out? She eats The Joker's long-ago flayed-off face that she finds in the sewer on the very first page.)

Why, it's the first in-continuity appearance of The Joker since Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo and company's "Death of The Family"...!

That's gotta be an art mistake, right?

Right below that panel revealing that The Joker has returned not in the pages of Batman or Forever Evil, but in DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #5, are printed what, by the time I finished this issue, were among my three favorite words in the English language:

DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #4: Needs more Snout Spout

See that? That's just a single image from this fantastic gallery of painted Masters of The Universe-related artwork at Monster Brains, which more than one of my Facebook friends linked to last week. That gallery pretty accurately sums up what the inside of my head looked like at least an hour every day between the ages of, oh, 5 and 8. But even if you don't click on the link to see all the pictures, just take in the one above. Look at all of those colorful characters, almost each of which had its own unique power or gimmick. Look at those crazy vehicles, all based on monsters or animals. Look at those playsets. And in that image above, among those dozens of characters, there are at least three distinct and warring factions of bad guys—Skeletor and his Evil Warriors, Hordak and The Horde, The Snake Men—with whom the Masters of the Universe must contend.

There's just so much there to work with.

Guess how much of that has made it into DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe?

Four issues in, the only characters from the Masters of the Universe universe to appear have been the drastically redesigned, "New 52" versions of He-Man, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Roboto, Moss Man, Stratos, Battle Cat, Evil-Lyn, Skeletor and Orko. Orko is, it turns out, the ultimate villain of the piece, with Keith Giffen having turned the annoying/funny magical sidekick from the cartoon series into an all-powerful, unstoppable magical force—a little like what Alan Moore did with Mr. Mxyzptlk in "Whatever Happened to Man of Tomorrow?" and a little like what Sean McKeever did with Wonder Dog during his rather unfortunate run on Teen Titans.

As for the DC Universe, it has thus far been represented by the rosters of the three Justice Leagues, plus minor villain/anti-heroine Black Alice. And that's it, really.

In terms of scope and sweep, it's a pretty narrow, limited to some cherry-picking of characters, and the plot doesn't draw anything of any particular interest to either shared universe setting: Working at Dark Orko's behest, New 52 Skeletor travels to Earth-New 52 in order to drain it of all magic, a process that will destroy the planet. To keep the heroes off his back, he manipulates He-Man into seemingly killing Superman, so the Justice Leagues are hunting for and fighting the Masters of the Universe rather than looking for Skeletor.

And that's it, so far. It's been a very weird crossover so far, with no real indication that this is meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime meeting between two huge franchises full of scores of characters that intersect, compare and contrast in interesting ways. It reads more like your average JLA/JSA crossover from back in the day, when those things happened annually or so; just two teams of super-people sharing a brief adventure to fill comic book pages and if the results are nothing special, well, so what? There's always next time.

JLA/Avengers it ain't, in other words. Hell, JLA/Titans or Avengers Vs. X-Men it ain't. I'd say it's more like New Avengers/Transformers, but I never finished reading that miniseries; and I suppose it's always possible it got better after the first few terrible issues.

To recap, in the first three issues: He-Man's mom came to DC's Earth, where she is apparently from, seeking help to stop Skeletor, who is working with Black Alice for Orko. She finds John Constantine, who, oddly enough, seems to be the main character in this story, getting more panel-time than just about anyone else. They're soon joined by He-Man, Teela and Evil-Lyn.

Skeletor possesses all of the Justice Leaguers save Batman, who is too cool to be possessed, and has them attack He-Man and friends; during the melee, He-Man seemingly impales Superman, who vanishes upon being stabbed. This makes all of the Leaguers mad, and they go hunting the Eternians. And then another group from Eternia, including Man-at-Arms and the others, arrive on Earth, searching for the first group. They run into the Justice League of America.

Things seems to be under control with the creative team at last, at least, with Tony Beard still scripting from Keith Giffen's plot, but Pop Mhan back to handling all of the artwork himself again, after some rather substantial assistance last month.

COVER:

Look, see? There's John Constantine again. Dude's like the face of the DC Universe in this thing. He's appearing alongside He-Man, Teela and, in the center, Zatanna, who does not appear in this issue, and has not appeared in any issue of the series so far.

PAGES1-3:

Evil-Lyn, Teela, He-Man and He-Man's mom are at Stonehenge, recapping the plot, where they've found one of the magical siphon thingees Skeletor is using to drain Earth-New 52 of its magical essence. Evil-Lyn tells them they can use it to find Skeletor. A determined He-Man tells her to "hurry," because "if we don't stop my uncle, who will?"

That sets up the next two pages, full of people who would like to stop his uncle, Skeletor.

PAGES 4-6:

A terrible scan, as the book is bigger than my scanner. Please note Mhan's Roboto and the J'onn/Battle Cat fight, though.

It's (some of) the Master of the Universe vs. (some of) the Justice League of America! Stratos vs. Hawkman! Man-at-Arms vs. Green Arrow! Green Lantern Simon Baz versus the most poorly drawn version of Roboto you can imagine! And, most amusingly, Martian Manhunter vs. Battle Cat!

That last match-up shouldn't be much of a fight at all, given that Martian Manhunter's powers include super-strength, invulnerability, invisibility, intangibility, shape-shifting, telepathic powers and devastating eye-beam weapons referred to as "Martian Vision."

Battle Cat, on the other hand, is a large, green tiger.

J'onn's strategy for fighting Battle Cat, however, is to turn into a cat-man and try to tackle Battle Cat, who grabs him, throws him down, and then slaps him across his stupid Martian face. Congratulations, Martian Manahunter! You've just reached the nadir of your career!

While the battle rages across five whole panels, Colonel Steve Trevor, hiding behind a car, uses his cell phone to call Wonder Woman's bracelet and ask her if these are her hostiles. She says she'll be there to help capture and interrogate them with her magic rope.

This final page looks so much like it was drawn by Howard Porter, I had to re-check the credits to make sure that it was indeed Pop Mhan who was drawing every page of art in this issue.

PAGES 7-8:

In conversation with Alfred, a brown-haired Bruce Wayne realizes that Superman isn't really dead, because it's just a little too convenient that his body completely disintegrated after being stabbed to death. Also, there's no way DC would kill Superman off, even temporarily, in a stupid little miniseries like this that no one's reading.

PAGES 9-10:

Dark Orko tells Skeletor and Black Alice his plan, which involves converting all life into his Horde or whatever, and they realize that serving Orko may not actually be in their best interests.

PAGES 11-13:

We rejoin the MOTU vs. JLOA battle already in progress. The Savage Hawkman tries stabbing Stratos, who is mainly just avoiding him, and then he KRAKs him with his big, golden, spike-covered mace.

Martian Manhunter has completed his transformation into a large, green, cat creature and is trying to reason with Battle Cat, who slaps the shit out of him again.

Green Lantern, having apparently defeated Roboto off-panel, now goes after Moss Man, who uses his plant-controlling powers to smack him around with some trees. GL responds by creating a large green chainsaw which he is about to chop Moss Man's arm off with (!!!) when suddenly...

PAGES 14-16:

Swamp Thing snatches the chainsaw out of the air, grabbing its whirling blade in his hand (SHLP SHRP SKLUSHHH is the sound a chainsaw blade makes in the palm of the hand of a muck-encrusted mockery of a man, if you're wondering), and slowly tells GL to stop this madness and that his "construct...is in very poor taste."

Justice League Dark, having been recruited by Constantine last issue, has come to break up the fight—by beating on Justice League of America. Frankenstein blocks Hawkman's mace, which he was about to use to crush the skull of poor, helpless Stratos (JLoA is pretty fucking hardcore, if this is their idea of taking the Eternians alive). Deadman possesses Green Arrow, uses a flame arrow to chase Martian Manhunter away from Battle Cat (and, incidentally, make J'onn say "SQUEEEE--!", but not in the Internet's general usage of that word), and Black Orchid runs up and punches out Steve Trevor.

The Masters are the JLD are then teleported away by magic.

PAGE 17-20:

Madame Xanadu cast the spell to rescue the two teams from Trevor's Leaguers. Together with John Constantine and Batman, they plan on stopping Skeletor and figuring out where Superman is being kept so they can rescue him.

While Batman narrates an inspirational speech, the artwork jumps around to show us who is where: He-Man and his team are just outside Skeletor's headquarters in the House of Secrets. Skeletor and Black Alice are still talking to Orko. And Superman? He's trapped in the flaming portal in the torso of Dark Orko, the portal that used to be the big, black O on his little purple cloak, back when he was the wacky sidekick and court jester in Eternia.

Next? "The Story of Dark Orko," according to the last-page blurb. I can't wait.

DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #3: It comes to this

To recap, DC Comics recently published DC Universe Vs. Masters of the Universe #1 and #2, part of a miniseries event-tacular, in which the characters from the Masters of the Universe universe come to the universe of the DC Universe, where He-Man's redesigned archenemy Skeletor and DCU footnote Black Alice are attempting to siphon off all of the mystical energy forces, at the behest of a mysterious collaborator.

In an effort to save the day, He-Man's mom teamed-up with John Constantine, and then He-Man, Teela and Evil-Lyn teamed up with them, and then they all teamed up with Batman, and then Skeletor possessed the Justice League and sicced them on Batman and He-Man, and so He-Man had to totally stab Superman to death.

Which brings us to the third issue, where two more Justice Leagues join the adventure, more Masters arrive on Earth-New 52, and Skeletor's unseen ally is finally revealed to be the most hilariously dumb villain imaginable.

Also of note, the creative team continues to grow, always a sure sign that things are going just great behind the scenes.  For the first issue, Keith Giffen did all the writing and Dexter Soy handled all of the art, right down to the colors.

For the second issue, Giffen plotted, Tony Bedard scripted, Soy handled almost all of the art, but took on a co-colorist.

For this issue, Giffen plots, Bedard scripts, Soy is credited for the art on 16 pages, while Derlis Santacruz and Andres Ponce are credited with art on 6 pages, and there are still two colorists.

COVER:

This installment's cover, drawn like those of the previous two by Ed Benes, features Wonder Woman fighting Teela, as does not happen at all in this issue, but sort of did last issue (The fight was a little more one-sided than this cover implies, though; Wonder Woman flying kicked Teela's apparently invincible spine from behind, and then started trying to strangle her apparently invincible throat with the magical lasso of truth).

Their fight occurred in front of Wayne Manor, although for the purposes of this cover, it is taking place in front of a smashed up tank (?) in front of....some pretty vague buildings. I'm no architecture expert, but the vague buildings look a little more Eternian than Earth-ian to me, but, like I said, I don't know.

PAGES 1-6:

After Cyborg paraphrases South Park—"Good God, they killed Superman!"—and He-Man looks a little sad about impaling Superman, Constantine tries to talk sense into the possessed Leaguers, while using as many signifiers of the fact that he's British as possible: "You must have been talking about this Skeletor bloke that He-Man and his mates are looking for." They were just about to check the boot of the lorry, but it was almost tea time, and they had to have a kip before getting kitted out to continue looking for that Skeletor wanker.

"Stop trying to confuse me, John Constanine," Wonder Woman says, crying out glowing Skeletor possession energy like floating energy bubble tears. Women! Always being confused, by emotions! "I don't know anyone named 'Skeletor,' but I saw damned well who stabbed my man through the heart!" I'm still getting used to the idea of Wonder Woman and Superman dating. But I don't think I will ever get used to the idea of Wonder Woman calling Superman (or anyone, really) "my man."

He-Man surrenders himself to the five Leaguers who aren't Batman, SHA-KOOM-ing himself from He-Man mode back into Prince Adam mode, and preparing to hand over his sword. Evil-Lyn isn't having any of it though, and calls upon the four elements, including the flame from Constantine's lighter—ever notice how he always seems to be lighting up a cigarette, but never smoking one or putting one out?—to cast a spell that teleports Teela, Prince Adam, He-Man's mom, Constantine, Xanadu and herself away to Metropolis...againt Adam and Teela's will.

Xanadu proposes a new course of action: The Eternians search for Skeletor, while the two DC magic folks summon help from their associates.

PAGES 7-8:

While Batman bickers with the League about who they should be hunting—Skeletor or He-Man—Superman's bloodless chest wound starts to leak lightning, and he totally disappears in a cloud of dust. Wonder Woman's arm-bands, which number two on this particular page for some reason, also disappear, as she's not wearing any on the next page. Is that too part of "a curse on He-Man's magic sword," as Aquaman wonders, or just another example of the hurried, careless, far below sub-standard art on the series?

Seeing the rest of the League still aren't thinking clearly, Batman says something funny, which I won't spoil, as the book offers so few legitimately pleasurable moments.

Apparently, Batman and the surviving Leaguers are splitting up as well.

PAGES 9-10:

By the way, I totally find that third panel offensive. Not because of the fact that Black Alice only appears in six panels, and this is the only one in which the reader really sees her—primary artist Soy is all about the silhouette and the tight close-up, both of which cut down on the amount of drawing need done—and it features a kinda sorta upskirt image. Rather, because it is such a horribly inept upskirt drawing. Maybe I'm spoiled by manga, but good gosh, if you're going to draw an upskirt panel, at least do a good job of it, yo.

At "The House of Secrets," Black Alice is screwing around on her laptop, while Skeletor stands nearby, posing. The death of Superman has already made the TV news, complete with photo images, despite the fact that there was no media present at the battle and his body disintegrated completely already.

Perhaps Cyborg took the time to fire off a press release before he and the Leaguers went off to hunt down He-Man...? (Good thing there were no media present too, as the fight took place in front of the house of Gotham City billionaire philanthropist playboy Bruce Wayne, and created a gigantic hole leading directly into the Batcave).

This is all according to Skeletor's plan. The heroes of Earth will hunt He-Man instead of him, allowing his magic siphons to do their work.

PAGES 11-13:

Back on "Eternia," as the caption says, we finally get a fairly decent introductory image of what the Masters apparently participating in this series. Man-At-Arms, Moss Man, Stratos, Battle Cat and Roboto all pose as Man-At-Arms uses one of the Horde's "infernal machines" to make the one-way journey from their world to the DCU, where they hope to find their lost allies, and a way bring them  back to their own world.

They arrive in Greenwich Village, where the roaring giant green tiger wearing a mask scares all the bystanders away. Man-At-Arms manages to grab a little boy who has forgotten all he's learned about stranger danger by the wrist, and he and his compatriots quiz him.

Moss-Man, for some reason, apparently wears sexy metal pants now.

That seemed somehow off to me, so I later went to have a look at the original, which was just the Beast Man mold covered in green, lint collecting fuzz and smelling of pine.

(Moss Man was, I believe, the first and only action figure that was also an air-freshener. If I had a double, I would have hang it from my rearview mirror in lieu of one of those flat, cardboard air-fresheners).

Anyway, he wore a metal belt, furry under pants, and carried a brown, metal mace. So I guess there is precedent for Moss Man not wearing plant-based loin coverings. Still strikes me as weird, though, like Swamp Thing wearing chainmail.

And hey, speaking of Swamp Thing...

PAGE 14:

At "The House of Mystery, Headquarters of Justice League Dark," we see the associates Constantine and Xanadau had in mind: Swamp Thing, Frankenstein, Deadman and Red Cabbage.

Well, we may not get to see match ups like Mer-Man vs. Aquaman, Beast Man vs. Animal Man, Buzz-Off vs. The Red Bee (or, more likely, Bumblebee) or Sy-Klone vs. Red Tornado, but hey, at least a Moss Man vs. Swamp Thing confrontation seems likely...!

PAGE 15:

Before Man-At-Arms' group can find the Justice League, the Justice League finds them...well, a Justice League finds them. In this case, it's a faction of Steve Trevor's Justice League of America, consisting of Hawkman, Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern Simon Baz.

Then Man-At-Arms makes the mistake of mentioning the name He-Man.

PAGES 16-17:

"They're with the killers," Trevor spits,  TAKE THEM!" Instead of panels showing the two groups of combatants in combat, these two pages are devoted to a splash involving the characters all about to fight (Which should really be a short fight. Green Lantern or Manhunter should be able to defeat the super-powerless Masters in about two, maybe four seconds).

The creators apparently tried to match the two sides up, which doesn't really work, as the flying Hawkman and the flying Stratos are the only two characters who have anything in common. Green Lantern creates a robot-looking ginat green arm to reach for Robot, Man-At-Arms and expert archer Green Arrow fire at one another at point-blank range (M.A.A. misses; I assume when GA releases his arrow, he's going to miss too, although I hope he has a razor arrow in his quiver and manages to take out Man-At-Arms' mustache with it next issue), and J'onn J'onnz is left to deal with Battle Cat...maybe because they're both green? To make himself more suitable still to fight a giant green tiger, J'onn uses his amazing shape-changing powers to...grow cat ears...?

Moss Man is off-panel; perhaps he'll be fighting Trevor, who doesn't appear in the splash page either.

PAGES 18-20:

Black Alice quizzes Skeletor about his mysterious master again, who has so far only appeared as a pair of floating eyes or a voice. That ally is finally revealed in a hilarious final page splash as, get this, Orko.

Oh, I'm sorry, "Dark Orko."

If you are either too old or too young to know who or what Orko is, he was a comic relief character created for the original Filmation cartoon series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (a character that later made his way into the toy line; unlike most of the line, Orko was a cartoon character first and then a toy, rather than vice versa).

As for what he was, other than the most annoying aspect of the cartoon, the floating longsleeve t-shirt, eyes, scarf, hat, ears and hands was supposedly a "Trollan," which is kind of like a troll, but with an "-an" at the end, and he was a magical emigree to Eternia from a different dimension.

Orko looked like this:

His redesign is thus even more dramatic than He-Man and Skeletor's.

In addition to being one of Adam's besties and one of only three individuals (on the show, anyway) who knew of his dual identity as He-Man, Orko served as the court jester to King Randor. That makes his dramatic comment to Skeletor in the last two panels particularly weird: "They always laughed at me, you know? Tell me, Skeletor, who's laughing NOW?"

Well me, for one.

DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe #2: Things don't get any better

I was pretty disappointed in the first issue of DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe, the miniseries in which the two sets of characters that have previously appeared in comic book, cartoon and toy form—most of which I had read, watched and played with as a child—share the same story-space for the length of a comic book miniseries.

That was the issue in which we learned the parameters of the conflict: John Constantine and He-Man's mom vs. Skeletor and Black Alice, for the fate of Earth-New 52! It was safe to assume that things would get better as the series progressed, as they could hardly get worse. But, you know what happens when you make an assumption...

Things do improve slightly on the getting-more-characters-from-the-DC Universe-in-the-book department, but there's no attendant uptick in quality, and the most fascinating thing about the book remains seeing how a creative team with two such rich readymade setttings and casts with the directive to weave them together can come up with something so small, uninspired, cliched and dull.

Read with me, won't you...?

COVER:

For the cover of the second issue, cover artist Ed Benes returns to a too-often employed motif from his time as the primary artist on the 2006-launched volume of Justice League of America: A villain standing triumphant on a generic plane upon which are littered the prone, unconscious bodies of the Justice Leaguers. Here the villain is the Benes-designed New Look Skeletor, and the knocked-out Justice League is joined by a few knocked-out He-Man guys.

PAGES 1-4: 

Something looks slightly different about the art this time out, but Dexter Soy remains the sole credited artist on the book (although this time he does have a co-colorist, Veronica Gandini). The bigger change in the creative team comes in the writing department. Keith Giffen is no longer the sole credited writer. Here, he's credited simply with the plot, while Tony Bedard (who, like Giffen, is a writer DC seems to regularly turn to for pinch-hitting purposes) is credited with the script.

It's well worth noting that in the very first panel they address one deficiency from the first issue. The never-named black-haired lady that was more than likely Madame Xanadu is now specifically identified as such. The caption in the first panel reads, "GREENWICH VILLAGE, PLANET EARTH: The Fortune-telling Parlor of Madame Xanadu."


The action picks up right where it left off at the end of the previous issue. Evil-Lyn has just transported He-Man and Teela from their home world of Eternia what we now know is Madame Xandadu's place. There, He-Man's mom has been talking to John Constantine about Skeletor, when suddenly the place was crawling with skeleton-headed magic rat monster things.

After a few panels of futile attempts to fend them off, Evil-Lyn and Constantine unite their magical abilities to suck the monsters into something from Spencer's that Madame X. happened to have on her shelf.

To accomplish this spell, Evil-Lyn must dry-hump Constantine:

There's a little exposition, as He-Man's mom explains that she was originally an astronaut from Earth and how she crash-landed on Eternia an fell in love with its king, and the other visitors from Eternia explain that Hordak has taken over there, so they've come to fetch Skeletor to help them fight Hordak off and/or save the DC Universe from Skeletor's plan which, you'll recall last issue, involved him sucking it dry of magic at the behest of a mysterious new partner.

"Where is Skeletor, anyway?" Teela asks, setting up the next scene, which takes place on "THE JUSTICE LEAGUE SATELLITE."

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While the intruder alert goes off, most of the members of The New 52 Justice League fly down the hallway, despite the fact that some of them (Aquaman, Batman, Cyborg) can't actually fly. Ironically, Superman, who can fly, appears to be running down the hall.

That intruder is, of course, the new, giant-sized Skeletor, who coincidentally quotes Shakespeare at the League and powers-up, Dragonball Z-style. When Superman attacks, Skeletor knocks him back and tells the assembled superheroes that he requires "powerful minions," and then shoots a bunch of skeletal faces out of his hands, shouting "Scare Glows...Attack!" 

Let us here pause to consider the Scare Glow.

He was one of the later Masters of the Universe action figures released, in 1987. By that point, I was ten, and my interest in the toys was long-past waning, and the cartoon—which was never very good—was completely supplanted from my imagination by the likes of not only G.I. Joe and Transformers, but newer shows like The Real Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all of which revealed that just how terrible the He-Man cartoon was, even relative to other 1980s cartoon shows meant to sell toys to little boys (That was also the year I saw the live-action Masters of The Universe movie in theaters, and if ever there was a nail to hammer into a coffin of growing disinterest...)

Scare Glow, like most of the MOTU toys, had a gimmick of some sort to distinguish him. His was that he glowed-in-the dark. He essentially resembled a Skeletor action figure, were Skeletor wearing one of those skeleton Halloween costumes, with the white bones over a black body-suit. He also wore a purple cape, and was labeled "Evil Ghost of Skeletor," which could be read two ways: He was either the ghost of the dead Skeletor, or he was a ghost that worked for Skeletor.

Apparently, the latter is the more popular interpretation, but given how late Scare Glow came into being, he's a blanker canvas of a character than many of the other characters. I'm kind of sorry I never got his action figure. Glowing-in-the-dark is a pretty good gimmick for an action figure, really, and he has one of the better dumb-pun names common among those characters. Looking at the rest of the late-in-the game Masters of The Universe characters (Clamp Champ,  Rio Blast, Extendar, Ninjor, etc), he also stands out as particularly not-as-lame.

The only place I've seen him outside of a toy store aisle or Internet entry, however, was in the first story-bit that appeared in the Masters Of The Universe trade written by Giffen, James Robinson and Geoff Johns. A Scare Glow appears in the first few pages, Johns' contribution, set during Eternia's past.

It was just a skeletal ghost, reducing the character that had until that point existed only in my imagination from a proper character to a creature of some sort, not Bigfoot or The Devil, but a bigfoot or a devil (In toy line terms, Scare Glow wasn't a proper character like, say, Destro from the G.I. Joe line or The Shredder from the TMNT line but, rather, more like Cobra Trooper or Foot Soldier, a name-less minion type of which you could have doubles of and it wouldn't matter, as in your imagination there would be dozens of them anyway).

How would you use such a character in a comic book miniseries entitled DC Universe vs. Masters of the Universe...? Would he cross scythes with Batman villain Scarecrow, and the latter would remark upon the strange coincidence of their similar names? Would  he fight DC's heroic ghosts like The Spectre (whose 1990s solo series featured glow-in-the-dark cover gimmicks on more than one occasion) or Deadman, or perhaps Dr. Thirteen, the so-called "Ghostbreaker"...?

Nope. Here "Scare Glow" is just the name of some ghost-things that Skeletor shoots out of the palms of his hands, in order to possess the Justice Leaguers. 

Batman alone has the presence of mind to shout "Computer: Emergency teleport!"

Why didn't Cyborg think of that? Dude's like three-fourths computer!

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Meanwhile, in Eternia, a few of the Masters there are looking for  Evil-Lynn, He-Man and Teela. Typical of what we've seen so far, these characters are all incredibly poorly introduced.

The first image of Man-At-Arms this issue features him in silhouette, from the shoulders up, in the background. He appears in three more panels: Another one as a silhouette, in an extreme long-shot; in a tight-ish close-up, seen in profile from the shoulder up; and, finally, in a close-up from the sternum up or so.

Stratos, who also appeared last issue, gets two lines and two panels, only one of which really shows the reader what the character looks like.

A few more characters appear for the very first time here.

Roboto appears in three panels, never getting a full reveal or introductory image (Close-up, medium-shot revealing a good three-fourths of his body, long-shot silhouette). Battle Cat  in two (close-up, long-shot silhouette). Moss Man, a friendly forest spirit/nature guardian that resembles a cross between the evil Beast Man and Swamp Thing (the toy used Beast Man's mold, but coated it in a fuzzy green material that smelled like pine cleaner and collected dog hair and lint like nobody's business), gets two panels and two lines of dialogue; he only appears from afar in silhouette and then in a close-up that only shows us the character from the neck up or so. It looks like he has tentacles on one shoulder, maybe...?

Luckily, Man-At-Arms has a "Horde dimensional transponder" to trace their energy signal, so they can make a rescue attempt.

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Constantine and his group walk into the Batcave. The Batcave! I didn't know Constantine knew where the Batcave was, but I don't know, magic!

There are some interesting reactions to the decor; Evil-Lynn sees the orange-ish red T-Rex and off-model giant Joker playing card and remarks that she likes his style, whild Teela regards a row of glass cases containing uniforms (including a Pre-New 52 Robin costume and Nightwing's New 52 costume...for some reason...?) and remarks, "Let's get out of here. I think he kills kids--!"

Batman stumbles out of a column of...teleporter energy, a Scare Glow still clutching at his cape, and He-Man cuts off the Scare Glow's arm, the rest of it disappearing with the column of energy. Batman is not happy to them there in his secret headquarters, and, in the best moment of the comic, enforces his no smoking policy.

Then Soy draws the strangest images of Batman's cowl I've ever seen:

Some artists—almost all of 'em, actually—draw Batman with white triangle eyes, caused either by the way he mask fits, like a sort of artistic flourish, or by the fact that he has lenses in the eye-holes in his cowl (that's been the case for as long as I've been reading comics anyway; we've all seen comics where he's got night-vision or infrared capabilities in his lenses, right? And sometimes he even has, like, Terminator-style data appearing before his eye on it, via built-in, high-tech computer what-have-you...?

Other artists draw Batman with eyeballs visible in his cowl. It's mostly just Alex Ross who does that these days, and, obviously, the live-action Batmen have all had eyeballs instead of white triangles in their cowls.

But Soy draws the cowl eye-holes big enough to sh ow the skin all around Batman's eyes, and gives him white, pupil-less eyes, as if he were wearing white contact lenses. Only in this one, single image though.

Teela gets in a pretty good jab at Batman, provided you know who or what Hordak is already, and then we finally get to some DC Universe vs. a Master of the Universe.

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Fight! Superman arrives in the Batcave, his eyes glowing purple. He is now in Skeletor's thrall!

He throws Batman, Constantine and some black shapes so hard that they literally smash through the roof of the Batcave, arc high into the air in front of stately Wayne Manor, and crash back to the ground so hard they crack it.

And they live!

Or wait, wait wait. Now that I'm looking at this scene for the fourth time, I see that the huge hole might have been created when Superman flew through the ground and landed in the Batcave, not by Batman and company's bodies being thrown through the roof of the cave. That would make more sense; if that's what  happened, then it's only remarkable that Batman and Constantine survided that incredible fall.

Or, I don't know, maybe that's not Constantine, but He-Man, and that jagged black bit is meant to be his sword, not a piece of a trench coat. Yeah, that must be He-Man.  Makes sense, given his placement in the next panel.

Shitty art! It sure makes it harder to read a comic book!

(I wonder what that gray bit in the corner of the last panel there is mean to be...? Some part of Cyborg maybe...?)

So anyway, the possessed League shows up, and there are a few panels of some fighting. Teela shoots Aquaman to no avail, and gets flying kicked from behind by Wonder Woman.

The Flash grabs He-Man's mom, and He-Man punches the flash. The Superman returns to the scene and shit gets real.

How real?

Superman—possessed by Skeletor, remember—shoots his heat-vision directly into He-Man's eyes at point-blank range...! And He-Man's okay? I know he's supposed to be super-strong and all, but his eyeballs are strong enough to repel Superman's heat-vision...? That's a lot more strength than I would have imagined He-Man to have, but, I don't know, maybe the fact that his strength is somehow magical (I think; I don't know the origin of this version of the character) makes him more resistant to Superman's powers...? But wait, that can't be right, or else when he kicks Superman in the chest, a "magic" kick should have have had greater effect, right...?

Oh, and also Teela is super-strong too, I guess, as not only did Wonder Woman's kick not kill her, but she's even not being strangled to death when Wondy tries garroting her!

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In a two-page spread, He-Man stabs his over-sized super-sword, now crackling with electricity,  right into the middle of Superman's S-shield, a good foot or two of blade sticking out of Superman's back. With a loud, red, wiggly SKLUTCH, He-Man has impaled the possessed Superman! Everyone else reacts with wide-eyed, slack-jawed surprise, even the possessed Leaguers.

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He-Man withdraws his blade, Superman THUMPs onto his back, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern at least seem to come out of Skeletor's spell, and Batman makes a face that looks like its got bits of disgust, anguish and about-to-cry in it, shouting in a red circled dialogue balloon, "What have you done?!"

He's obviously just totally killed Superman forever, Batman, and now DC's going to cancel Action Comics and Superman and Batman/Superman and Superman/Wonder Woman and you're going to have to start hanging out with Shazam or Martian Manhunter now. Obviously.

Or I don't know, maybe one of the three wizards on the scene can magic away traumatic stabbing wounds...? I guess we'll find out next month, because I am not going to stop reading a Justice League/He-Man comic no matter how poorly made it is or how much of a waste of raw story material it may be.

And to think I used to think DC Comics Presents #47 was a lame comic! Look, Giffen and Bedard just took Superman's anxious thoughts from the cover of a 1982 comic book for children, and realized them, in a graphic and gruesome fashion in an attempt to please those same children now that they're adults! It's DC's business entire business model, demonstrated in a single scene of a single comic book.