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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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...!

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

DC Universe Vs. Masters of the Universe #1 is not a very good comic book.

At various points in my life, Mattel's Masters of the Universe line of toys, DC Comics' Justice League and comic books in general were among the things I was most interested in, passionate about and/or obsessed with.

DC Universe Vs. Masters of the Universe is a comic book series in which the characters from the MOTU toy line meet and, one imagines, fight the DC Universe characters (who, based on the covers, seem to come mainly from the ranks of the Justice League). It is, in other words, a thing seemingly created especially for me—Well, not me-me, but readers like me.

Despite my many, many reservations about the potentially quite low quality of the book, based on the creative team of writer Keith Giffen and artist Dexter Soy (the former of whom wrote a terrible miniseries with a similar premise, DC/WildStorm: Dream War, in 2008), my brief previous exposure to DC's new-ish He-Man comics and the new designs of the MOTU characters, I bought myself a copy of the first issue and read it. The equation of MOTU + DC + Comics was just too powerful for me to resist.

Sadly, the comic did not meet my extremely low expectations. Look—

COVER: 

The issue of the book I picked up featured cover art by Ed Benes, one of my least favorite comics artist, showing the DC characters rushing and or shooting towards unseen foes, one of whom is carrying a gun he's shooting at Batman's feet. I know the other half of the image contains the Masters of the Universe characters, because I saw the solicitation for the book online a few months ago.

(For what it's worth, this issue actually shipped a week late. I only noticed because when I went to look for that image, I expected to find it in DC's September solicitations, as it came out last Wednesday, the first Wednesday of September, but found it instead in the August solicitations, scheduled for an August 28th release. I have to stop looking at this picture now, because the more I study it, the more angry and irritated I get).

I guess DC cut in the image in half, hoping some reader somewhere might buy two copies, just so they can have a complete image? Does that really work...?

I should note that none of the five characters on the half of the cover I got actually show up at all in this first issue, save for Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern appearing in a black and white photo on a the screen of a laptop in a single panel, when a character from the DC Universe tries to explain the Justice League to Skeletor.

The guys on the He-Man half fare a little better; 4/5ths of them appear in the issue.

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According to the captions, the story opens in the following setting "EARTH: Greenwich Village, New York City." A young woman is running down the street, pursued by large rats with no skin or flesh on their heads, exposing their skulls, which are glowing. When they pass through an elaborate glowing sigil in the street, they all explode with a CH-TOOM!

The blond lady sits down on a porch, and a black-haired lady opens the door, says something about John and his magic traps and invites her in.

Neither character is introduced and, in the case of the black-haired lady, no name is given throughout the entirety of the book. I'm assuming she's Madame Xanadu, because she says "I've been expecting  you" to the blond and Xanadu is a fortune-teller, but some indication of the character's name might have been helpful. All we know for sure from the text is that she's a woman, she has black hair and she knows John Constantine. She's not wearing fishnets, so she's probably Xanadu and not Zatanna, right?

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Are you reading Giffen's other Masters of the Universe comics, which consist of the ongoing He-Man and the Masters of The Universe and myriad origin one-shots? Hopefully, because whatever is happening in those comics seems to be reflected here.

This scene is set on "ETERNIA: The Kelting Pass." The personae daramatis are: He-Man, in his new red costume with a big, stylized H on the chest; Teela, in her new armor, which resembles a more revealing and form-fitting version of her father's; Man-At-Arms, who looks just like he did on the stupid cartoon, right down to the stupid mustache; and Stratos, who is now slimmer, less hairy and wears a red mask and goggles that covers his whole face, and makes him look a bit like G.I. Joe guy Snake Eyes. Like Snake Eyes, he is apparently mute.

He-Man and Teela bicker in whispers like this is a bad version of a screwball comedy as the quartet vaguely attack (jumping in the direction of) some vague robotic enemies (only seen in long-shot or mostly off-panel). Man-At-Arms tells Teela to leave one functional this time, as she apparently completely destroyed the last robot she fought because, as she explains, "He was checking out my butt! The perv!"

The robots have a big metal cube in which Evil-Lynn sits huddled, bound with licorice rope.

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The Masters sit around a campfire with the rescued Evil-Lynn. She doesn't have yellow skin, like her toy did, but white skin.  We don't get a good look at her costume or design, but it looks like she might be wearing leaves on her helmet. Soy is pretty awful at introducing characters; in the first two pages in which Evil-Lynn appears, the reader only sees her from the shoulders up and as a silhouette in extreme long-shot.

It will be ten more pages before we get a good look at this Evil-Lynn character, who the creators seem to be assuming everyone knows so well already that knowing what she looks like isn't important.

Stratos finally gets a line of dialogue: "Uh-huh." So I guess he's not mute. He's just taciturn. Or it's hard to talk through his new mask. One.

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The blond lady, who we learn is named Marlena, continues to talk to the black-haired lady, and then asks to speak to John Constantine about Skeletor.

John Constantine appears as if on cue, given a nice, full-length introductory panel of the sort other characters like Evil-Lynn coulda used.

Constantine is one of the only DC Universe characters to appear in this comic, by the way, with the exception of the black-haired woman who is probably Madame Xanadu and a minor anti-hero we'll get to shortly.  That's sort of weird, isn't it? That John Constantine is now the primary representative of the DC Universe instead of, say, Superman or Batman or one of those other superheroes on the cover?

Also interesting? Constantine just played a central role in the six-part, three-book "Trinity War" storyline that lead in to DC's first big line-wide crossover in a few years. And now he's apparently the lynchpin of the the DC crossover with the MOTU characters. Who knew DC's superhero writers were apparently dying to write the character this badly for so long? 

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The scene shifts to a mysterious group of four towers with no openings or maybe just some kind of stone henge-like group of obelisks on "EARTH: Salem, Massachusetts." That's where Dr. Fate lived, in a mysterious tower with no openings, but that was the old DC Universe, not the New 52-iverse. Now there was never a Dr. Fate on Earth-New 52; Fate lives on Earth-2, the next parallel dimension over.

Two people are talking; one of whom has his own special dialogue balloons: They're yellow with purple letters inside and purple borders. Those word bubbles belong to Skeletor.

You may have heard that Skeletor has also been redesigned for the purposes of this story, which is apparently big enough news that USA Today covered it. Here are the first four panels Soy drew featuring the new design, which was apparently cooked up by Benes:

Introductions obviously aren't Soy's strong suit, so maybe he wasn't the best choice for a book like this, which is at least partially intentioned to introduce new, freshened-up versions of the characters.

(The New 52 Skeletor, by the way, is pretty dumb-looking. He has a more stylized looking, emotive skull, with prominent fangs and no lower jaw of any kind. It just floats in a black space between his purple football pads and his new hood/hat. I'm not even sure how to describe it. Remember how he used to carry that cool staff topped with a ram's head? Well, now he wears a tiny little purple animal skull atop his head like an ill-fitting toupee, and it has really, really long, drooping, curved horns, but not curved like a ram's horns; rather, they sort of look a bit like tusks, but not tusks that would fit either the purple animal head or Skeletor; they sort of radiate out of his shoulder.  Here isn't really a good look at him in the whole book, but he wears purple armor, has blue arms, is really big, and has a lot of chain-mail dripping here and there. His cape, which glows a neon yellow at the tips, looks like its design was inspired by tire treads, and he carries no weapons).

Skeletor is hanging out with Black Alice, a minor character originally created as a villain by Gail Simone, Joe Prado and Ed Benes during a 2005 Birds of Prey issue. Simone apparently quite liked the character, a teenage goth girl with the power to siphon the magical abilities of other DC magic-users, giving herself a new, goth girl version of whichever character's powers she's siphoning, returning to her several times in several different titles.  Giffen must like her too, having previously written her in his Reign In Hell miniseries and using her here, which marks her New 52 debut (For what it's worth, she doesn't appear to be siphoning any particular characters' powers, and is being used as a sort of local handler or tour guide by Skeletor, who is on Earth for a special mission at the behest of...a floating set of eyes with make-up suggesting they might belong to a powerful female of some sort...?)

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The blond lady explains the plot of the series to the black-haired lady and Constantine: Skeletor is traveling to different worlds in an attempt to harvest the magical energy that serves as the soul of each planet; when he does it, the planet dies.

She introduces herself a little more thoroughly, in a scene in which she throws Constatine into...I'm going to guess an invisible book case...? I can see boards and books behind him, but they're appearing out of the green fog that makes up the interior of the black-haired lady's house. Whatever the reason this book was a week late, it wasn't because Soy needed more time to draw backgrounds.

Anyway, the blond lady is "Marlena of two worlds, wife of Randor the Fourth...WARRIOR QUEEN OF ETERNIA!" (Also? He-Man's mom).

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In "The House of Secrets or Mystery or Whatever," Black Alice tells Skeletor about the three Justice Leagues, offering the most detail on the original: "Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and some guys whose names I forget."

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Back on Eternia, He-Man, Teela and Evil-Lynn talk for a while about what Skeletor's up to, exactly, and whether they should follow him. Evil-Lynn teleports them to the black-haired lady's house before they can make their decision final and official. 

On this final splash page, we see Marlena and Constantine being attacked by the glowing skull-headed rats, while He-Man says "Mom?!" and Constantine says "You have got to be kidding me," which would have been a lot funnier if He-Man appeared wearing his classic, barely-there barbarian garb.

A tag along the bottom of the page reads: "Next issue: Crisis On Whichever Earth This Turns Out To Be!"

So, to recap: We join a somewhat convoluted story in-progress, have a bunch of barely introduced (verbally or visually) characters thrown at us, get some incredibly lazy, slipshod, amateurish artwork and reach the end of the first issue of a comic book entitled DC Universe Vs. Masters of the Universe with the parameters of that conflict being roughly defined thusly: He-Man, Teela, Evil-Lynn and He-Man's mom are going to team up with John Constantine and some lady to stop Skeletor and Black Alice.

I'm assuming it gets better. It's just got to, right?