Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 5

Brief Worldcon Update – and a Fannish Poem

I had a great time at the Glasgow Worldcon, but the internet in my hotel isn’t great. Plus, it turns out that my travel laptop is on its last legs and extremely slow. So you’ll have to wait a bit longer for my Worldcon report as well as the Hugo winner and Dragon Award finalist commentaries, especially since I’m off to Eurocon in Rotterdam almost directly after Worldcon (I have one and a half days to do laundry and shuffle clothes from one suitcase to another). I’ll post my Eurocon schedule once I’m back at home.

But for now, since I’m at the hotel, waiting for the taxi that will pick me up at 3:45 AM to take me to the airport, enjoy this poem I wrote. Any resemblances to persons living, dead or undead are entirely coincidental.

The Phantom of the Armadillo

There’s a spectre haunting Glasgow,
a spectre by the name of Dave.
You might spot him lurking in hotel bars
and skulking around the Armadillo,
forever on the outside,
longingly gazing,
at all the fun had within.

‘Twas scarcely a year ago,
that he was one of them,
wined and dined and feted
and treated like royalty.

And now he’s a pariah,
shunned and barred from entry
and fated to be cursed out
by women in glamorous hats.

How could this happen?
How could it ever come to this?
After all, it’s not his fault that
those Hugos arrived broken.
And surely no one cares about those stats.
And Nepal, Tibet, who
can tell the difference anyway?

And so the spectre of Dave
continues to haunt Glasgow,
forever trapped on the outside,
looking in, ignored
by those who don’t know him
and cursed by those who do,
his very name a cautionary tale
to scare young fans at the con bar.

“Have you…” the old-timers whisper,
“…heard the story of Dave who
fucked aorund with the Hugos and
found out how long
fandom’s memories can be?”

Cora goes to the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow, Scotland – plus bonus He-Man and Teela

This week, I’m off to Glasgow for Worldcon. I’ll be flying very early on Tuesday morning and will be gone for a week, then I have two days at home to do laundry, etc…, before I’m off to Rotterdam for Erasmuscon, the 2024 Eurocon. The timing is not great. I think the reason the two cons are so close together is that the organisers wanted to make it easy for overseas visitors to attend both cons in a single trip. However, Rotterdam is not as attractive for overseas visitors as it is for me, who spent some very formative times there, so it looks as if Eurocon will be mostly European fans.

So there will be light to no blogging for the next two weeks and plenty of photos and con reports and Hugo discussion (come on, you know there’ll be Hugo discussion) once I get back. You can also get live updates of what I’m up to on Twitter, Threads, BlueSky or Mastodon.

In the meantime, the Speculative Fiction Showcase and the Indie Crime Scene will still be chugging along, including (somewhat truncated) link round-ups.

But should you find yourself in Glasgow for Worldcon or in Rotterdam for Erasmuscon (schedule will be posted separately), say hello to me. You might even get a tasty North German treat (while supplies last).

You can also find me and several other fine folks on the following panels:

A World Tour Through Comics

Saturday, August 10, 2024, 16:00 BST

Location: Alsh 2, Duration: 60 mins, In Person

Panelists: Barbara Postema (moderator), Cora Buhlert, DestructCode (As an artist), Fulvio Gatti

Whether you call them bande dessinées, historietas, manga, manhua or comics, stories told with sequential art have a long history and a global appeal. Regional traditions can influence each other through publishing styles and ideas, and in this panel we’ll take a tour through the shared history and culture of comics.

The Conclusion of the Retro Hugo Era

Saturday, August 10, 2024, 19:00 BST

Location: Carron, Duration: 60 mins, In Person, Online

Panelists: Cora Buhlert, David E. Hook (moderator), Mark Plummer, Perrianne Lurie, TrishEM

The Retro Hugo Awards, a tradition where Worldcons retrospectively awarded prizes for years prior to the establishment of the Hugo Awards, have had both avid supporters and vocal critics. The last two Worldcons eligible to grant Retro Hugos opted not to do so, and Glasgow is following suit. Does this signify the demise of the Retro Hugos? And if so, is this necessarily detrimental?

Women of Post-war Science Fiction: Writers, Editors, Fans, Artists.

Sunday, August 11, 2024, 13:00 BST

Location: Meeting Academy M4, Duration: 60 mins, In Person

Panelists: Carrie Cooper, Claire Brialey, Cora Buhlert (moderator), David E. Hook, Gabrielle de Cuir

It would be wrong to think of post-war science fiction as a boys club with a “No Girls Allowed” sign on the door. Women were active as writers, editors, fans, and artists, key players in the scene even if outnumbered by their male counterparts. Look back with us on the contribution of these often fascinating characters of late 1940s science fiction.

The full program guide for the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow may be found here.

***

However, I’m not going to travel to Glasgow on my own. I’ll be bringing along two friends, so let’s take a look at their travel preparations.

Eternos Palace, the private quarters of the royal family:

The furniture is IKEA doll house furniture.

“I guess I’ll take both the Power Sword and the Sword of Ancients to Glasgow, just to be on the safe side.”

“No, Adam, we have limited space and you’re taking only one sword.”

“But…”

“Only one sword.”

“Okay, the Sword of the Ancients stays here. Happy now?”

“Yes.”

“But why do you get to take a shield and a sword?”

“A girl needs to defend herself. Besides, I’m the Captain of the Guard and your bodyguard, Adam.”

“You are aware that I’m He-Man, the most powerful man in the Universe?”

“But what if you lose your sword and can’t transform?”

“That’s why I wanted to take a spare.”

“Can I at least take my heart pillow?”

“No. They have pillows on Earth. Your mother confirmed that.”

“But my heart pillow is so soft and cuddly.”

“Adam, no. The pillow stays here.”

“You’re no fun.”

“So are you excited to visit your mother’s home, Adam?”

“Of course. Though we’re not exactly visiting Mom’s home. Earth is a big planet and Glasgow is in a completely different part of the world than where Mom grew up. Like Eternos and Avion are different places.”

“So Glasgow is like Avion?”

“Well, Mom says that Stratos sounds like he’s Scottish, so I guess it is.”

“Hey there, No canoodling. Or as Orko would call it, training. But then Orko is as idiotic as he is short.”

“Thanks for taking us to Glasgow, Gwildor.”

“No problem, no problem at all. My Cosmic Key can send you anywhere or anytime in the universe, as long as I know the right melody. So let’s see. Keying up the coordinates for Glasgow, Scotland, Earth.”

Duh-duu-dummm!

“Glasgow, here we come.”

ZOOM.

Comic Review: Masters of the Universe Revolution Prequel #3 by Ted Biaselli, Rob David, Tim Sheridan and Daniel HDR

This post continues my issue by issue review of the Masters of the Universe Revolution prequel comic mini-series written by Ted Biaselli, Rob David and Tim Sheridan with art by Daniel HDR and Keith Champagne with a look at issue 3. Go here for my takes on issue 1 and issue 2.

Warning: Spoilers behind the cut!

Issue 3 continues where issue 2 left off, with the cloaked woman implied to be Shadow Weaver manipulating both Hordak and Keldor for reasons of her own. She tells a meditating Keldor that he must fight a demon and that his legacy waits for him in Eternos and she tells a sleeping or rather regenerating Hordak that once he has dealt with Grayskull’s heir, the secrets of Eternia shall be his, though “Shadow Weaver” claims that “the fog of ha’vok” is concealing the details about those secrets from her. However, she tells Hordak and Keldor that once they have claimed their birthright, they will help her to claim her birthright. The question still is, what exactly does “Shadow Weaver” get out of manipulating the two most dangerous men in the universe and what precisely is that birthright she wants.

It’s interesting that while Skeletor’s and Hordak’s male subordinates are mere henchmen with little ambition or initiative, the chief female villainesses, Evil-Lyn and Shadow Weaver, have always had their own agenda and were perfectly willing to betray Hordak and Skeletor respectively to get what they want. Even Catra, who is more of a subordinate than Shadow Weaver ever was, has her own agenda and does conspire with Skeletor to take out Hordak in at least one episode of the Filmation She-Ra cartoon. With so many independent women both good and bad, is it any wonder that so many little girls became Masters of the Universe fans?

But whatever her motivation, “Shadow Weaver” is playing with fire here. Especially since both Hordak and Keldor are starting to get a teensy bit suspicious of this oh so helpful voice in their heads. Keldor has finally cottoned on to the fact that whoever this voice is, it’s not his mother Saryn and demands to know who the voice is and why she is helping him, questions the voice deflects or ignores.

Meanwhile, Hordak finally realises that “Shadow Weaver” is playing both sides, when she mentions that “our three paths will finally converge”. He emerges from his beauty sleep aboard the Horde flagship and yells for Keldor. However, Captain Keldor is nowhere to be found. The computer helpfully offers Hordak to locate Keldor, but Hordak says there’s no need. He knows exactly where Keldor has gone.

Hordak’s regeneration bed, which we’ve seen twice now in this comic series, is certainly interesting. We know that Hordak is very old, hundreds, possibly thousands of years old. Is that why he needs a regeneration bed? Or is he suffering from some kind of degenerative illness like the Hordak from the 2018 She-Ra cartoon?

The scene now shifts to Eternos, which is where Keldor has gone, just as Hordak predicted. We see Keldor sneaking through the city, wearing his hooded cloak and carrying the Horde’s signature crossbow weapon. I really wish we’d get a Horde Keldor figure in Masterverse – basically they could just give the existing Horde Skeletor figure a new head – complete with Horde crossbow.

In his mind, Keldor is replaying an argument with Hordak, wherein Keldor demands to learn why Hordak never told him about the prophecy that the champion of Ha’vok will triumph over Grayskull’s heir. Hordak wants to know how Keldor can even know about this prophecy (obviously, a certain little bird told him), while Keldor replies that is doesn’t matter, since the Horde doesn’t believe in magic and prophecies anyway (Take that, Hordak). All Keldor wants is to take out King Miro and take the throne of Eternos – all for the glory of the Horde, of course. And that’s exactly why Keldor has returned to Eternos after all these years and why he carries a Horde crossbow. He wants to assassinate his father.

This is quite shocking, since the sweet little boy we saw in the flashback at the beginning of episode 2 of Masters of the Universe Revolution clearly just wanted to be loved by his Daddy and would never dream of assassinating him. Of course, Saryn had nothing good to say about Miro and she had approximately fifteen to twenty years to tell Keldor what a piece of shit his father was. Besides, it’s obvious even from the flashback in Revolution that Miro was not a good father. For starters, he’s a secret drinker, as evidenced by the flask little Keldor finds in his desk, which is never a good sign. Plus, Keldor and Randor are clearly scared of their father. Keldor says that Miro must never notice that they snuck into his study or he’ll be angry, whereupon little Randor replies that their father is always kind of angry. Keldor denies this and says that Miro is just serious, because being king is such a great responsibility. All this suggests that Miro may well have been alcoholic and prone to rage and that he took out that rage on his sons and likely his wife as well. Note that the brief scene between Miro and Amelia is an argument and does not point at a loving marriage. It’s also notable that Keldor tried to shield his little brother from the truth about their father.

So in short, Miro probably has it coming, at least in the Revelation/Revolution continuity, because he is an unambiguously sympathetic character in the Filmation He-Man and She-Ra cartoons. Hordak points out that there is a fatal flaw in Keldor’s plan. The people of Eternos won’t just accept the man who just murdered the previous king as their new king, especially not the disowned bastard son. Though note that there is no evidence that anybody in Eternos has a problem with Keldor being illegitimate and half-Gar other than Miro and Amelia, especially since the people of Eternos happily accept him as their king in Revolution.

We also learn that Hordak flat out forbade Keldor to return to Eternia until ordered to do so. So Keldor is once again disobeying Hordak’s order, but then Keldor/Skeletor was never one to take orders from others. Hordak – who shockingly is the voice of wisdom compared to the young and rash Keldor – also points out that when Keldor returns to Eternos, what he finds there may not be what he left and that things will have changed. Especially since this unauthorised excursion is very likely the first time Keldor has been in Eternos since he was sent away as a little boy.

Of course, it turns out that Hordak was right. Eternos is no longer the place he left. And so Keldor finds himself face to face not with his father in the flesh, but with a statue of King Miro III – Lost at Sea. Keldor needs a moment to process what this means. For starters, he is too late to take out his father. Someone else got there before him (since I doubt a random storm took out Miro). Also, if Miro is gone, it means that Randor is now king.

No sooner realised that his brother is now king that Randor himself appears, looking very much like he did in the 2002 cartoon and the Origins Young King Randor action figure, only that he doesn’t yet have his beard. He is walking around the palace with a still moustache-less Duncan. Randor stops directly in front of the statue of his lost father, a pensive look on his face, while his long-lost brother hides behind the statue. But then someone cries, “Make way for Grayskull’s heir” and Randor’s face lights up. For there’s Queen Marlena and she’s very, very pregnant.

Duncan is concerned about Marlena and points out that she shouldn’t be up, whereupon Randor replies that Marlena is pregnant and not ill. “In my experience…” Duncan begins, whereupon Marlena counters how Duncan can have any experiences with pregnancy, unless he has a secret wife and child somewhere. It’s said in jest, but Marlena, who is one of the most perceptive people on Eternia, considering she figured out Adam’s secret, too, is of course absolutely right. Duncan does have a secret partner and baby. Though apparently Teela was a handful even in the womb, considering that Teela-Na had a more difficult pregnancy than Marlena, even though Marlena is having twins. Though this brief scene not only shows how close the friendship between Randor, Marlena and Duncan is, but also shows what Duncan was denied because Teela-Na insisted on keeping their relationship a secret. Duncan does not get to walk around Eternos with his pregnant partner arm in arm. He only gets left holding the baby, while Teela-Na abandons her partner and child for the Power of Grayskull.

As for Keldor, he’s utterly shocked, for though he must have known intellectually that Randor would be an adult by now, he most likely still imagined him as the little boy he was, when they were separated, and is now shocked to see his little brother all grown up and about to become a father himself. Keldor leaves, crestfallen, his assassination plan forgotten. But even though Keldor was willing to take out his father – and later events in the issue show that it’s not clear if he really would have gone through with it, given the chance – there’s no way he’ll try to kill Randor, since Keldor truly loved his younger brother.

So Keldor walks away, confused and crestfallen. He takes a Windraider and returns to Anwat Gar to pay a visit to Saryn, clearly excited because he has so much to tell her. I suspect he also wants to ask Saryn for advice about what to do now. Return to the Horde or ditch Hordak and reveal himself to Randor. Because I suspect that at this point, Keldor wants to be part of Randor’s family again. And if he had revealed himself to his brother, I’m pretty sure Randor would have taken him back, no questions asked, Keldor would have found his place as royal sorcerer or something like that and the story would have gone very differently.

But when Keldor returns to Saryn’s apartment, he find it empty. Saryn is gone, but there is a strange tree growing in the corner. And in the wall, there is a very familiar hole with a barred door. The entrance to the Fright Zone had returned to Anwat Gar and this time, it’s in Saryn’s apartment.

Keldor ventures into the Fright Zone in search of his mother, but instead he finds a different parent, namely Miro, half-naked and chained to a wall. Keldor is clearly unsure what to do at this point, whether to free Miro or kill him as originally planned.

Before Keldor can decide what to do, the hooded sister of Havok appears. Keldor is confused and asks her, if this another dream. But most of all, he wants to know how Miro can be chained to a wall in the Fright Zone when he was supposedly lost at sea. The hooded woman replies that Miro was lost at sea – twice – which is interesting, because in the DC “Eternity War” comics, Miro was shipwrecked on the shores of Anwat Gar and rescued by Saryn, who nursed him back to health, which eventually led to the conception of Keldor. The comment that Miro was lost at sea twice suggests that the same thing happened in this continuity.

But the sister of Havok isn’t really interested in answering Keldor’s questions anyway. Instead, she tells him that she’s giving Miro to Keldor on a silver platter and also reminds him once again of what Miro did to him – banished and abandoned him, denied him the crown and left him to die on Anwat Gar. And now would Keldor please be a good boy and do what he came to Eternia to do and kill Miro.

It telling Keldor has placed his own body between the sister of havoc and Miro, once again suggesting that Keldor’s resolve to kill Miro is not as strong as it seemed and that it’s quite possible he wouldn’t have gone through with it, even if he had encountered Miro alive and well in Eternos.

But Keldor has yet another shock coming for the sister of havoc lowers her hood and… it turns that she is not Shadow Weaver after all, but Saryn. It’s a great bit of misdirection, though one that makes perfect sense, because everything we see in this comic mini-series contradicts what we know about Shadow Weaver, whose origin story is remarkably consistent across various iterations. Saryn, however, has been portrayed as an ambiguous figure so far – eager for Keldor to learn magic and eager for him to achieve some kind of destiny. Plus, Saryn seemed to vanish from the story early on and was only seen as Saryn for a page or two in the first issue. Though it turns out that Saryn was the third main character of this mini-series all along.

Keldor is shocked. What exactly is his mother doing here and why did she invade his dreams? Saryn assures Keldor that she wasn’t invading his dream, she was just preparing him for the day when he would seize his birthright, the throne of Eternos. And now that moment is at hand, so would Keldor please just kill Miro and take the crown. Keldor points out that someone else is already wearing the crown, whereupon Saryn counters that Miro handed Randor the crown, even though he was the younger brother, and asks Keldor if he thinks that was fair. Keldor says no, it’s not, whereupon Saryn again urges him to kill Miro. In short, Saryn clearly did her best to turn Keldor against Miro and she had years to manipulate him.

But Keldor still hesitates, so Saryn icily says, “…if he doesn’t destroy you first”. As if on cue, Miro – up to now a seemingly powerless old man – breaks his chains, turns into a Hulk-like monster and attacks Keldor. Now it becomes clear that even though Keldor was planning to assassinate Miro, he would never have gone through with it, because he literally cries out that he doesn’t want to hurt Miro. “Miro”, meanwhile, seems desperate to tell Keldor something and starts by saying that he’s not his father.

Keldor uses his magic to keep “Miro” at bay, while Saryn eggs him on to kill his father. Keldor, however, has had enough. He uses his magic to choke both “Miro” and Saryn. “Why are you doing this to me?” he demands. Saryn is shocked, since she clearly did not expect Keldor to turn against her, while “Miro” is still trying to say something.

Keldor just runs away and promptly stumbles onto the withered corpses of the other two weird sisters of havok, cause there were three of them, when Hordak consulted them in issue 1. However, two of the sisters disagreed with Saryn, so she killed them and stole their powers, something Saryn describes as a “regrettable, but necessary sacrifice”.

Keldor, meanwhile, is just confused. “I don’t understand any of this”, he laments and indeed, “confused and lost” is pretty much Keldor’s default state throughout this issue, a sharp contrast to the previous issue where he was pretty confident and competent as a Force Captain of the Horde.

Saryn does take pity on Keldor (and the audience) and explains that she is the “First Weaver, High Priestess of Ha’vok, Mother of Chaos and Shadows” and coincidentally, now the only priestess of Ha’vok, since she murdered the other two. Saryn also explains what the Fright Zone is, namely a place between worlds (which is why the Fright Zone can manifest wherever it wants or needs to be), born in the age before magic. Saryn and her late fellow sisters of Ha’vok use it as a hiding place.

The vintage Fright Zone toy didn’t have much of an interior beyond the cell and the monster puppet which tends to disintegrate. In this comic, the interior of the Fright Zone is a series of caves with the pool of Ha’vok. However, there also are murals on the walls and those murals are quite interesting. They depict the three Eternian gods Zoar, Kaa and Ha’vok as well as the three sisters of Ha’vok and – most interestingly – Motherboard and Skeletor infected by the tech virus. These things obviously haven’t happened yet, suggesting that the Fright Zone exists not just between worlds, but also outside time.

Keldor, however, doesn’t pay much attention to the murals and is far more interested in whether the old man he saw chained up in the Fright Zone and was forced to fight really was his father Miro. Saryn counters that even though Keldor may be Miro’s biological offspring, Miro isn’t his father or his family, but just an obstacle to overcome on the path to greatness. For according to Saryn, Keldor is destined to become the champion of Ha’vok and destroy Hordak. That’s also why Saryn manipulated Hordak into seeking out and recruiting Keldor, so Keldor could get close enough to Hordak to take him out.

As for what Saryn gets out of all this, well, she wants to become Empress of the Horde Empire. She’s certainly ambitious, especially considering that she hails from a world that does not have interstellar travel. Though in the Classics continuity, the inhabitants of Anwat Gar are the descendants of alien refugees who crashlanded on Eternia after their planet was destroyed, which is also why the Gar have advanced technology. Nonetheless, we finally know what Saryn wants, namely nothing less than to rule the entire universe. Megalomania clearly runs in the family.

However, Saryn also wants something else. Because the power of Ha’vok alone won’t be enough to conquer Eternia, let alone the Horde Empire. In order to do that, she also needs the Power of Grayskull. And this where Keldor comes in. Because Saryn, the Gar High Priestess of Ha’vok, would never get into Castle Grayskull. However, Keldor as an actual descendant of King Grayskull via his father should be accepted by the castle and the Power of Grayskull. “This is your purpose”, Saryn tells Keldor, “It’s why you were conceived.”

It’s a shocking moment in an issue that’s full of them. For while it was clear from the moment she lowered the hood of her cloak that Saryn is a master manipulator who has no qualms about playing two of the most dangerous men in the universe against each other, it’s only now that Keldor – and the reader – realises the true depth of her depravity. Because it turns out that Keldor never was a child of love or even lust, but that Saryn deliberately seduced – or raped, since we don’t really know what happened and how consenting a participant Miro was – Miro in order to steal his Grayskull sperm and produce a child that has Grayskull genes, so she can use him to get into Castle Grayskull and the juicy power within. In fact, it’s quite possible that Saryn used her magic to first cause Miro to be shipwrecked on Anwat Gar in the first place and that she’s also behind Miro becoming lost at sea for the second time to get him out of the way.

From the moment we first met her in the DC “Eternity War” comics, Saryn was never a positive figure. But the Eternity War Saryn was a baby-crazy and mentally unstable woman, who harboured an unrequited crush on King Grayskull, and was subsequently duped into murdering him and stealing the Sword of Protection and then spent the rest of her long life in a cave on Anwat Gar – briefly interrupted by an interlude where she rescued a shipwrecked Miro, nursed him back to health and had consensual sex with him – until Adora puts her out of her misery. This Saryn, however, is a monster and has just won herself the 2024 Darth Vader Parenthood Award, since I doubt that anybody who’s even worth will come along.

Once Skeletor was revealed as Keldor, he becomes a much more complex and interesting character, but you also get the problem that the existence of Keldor, the shunned illegitimate son, makes King Miro, who was an unambiguously sympathetic and likeable character in the Filmation cartoons, look like something of a jerk who has no issues sleeping with a hot blue-skinned woman, but then won’t marry her or acknowledge their kid. Revealing that Saryn deliberately engineered her relationship with Miro to conceive a child with Grayskull genes makes Miro look like less of a jerk, though he and Amelia still aren’t off the hook, because Miro didn’t have to banish Keldor to Anwat-Gar. He could have kept Keldor in Eternos and named him the heir. But even though Miro was not a good father to Keldor, Saryn is so much worse. It’s notable that even Hordak – who literally is one of the worst people in the universe – is horrified by what Saryn has done.

As for Keldor, the revelation that he was just a tool, conceived as a flesh and blood key to Castle Grayskull, is of course doubly horrifying to him. Because through this mini-series, Keldor has been portrayed as someone who’s desperately looking for the love and approval of a parent figure and yet only finds terrible people – Miro and Amelia, Hordak and Saryn – who can’t or won’t give him what he needs and craves.  Indeed, Keldor asks his mother, “Did you ever love me?”

The disgusted look on Saryn’s face is all the answer you need. “Don’t be naive”, she replies.  Coincidentally, this also explains why Saryn was happy enough to hand her baby over to Miro, though she asked him to return him to her, once he was of age. In the “Eternity War” comics, Saryn did this, because she wanted a better life for her son in Eternos (Anwat Gar is a forbidden, shunned island in those comics and not the cyberpunk high-tech world we see in the Revelation/Revolution continuity). This Saryn, however, obviously is not going to deal with things changing diapers and is only too happy to leave that to Miro or rather his servants

Talking of Anwat Gar, I’m beginning to suspect that the reason that Gar don’t trust magic isn’t because they have no affinity for it, which is the explanation given in the Forge of Destiny comic. Because for a species that has no affinity for magic, there are actually a lot of Gar sorcerers. Of all the named Gar character we meet, about half – Keldor, Saryn, Shokoti, Jarvan from the Filmation cartoon and possibly Adi, the treacherous Gar member of King Grayskull’s council – are magic wielders of some kind. The named Gar who are not magic wielders are Kronis a.k.a. Trap-Jaw, Dash-el a.k.a Sy-Klone, his mother Hera Caine, her general Hail Storm and Ditzstroyer of the Fighting Foe Man, a rather obscure character who does have his own action figure. However, Gar magic wielders all tend to be villains, so I suspect the reason the Gar shun magic is that their main magic wielders are a cult of Ha’vok witches and warlocks. Shokoti was very likely a previous Sister of Ha’vok, until her villainous ways got her entombed in a pyramid in the Sands of Time. Also note that the mural in Castle Grayskull that we glimpse in Masters of the Universe Revolution shows King Grayskull, Tytus and a Gar woman dressed like Saryn and carrying the Staff of Kaa fighting the Horde. The Gar woman in the mural is very likely a Sister of Ha’vok who also wields Kaa magic, i.e. she has two of the three types of magic in Eternia. For Granamyr we also learn that the people of Eternia abused Kaa magic, when he gave it to them, so I suspect the Gar soceress in the mural was not a force for good.

Saryn revealing her true plan and the role he plays in it to Keldor is cut short by the surprise arrival of none other than Randor, who promptly attacks and calls Keldor “half-breed”. Keldor uses his magic to defend himself, while Saryn eggs him on to strike down his bother and remove the remaining obstacle on the way to the throne. However, Keldor has become wise to Saryn’s manipulative ways and realises that everything he saw in the Fright Zone was an illusion conjured up by Saryn and that neither Miro nor Randor are actually there. Saryn keeps shrieking “Destroy him”, while “Randor” implores Keldor to resist her, because Saryn has been manipulating them both. Keldor uses his magic to dispell the illusion cats by Saryn and “Randor” is revealed to be Hordak, whom we’d seen earlier arriving at the Fright Zone on a Mantisaur, stumbling over what was later revealed to be the dead sister of Ha’vok before being knocked out by Saryn.

Hordak once again implores Keldor to resist Saryn and also reveals that he has the Havoc Staff. He’s about to hand it to Keldor, while Saryn demands that Keldor leave the Havoc Staff to her. She also tries to warn Keldor that the Havoc Staff is dangerous – probably the only moment of genuine concern for her son – but her warning is cut short when Hordak blasts her with his arm cannons. Saryn vanishes, as does the Fright Zone. All that’s left is Saryn’s amulet, which Keldor picks up. “Did we kill her?” he asks, “Did we kill my mother?”

It remains to be seen whether Saryn is truly dead, but I for one wouldn’t count on it. I’m pretty sure we’ll see her again. Hordak, meanwhile, tells Keldor that he shouldn’t call Saryn his mother, because she was a power-hungry succubus who used them both and would have killed Keldor, once he’s fulfilled his purpose. He very likely is right, too, since I’m pretty sure Saryn would have killed Keldor as a potential rival and threat eventually. Hordak also tells Keldor that he will never be free, until he embraces his full power and takes the Havoc Staff.

Keldor, however, is hesitant, because he realises that Hordak is just as manipulative as Saryn and wants to know why Hordak has been keeping the Havoc Staff from him, if he had it all along. Hordak replies that Keldor wasn’t ready and also points out that the Havoc Staff isn’t the answer to Keldor’s problems and can’t give him what he needs. It’s a remarkable moment of honesty – because what Keldor needs are love, acceptance and a family, not a Havoc Staff – especially coming from Hordak of all people.

Keldor is still sceptical and wants to know why Hordak is telling him all that, whereupon Hordak replies that his brother Horde Prime believes that superior technology is all that’s needed to conquer the universe. Hordak, however, has realised that both magic and technology are needed, something that Saryn also understood, power hungry and mad as she was.

Keldor agrees that Saryn’s plan was sound, because if he takes the throne and has the power of Havoc and the power of Grayskull at his command, he can finally rule Eternia. Hordak tells him to think bigger, because why settle for Eternia, when you can rule the whole universe? And together, Hordak and Keldor can do just that, rule the Horde Empire with the joint powers of magic and technology. Of course, it should be obvious that Hordak will never share power with anybody else. But Keldor is still looking for a parent figure and so he takes the Havoc Staff. We all know what happens next, since we saw it in Masters of the Universe: Revolution. Keldor gets his face melted off and becomes Skeletor – at least physically. Though the shocked expression on Hordak’s face is interesting, since he apparently had no idea that this would happen. Also kudos to Daniel HDR’s amazing artwork on this splash page and throughout the issue.

In the 2002 cartoon, Keldor got his face melted off, when he tried to hurl a vial of acid at Randor. Randor blocked the attack with his shield and the acid backfired on Keldor, melting his face off and mortally wounding him (you can watch the whole thing here). Hordak than saved his life, but turned him into Skeletor in the process. I’ve always liked the element of poetic justice in this origin story – Keldor tries to murder his brother, but his attack backfires and turns him into a monster. But acid attacks feel a lot closer to the real world than they did in 2002, which is probably why Keldor now gets his face burned off by contact with corrosive Havoc magic (which is also what happens in the CGI cartoon).

As I’ve said before, the introduction of Keldor turns Skeletor from a fun, but one-note villain into a much more complex character. This version of the original story adds yet more layers to the character of Keldor/Skeletor, because this version of Keldor is clearly not ruthless enough to hurl a vial of acid at his own brother. He does plan to assassinate Miro, though as subsequent events show, he likely wouldn’t have gone through with it, but he never plans to kill Randor, probably because his brother is one of the few people Keldor ever loved and who loved him back. And when he sees an adult Randor as a king and expectant father, it’s notable that Keldor doesn’t even try to assassinate him – though he still has the Horde crossbow he wanted to use to murder Miro – but walks away.

It will also be interesting to see exactly what it is the shatters Keldor’s mind and erases his memories and gives birth to the persona of Skeletor. Is it the corrosive power of Ha’vok, paired with the traumatic experiences Keldor just had that send him over the edge or does Hordak have a more active hand in erasing Keldor’s memories and personalities? Of course, Skeletor accuses Hordak of manipulating his memories and creating a fake persona in Masters of the Universe: Revolution, but that doesn’t mean it’s the truth. I guess we will find out next issue.

We actually do catch a glimpse of our heroes in this issue and see a young Randor, Duncan and Marlena – and Adam and Adora in utero – but this comic mini-series is still very much a story about three villains and their toxic relationships with each other.

Of the three protagonists, Keldor gets off the best. In this issue, he mostly comes across as lost and confused, a young man who just wants the love and approval of a parent figure. Also, this issue actually made me feel sorry for Keldor of all people, even though I know exactly who and what he will become. He already is a villain at this point – just ask the people of Zal-Kron – but he’s not irredeemable. Instead, Keldor is something of a tragic figure, because by the time he gets what he clearly craves – love and acceptance by his family and the people of Eternos – he no longer knows what to do with it. He abuses his own henchpeople and Lyn, who genuinely does seem to love him, and once he finally becomes King of Eternia and is accepted by his family and the people, he promptly turns around and betrays them all to the Horde. Indeed, if Keldor had revealed himself to Randor, he wouldn’t have become king, but he would have gotten what he truly needs, a place where he’s accepted and a family who cares about him. In many ways, Keldor is the victim of a toxic cycle of abuse who finally succumbs to it.

Hordak is not just clearly a villain, but also one of the worst people in the universe. He also no more cares about Keldor than Saryn does, but uses him to get what he wants. However, the events in this issue shock even Hordak, which I imagine takes some doing.

Saryn, meanwhile, is the worst. That woman truly is a monster, who not only manages to outmanoeuvre and outvillain two of the worst people – Skeletor and Hordak – in the universe, but also manages to horrify both of them, when she reveals the depth of her depravity. Saryn not only made me feel sorry for Skeletor of all people, but her actions shock even Hordak. So congratulations to Saryn who will never become Empress of the Universe, but who definitely is one of worst people in the Masters of the Universe universe, eclipsing both Hordak and Skeletor and rivalled possibly only be Horde Prime, whom we have yet to see.

I enjoyed the Forge of Destiny comic mini-series a lot, but I enjoy the Revolution prequel comics just as much, even though the protagonists are all villains of various degrees of terribleness. I’m also looking forward to the final issue where I suspect we may see a certain infamous baby snatching expedition.

Cora Goes to the Virtual SpiralCon

We are interrupting your regularly scheduled Hugo drama for a con announcement. There’ll be more of those in the days to come, because I’m planning to attend four cons – three physical and one virtual – over the next months and I’m on programming at three of them.

We’ll start off with SpiralCon 3, a virtual con focussed on sword and sorcery, cosmic horror, space opera and adjacent fields, put on by the good people of Spiral Tower Press, home of Whetstone, Witch House and Waystation magazines.

SpiralCon takes place on Saturday, July 27, 2024, i.e. tomorrow (yes, I know I’m late with this announcement), it’s virtual and it’s free, i.e. everybody can attend.

The full program schedule is here.

I’m on two panels:

The Appeal of Contemporary S&S,

Saturday, July 27, 2024, 11:00 to 11:50 am EST

The panel description should be here, though at the moment there’s only a list of panelists and a bio. But then the title is pretty self-explanatory.

Moderator: Sean CW Korsgaard is a United States Army veteran, an award-winning photojournalist, and a freelance reporter with articles published in titles such as The New York Times, VFW Magazine, and Analog. He served as an assistant editor and media relations manager at Baen Books until 2023 and is recognized for his contributions to science fiction and fantasy, including co-editing the anthology Worlds Long Lost. His most recent project orbits his love of sword and sorcery fiction as he is founding a new magazine, Battleborn. Korsgaard holds a degree in mass communications and history from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Panelists: Matt Holder, Cora Buhlert, and Dr. John “Cal” Baldari

Barbarians at the Gates: The Second Sword and Sorcery Boom and the Birth of the Modern Fantasy Genre.

Saturday, July 27t, 2024, 01:30 to 02:20 pm EST

Panel Description: In the mid 1960s, fantasy exploded into the mainstream, when Ace (illegally) published Lord of the Rings in paperback and Lancer began reprinting the Conan stories with Frank Frazetta covers and new material added. Both were huge successes and opened the floodgates for a Barbarian boom that lasted into the early 1980s. However, the sword and sorcery revival had been simmering under the radar since around 1960, when Cele Goldsmith began publishing sword and sorcery in the pages of Fantastic and John Carnell did the same in the UK in Science Fantasy. Fritz Leiber returned to Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, new writers like Michael Moorcock, Lin Carter, Joanna Russ and Roger Zelazny entered the genre and the fanzine Amra provided a place for fans and writers of the still nameless genre to get together. This panel will explore how the 1960s sword and sorcery boom came to be and how it continues to influence the fantasy genre until this day.

Moderator: Cora Buhlert: Buhlert is a Hugo Award-winning author based in Bremen, Germany. She holds an MA degree in English from the University of Bremen. Buhlert has published a wide array of stories, articles, and poetry in various international magazines. Her literary works span multiple genres, including pulp-style thrillers, space opera series, and the Thurvok and Kurval sword and sorcery series. Buhlert won the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer and the 2021 Space Cowboy Award. She also works as a professional translator and has experience teaching English and German as a foreign language.

Panelists: Cora Buhlert, Paul Weimer, Brian Collins, and Kris Vyas-Myall.

ETA: Shownotes with links to the panelists websites, social media, etc… are now online.

So what are you waiting for? Come and see us at SpiralCon tomorrow.

We’re Having Hugo Drama… Again

Apparently, we are not able to get through an awards season without Hugo drama and Worldcon drama in general. Especially since I really don’t have time for this right now, cause I have to prepare for three cons where I’m on programming, plus I’m still trying to write a story every day and I also have to work to pay for food, power (just ordered the yearly supply of oil for the furnace), books, toys, Worldcons and other essentials.

So since I’m busy, this is going to be a fairly short post, amended as and if necessary.

Earlier today, in the Hugo finalist Discord (which I founded, so I’m active there, even though I’m not a finalist this year), finalists were talking about receiving an e-mail about a virtual town hall meeting for all finalists that was set up on short notice. These virtual meetings are not unusual and usually involve logistical issues and since I’m not a finalist this year, I didn’t pay much attention.

Anyway, it turns out that the Glasgow Hugo administration team dropped a bombshell at this virtual town hall meeting and later also in a public statement, which can be found here. There’s also a YouTube video of the statement by 2024 Hugo administrator Nichlas Whyte, which has some additional information.

Basically, it turned out that there had been an attempt to stuff the Hugo ballot by someone or rather someones buying a large number of supporting membership with blatantly false names like several variations of the same name (John L. Smith, John S. Smith, Joan Smith, Joanne Smith, J. Smith, etc…) as well as consecutive numbers. These fake members bullet-voted for a particular finalist and generally submitted very unusual ballots.

The Hugo team caught this and disqualified 377 obviously fraudulent votes altogether, which is almost ten percent of the total. The finalist who was the beneficiary these fraudulent votes was not disqualified and has not been publicly named, since there is no evidence that they were aware of any of this.

This is obviously a big deal and even though there have been attempts to game finalists onto the ballot before, I don’t think any person, entity or group has ever attempted to manipulate the final voting, since it takes many more votes to win a Hugo than to make the ballot. Also, a supporting a.k.a. WSFS membership costs 50 US-dollars, so this is also quite expensive – roughly 19000 US-dollars – so whoever is behind this has deep pockets. Thankfully, they were also clumsy and didn’t even consider using a name generator or otherwise hiding their trail.

I applaud Nicholas Whyte and the Glasgow Hugo team for transparency in what must have been a difficult decision, because Hugo ballots are not disqualified lightly, and also for keeping the name of the finalist in question out of this.

That said, speculations are obviously flying high, both among finalists and the general public. I’ve been told that some of the fake member names were visible on the public membership list until fairly recently and I have seen screenshots, but most of those names seem to have been removed. The list of countries of origin of Worldcon members broken down into membership categories is also interesting.

John/ErsatzCulture noticed the membership weirdness some time ago and took screenshots, which he shared on Twitter. He also points out that the Glasgow statement refers merely to a finalist and notes that there are more Hugo categories than just the fiction categories.

Of course, this is all just speculation. We don’t know who the finalist in question is, though we can make some educated guesses, and we will probably be able to tell for sure when the detailed voting data is released, though the fraudulent ballots have been removed.

There is some discussion about this issue in the comments at File 770 and Camestros Felapton’s blog.

Also, considering a WSFS membership includes privileges other than Hugo voting, may I remind you to vote in site selection for the 2026 Worldcon this year, if you’re an attending or supporting Worldcon member. The race seems uncontested, since the only bid is for Los Angeles, California, but write-ins are a possibility.

Finally, in other, better news, the finalists for the 2024 Ignyte Awards have been announced today. I don’t cover the Ignytes in detail in this blog, because I have only so much bandwidth, but they alway have interesting finalists, including some that are overlooked by other genre awards. I’m particularly happy to see my good friends of the Simultaneous Times podcast on the Ignyte ballot this year.

 

 

The 2024 July Short Story Challenge – Day by Day

Blogging is light right now, because I’m getting ready for Worldcon and I’m also doing the July Short Story Challenge again.

What is the July Short Story Challenge, you ask? Well, in July 2015, Dean Wesley Smith announced that he was planning to write a brand new short story every day during the month of July. The original post seems to be gone now, but the Wayback Machine has a copy here. At the time, several people announced that they would play along, so I decided to give it a try as well. And then I did it again the following year. And the next. And the next. If you want to read my post-mortems of the previous July short story challenges, here are the posts for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Initially I was unsure whether I was going to do the challenge this year, because I caught some nasty cold/flu bug (not covid according to a test) in June, which knocked me out for a week, and was also busy with translation work, taxes and preparations for Worldcon in Glasgow. But then I decided to give it a try and see I could make it work. And since I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to do the challenge, I also held off posting the day by day post.

Initially, I committed to the challenge only for a week, but when the first week was over, I kept going. And now we’re already at the two week mark, so I might as well post the day by day overview.

In previous years, I’ve always done a post-mortem post about the July Short Story Challenge in August. In 2019, I also started keeping a running tally of all stories written to date right here on this blog to hold myself accountable. It worked well and so I did it again in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. I will do it again this year as well and will update this post with every new story. This tally will be very basic, listing just the date, title, word count, genre, series, if any, and maybe a one or two sentence summary/comment.

Most of these stories will become longer in editing. Many will eventually change their titles and some may never see the light of day at all.

If you want to follow along with the challenge, bookmark this post. And if you want to play along or cheer me on, feel free to do so in the comments.

And now, let’s take a look at the stories:

July 1, 2024: “So You Want to Be a Cozy Witch…”, cozy fantasy, 1069 words

Basically, this story is a summary of every witch cozy mystery series ever. The inspiration was compiling the end-of-the-month new release round-up for the Speculative Fiction Showcase and the Indie Crime Scene. One type of book I unfailingly have in the round-up every month are witch cozies. And having read so many blurbs for witch cozies, it’s hard not to notice that these series have a lot of similarities. So I set out to write a ultimate guide to every witch cozy series ever.

July 2, 2024: “Hansemann’s Bakery” (The Culinary Assassin), crime fiction, 1366 words

The world’s only gourmet hitperson goes to a bakery, buys a caraway breadstick and kills an abusive husband.

Yeah, it’s another Culinary Assassin story. I really need to collect these, since I have a bunch of them by now. The inspiration for this story was heading to a local bakery when they open at five AM and it was just getting light outside. And yes, the bakery is real.

July 3, 2024: “The Restaurant at the End of the World”, post-apocalyptic, 3182 words

Steve is fourteen, when the nukes fall. He survives inside an abandoned Cold War era bunker in the woods. When his supplies finally run out after four years, Steve is forced to leave his bunker in search of other survivors. But all he finds are burned out ruins, until he comes across an almost intact restaurant by a crossroads – and it’s owner, Ruth…

The inspiration for this story was this piece of concept art by Alariko. Steve is named for Steve Guttenberg, who was in The Day After, while Ruth is named for the closest thing to a protagonist that Threads has.

July 4, 2024: “Limbo”, crime fiction, 774 words

Sam is in prison, awaiting execution. But there is an unexpected delay…

The inspiration for this one was Punk Noir Magazine‘s flash fiction writing prompt “Limbo”. Of course, I missed the deadline to actually submit the story, but nonetheless, I suddenly had the idea of writing a story about someone in prison, awaiting execution.

July 5, 2024: “The Watcher on the Heath”, historical fiction, 1407 words

Millennia of history are told from the POV of a glacial erratic deposited on the heath.

The inspiration for this one was visiting a neolithic grave mound and assembly of glacial erratics in the village of Anderlingen.

July 6, 2024: “The Night The Thing Attacked Harbour Town”, cosmic horror, 1590 words

Prohibition era gangsters versus Cthulhu, ’nuff said.

The inspiration for this one were these three pieces of fantasy art by Richard Wright.

July 7, 2024: “Revenge of the Black Gargoyle”, pulp fiction, 2469 words

Thomas DeVane a.k.a. the vigilante the Black Gargoyle has finally found the man who murdered his parents, industrialist Atlas Snow. So DeVane infiltrates Snow’s skyscraper headquarters to take out the man himself.

The inspiration for this story was this piece of artwork by Christophe Vacher. It appealed because of the pulpy vibes and so I wrote a pulp vigilante story. Of course, I already have a pulp vigilante character in Richard Blakemore a.k.a. The Silencer, but he wouldn’t have worked for this story because of the revenge angle. So I created a new character who is somewhat inspired by Batman.

July 8, 2024: “The Whispering Stone”, time travel, 1102 words

In a small town about an hour inland from the North Sea there stands a stone stele that emits eerie whispers. The stele is very old and mentioned in the writings of Roman historians, Frakish missionaries and medieval chronists. Once recording equipment becomes available, scientists examine the stele and record the whispers and finally realise that they are message transmitted through time. And then they receive a terrifying warning…

The inspiration for this story is a sculpture in the city park of the town of Zeven named the Time Whisperer. I came across the sculpture during a stroll through the city park, though I can’t find any info about it online. The name intrigued me, so I wondered what if that sculpture really could transmit whispered through time. The story grew from there.

July 9, 2024:  “Meg’s First Day of School”, post-apocalyptic, 541 words

Meg lives in a mountain hut and today is her first day of school in the valley. But getting there requires crossing a field full of fallen mechas left over from the robot uprising…

The inspiration for this story was a piece of science fiction art of a little girl in a meadow full of fallen and overgrown robots. Unfortunately, I forgot to bookmark the artwork and I can’t find it right now. This is more of a vignette than a story, but I was tired.

July 10, 2024: “Fairy Doors”, fantasy, 1937 words

Fairy doors suddenly appear in the trunks of tree all over the neighbourhood of Shady Grove. The people believe it’s a prank or an art project, though no one ever comes forward to confess being responsible. Nonetheless, everybody is delighted. But then a cat goes missing and then other pets. And finally, children go missing…

The inspiration for this story was an article about fairy doors appearing in Brooklyn Heights. This story starts off quite cosily and then takes a turn into darkness…

July 11, 2024: “Home Story”, horror, 911 words

A TV journalist arrives at the country home of Secretary of the Interior Jeremiah Rice-Smythe. However, all is very much not as it seems…

The inspiration for this story was a news headline that the former British conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg would star in reality about himself and his family, which prompted plenty of jokes on Twitter about how Rees-Mogg was a vampire or some Lovecraftian entity. So I thought, what if he really was a vampire. What would happen to that TV team?

July 12, 2024: “King of the Raven”, horror, 572 words

Ravens are gatherine in the town of Fog Haven, watching and waiting for their king to arrive…

The inspiration for this story was this piece of horror art by Denis Loebner and the book and movie The Birds. Another quick flash piece, because I was tired.

July 13, 2024: “The Skull Mace”, dark fantasy, 697 words

The skull mace is a prized museum exhibit, a rare artefact of the Vilkor people who used the body parts of their slain enemies to fashion their weapons. But intern Kitty Chan questions whether it’s ethical to display a weapon made from a human skull. The skull, meanwhile, has ideas of its own…

The inspiration for this story was this drawing by Alexander Trufanov of a mace made from a skull, paired with a recent Twitter thread about museum exhibitions, warning labels and exhibits removed from display or not. Kitty Chan is also the name of the doomed museum intern from my story Paris Green.

July 14, 2o24: “Revenge Served Hot”, crime fiction, 428 words

The unnamed protagonist has had enough and decides to take revege on a greedy law firm. So the protagonist heads to the law firm’s office, a can of gasoline hidden in their briefcase…

The inspiration for this one was a report about an lethal arson attack on a club in Munich in 1984, which I had never heard of before. The real arsonists were far right fundamentalist Catholics intent on exterminating supposed “sinners”, but I changed the target and motivation of the arsonist.

This is the shortest story yet, but it didn’t any more space and I’m quite happy with how it came out.

 

 

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Puzzle”

It’s time for another Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo story. The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server.

Last month, I posted an Evil Horde recruitment ad. It clearly worked, since I have gotten a few more Horde members since then, including a new version of Hordak as he appeared in Masters of the Universe Revolution as well as Leech, one of the core Horde members from the vintage toyline and the She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoon. Eventually, I will have to retake that epic Horde group shot. But for now, I’ve been having some fun with the new Horde recruits.

Hordak in his robe of office, as he appeared in Masters of the Universe: Revolution.

One Horde member who’s not a new recruit is Entrapta. Entrapta was one of only two Horde members who was released in the vintage Princess of Power toyline, the other being Catra. All the male Horde members were actually released in the He-Man toyline, since the gender essentialist idiots in charge at Mattel didn’t think that girls would want monster characters. They clearly never met little Cora who loved her King Kong and Godzilla figures. I really should get some of the new King Kong and Godzilla figures that have come out in the wake of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Godzilla Minus One, since my originals from the late 1970s/early 1980s are long gone.

In the vintage Princess of Power toyline, Entrapta had a gleaming golden armour and long pink and purple hair that was twisted into braids. She used her golden armour to mesmerise enemies and her prehensile hair to capture them. Yes, that was her special power. She looked gorgeous and captured enemies with her hair. Entrapta was also (platonic) friends with Catra and they were seen hanging out together in a tree house in one of the Princess of Power mini-comics. Yes, the She-Ra mini-comics were utterly assinine with nothing in the way of conflict or suspense. I think the worst thing that happened was that Catra blasted someone with her shower power water blast. And then Mattel was surprised that girls didn’t like those comics and blamed it on girls not liking comics period.

Entrapta also appeared in the Filmation She-Ra cartoon. She still had her long hair and she still used it to capture enemies, but in an inspired move, Filmation also made Entrapta the Horde’s tech genius, their counterpart to Man-at-Arms for the Heroic Warriors and Tri-Klops and Trap-Jaw for Skeletor. She’s also the most intelligent Horde member. I guess the idea was to show that girls can be pretty and have long hair and wear glittery clothing and can still be smart and good at technology.

The 2018 She-Ra reboot decided to run with the techie part of Entrapta’s character and portrayed her as an autistic tech genius who prefers robots to people. Entrapta still has long prehensile hair, but ditched the glittery outfit for a more practical overall and shirt combo. Entrapta starts out as a member of the Princess Alliance, which is the 2018 She-Ra equivalent of the Great Rebellion, but winds up joining the Horde after she is accidentally left behind in the Fright Zone during a rescue mission gone wrong. Entrapta befriends Scorpia and Catra and also strikes up an oddly endearing friendship/romance with Hordak of all people. Entrapta completely fails to be terrified by Hordak, but views him as her lab partner, while Hordak is impressed by her technical and scientific skills. In fact, Entrapta is probably the only person aside from Imp that 2018 Hordak truly cares for.

Come to think of it, Hordak certainly gets around and has (implied) relationships with Shadow Weaver (they co-parent Adora), Motherboard (I’m not sure how that would work physically, but there’s clearly something between those two) and Entrapta and attractive female Horde members like Octavia and again Entrapta tend to end up draped over Hordak’s lap in the Filmation She-Ra cartoon.

The Horde does have another scientist member, namely Modulok. Though Modulok didn’t start out as a scientist. Instead, he was a kind of construction toy consisting of 22 separate components, including six legs, four arms, two heads, two tails and several connector pieces. The pieces could be assembled however you wanted to and Modulok was known as the “Evil Beast of a Thousand Bodies”.  In fact, Modulok perfectly illustrates how very weird Masters of the Universe could get in its heyday.

Because Modulok came out in 1985, the same year the Evil Horde was introduced, he was billed as a Horde member. As for how he became a scientist, that’s due to the Filmation He-Man cartoon, which introduces Modulok as Galen Nycroft, a humanoid mad scientist languishing in the dungeon of Eternos Palace for conducting unethical experiments and unwilling subjects. He builds a machine that’s supposed to help him escape, but which has the side effect of turning him into a weird monster with multiple reconfigurable body parts. In some versions of the story, he literally mails himself out of the prison bit by bit. Modulok initially joins Skeletor’s Evil Warriors, but later defects and joins the Evil Horde, since he feels underappreciated by Skeletor, and shows up in several She-Ra episodes as well. This backstory of Modulok was created by J. Michael Straczynski, who would go on to create Babylon 5 among many other things.

Because he has so many unique parts, Modulok is expensive to make, which is why he hasn’t yet appeared in either the Masters of the Universe Origins or Masterverse toyline. However, Modulok was made in the Masters of the Universe Classics toyline and I recently got that version of the character for a good price. And since I now had the two Horde technicians/scientists, I decided to have some fun and see what happens, when these two meet.

There are also two other Horde members in the story. The first is Imp, Hordak’s shapeshifting pet/spy and probably the only being in the universe he truly loves. The second is Dragstor, who had a figure in the vintage He-Man toyline, but never appeared in any of the cartoons. The result of Horde science experimentation, Dragstor is a cyborg who has a wheel integrated into his abdomen and exhaust pipes on his back. When he lays down on his belly, he becomes a vehicle that chases after enemies of the Horde and knocks them down. As I said, Masters of the Universe could get very weird indeed and the Horde had some of the weirdest characters of all (plus a good dose of body horror). The vintage toy actually did race across the floor, if you laid him down flat and pulled a rip-cord. The Masters of the Universe Classics figure, the only other version of this character ever made, just looks cool, but the wheel doesn’t actually work.

I should maybe say a few words about the set. In both the original Filmation She-Ra cartoon and the 2018 reboot, Hordak’s base, the Fright Zone is a Gigeresque technological nightmare, a maze of pipes and cables. I wanted to recreate the look of the Fright Zone, so I raided Dad’s workshop for suitable props and came across a box full of some kind of valves. They’re brand new and I’m not entirely sure what they were supposed to be for – I assume it has something to do with the heating system, since the radiator control valves were replaced last year – but they look great as a background for the Fright Zone.

But enough of the preliminaries. Let’s see what happens when Entrapta meets Modulok in

Puzzle

The Fright Zone, Entrapta’s personal workshop:

“I replaced your spark plugs and adjusted our carburetor, Dragstor. Now your engines should run much more smoothly. I fixed the firing mechanism on your crossbow, too.”

“Thanks for the tune-up, Entrapta. You’re a doll.”

“Wait till I tell Hordak you’re flirting with his girlfriend.”

“Shut up, Imp.”

“Hordak!”

“Lord Hordak, sir.”

“Don’t you have something to do, Dragstor? Such as hunting down those accursed rebels?”

“Y… yes, sir, Lord Hordak. En… Entrapta was just giving my engine a tune-up. I mean, not like that. She was fixing my… ahem…”

“Snicker.”

“I replaced his spark plugs and adjusted his carburetor, Hordak. He should run much more smoothly now.”

“You’re dismissed, Dragstor. I would like to speak with Entrapta. Alone.”

“Yes, Lord Hordak.”

“Alone” onviously does not apply to Imp.

“Sigh, I see you still show flagrant disregard for the official Horde dress code. Oh, Entrapta, what shall I do with you?”

“But I like soarkly and glittery outfits. And pink and purple match my hair so much better than red and black. And besides, Scorpia said I look pretty.”

“Scorpia has a crush on you and would say anything.”

“So you don’t think I look pretty, Hordak?”

“I didn’t say that. But there are rules and regulations about appropriate wear for Horde members, such as the requirement to wear a Horde symbol on your person all the time.”

“But I do wear a Horde symbol. I wear your face, Hordak, right here on my chest where my heart is.”

“Oh my Entrapta, you’re lucky that I happen to like you very much. And talking of which, I have a present for you.”

“A present? For me?”

“Hmph, I never get presents.”

“Quit sulking, Imp. Troopers, bring in the deliveries we received.”

Later:

“Wow, it’s body parts. Lots of body parts.”

“You really know how to romance a lady, Hordak.”

“Shut up, Imp.”

“So what’s all this about, Hordak?”

“Three weeks ago, we started receiving parcels, all delivered from the Prison Star. Every parcel contained a different body part, twenty-two altogether. The final parcel also included a note. ‘Assemble me’, it said.”

“It’s like a puzzle. A giant puzzle. That’s so cool.”

“Look, Hordak, it’s got two heads.”

“Of course, I have two heads. Cause two heads means twice the brain power.”

“It can speak.”

“Of course, I can speak. What do you take me for? And besides, I’m not an it. My name is Galen Nycroft, Professor Galen Nycroft to be exact, and my pronouns are he/him.”

“What exactly do you want, Nycroft?”

“Beyond being addressed by my name and correct pronouns, you mean? Well, I want to join the Horde, conquer the universe, subjugate countless worlds and carry out unspeakable experiments on enslaved beings.”

“So you are responding to our recruitment ad? Excellent. But then why did you arrive in this disassembled form?”

“Because those jerks in the Tri-Solar system did not appreciate my genius and locked me up on the Prison Star for life for ‘unethical experiments’. As if it’s my fault that fifty-six percent of my test subjects died. You can’t do science without breaking a few eggs or a few test subjects. And besides, my success rate is from seventy-three percent of test subjects not surviving the experiments.”

“All right, so that’s why the packages were all shipped from the Prison Star. But why did you ship yourself out in separate pieces.?”

“Because this was the only way I could escape. I built a machine from components found in the prison workshop, divided myself into twenty-two parts and shipped myself out one by one.”

“That’s so cool! Don’t you think that’s cool, Hordak?”

“It’s certainly… ingenious. Nycroft, I can use a man like you.”

“Then what are you waiting for? Put me back together!”

“Oh, I never dirty my own hands, Nycroft. I hire well. So Entrapta, if you would do the honours…”

“Put him back together again, you mean? Of course, Hordak. This is so cool.”

“You mean, the girl with the pink hair and the sparkly dress is your technician?”

“The very best.”

“No wonder you have recruitment problems.”

“Look, Hordak, we’ve got enough parts to make two of them.”

“I’m not two people, you silly girl, I’m one person with two heads.”

“Well, maybe you could have said that beforehand…”

“Maybe you could have asked, nitwit. And now put me together correctly.”

“There. Now you’ve got one body with two heads.”

“What have you done, you imbecile?”

“Put both heads on one body. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“My head is stuck on my butt, you idiot!”

“Snicker.”

“Well, there was nowhere else to put it.”

“Both heads go on my neck, idiot. And now fix me!”

“Snicker. Giggle.”

“And what are you laughing at, you little flying pest?”

“I’m laughing cause your head is stuck on your butt. Snicker.”

“This is not funny. Hordak, reign in your underlings!”

“I don’t know – snort. Personally, I think this is very funny. But Entrapta, could you please fix Professor Nycroft, before his second head passes out from his own farts.”

“Passes out from his own farts. Ha, that’s so funny! Snicker.”

“Idiots. I’m surrounded by idiots. I should have joined Skeletor’s Evil Warrior instead. Or the Denebrian Space Mutants.”

“At last. I am complete at last. Your sorry excuse for a technician finally got it right.”

“Nycroft, I’m warning you. Don’t insult Entrapta!”

“Nycroft? I am no longer Galen Nycroft. In this form, I shall be known as MODULOK!”

“Uhm, actually I was still working on those guns. But you can try them out, if you want.”

“I am Modulok, the Evil Beast of a Thousand Bodies.”

“Yeah, we heard you the first time.”

“The mere sight of me shall strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of the Horde.”

“If they don’t die of laughter first.”

“Imp, be nice to our newest recruit.”

“Oh look, Hordak, there’s a part left over. He’s got a second tail.”

“That’s no tail. That’s… Put it down, you stupid girl! Ahhhh!”

“Snicker.”

“Nycroft, final warning. Don’t insult Entrapta, my best and most brilliant recruit. Entrapta, put that thing down. It’s disgusting.”

“You’re right, Hordak. It is kind of sticky.”

“Snicker.”

***

Later:

“Hi folks, I’m Loo-Kee. I hide everywhere, even in scary places like the Fright Zone. That’s my thing, you know. I hide and watch and I see everything. And then, I will tell you what the moral of the story you just witnessed is. Because every story has to have a moral and a lesson. That’s a universal cosmic law, established by the all-powerful council of the Federal Communications Commission.”

“In today’s story, Modulok thought that Entrapta couldn’t possibly by smart and know about science and technology, because she’s a girl and has pink hair and wears glittery clothes. That was very short-sighted of him, because many girls are interested in science and technology. Besides, girls can be both smart and pretty. Hordak knows this and that’s why he appreciates Entrapta. Even though Hordak is a bad guy…”

“Hey, you there! What are you doing here, rebel?”

“Oops, I was spotted. Gotta go. Bye. Be seeing you.”

“Wait, you rainbow-coloured nuissance. Come back here. Or I’ll call the Troopers and then you’re in real trouble.”

The End

***

We’ve got another new character here, namely the ainbow-coloured Etherian woodland creature known as Loo-Kee. In the Filmation She-Ra cartoon, Loo-Kee is always hiding in the background somewhere, Where’s Wally? style. At the end of the episode, he emerges and delivers the moral of the story.

I recently acquired a Masters of the Universe Classics Loo-Kee figure (and trust me, you don’t want to know what I paid for two figures – Loo-Kee comes packaged with Kowl, another diminuitive Etherian creature – of the approximate size and articulation level of a Smurf). And since I have Loo-Kee now, he can do his thing and hide and then deliver a moral lesson.

And yes, if you assemble Modulok into the classic two heads, four arms, six legs configuration, there always is a tail piece left over. And no, I’m not the first person to make a joke about what the second tail really is, since it’s pretty obvious.

Finally, because I can, here’s a photo of Hordak with all the male Horde members (except Multibot) who appeared in the vintage He-Man line.

The Evil Horde. From left to right, we have Modulok, Mosquitor, Mantenna, Hordak, Grizzlor, Leech and Dragstor

And here is one of Hordak’s private family photos:

Proud parents Hordak and Shadow Weaver pose with their adopted (and abducted) daughter Despara. You know her better as Princess Adora of Eternia a.k.a. She-Ra.

***

That’s it for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story, because there will be more.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

 

Some Thoughts on the 2023 Nebula Award Winners – and Hamburg Traffic Hell

The winners of the 2023 Nebula Awards were announced this morning at 5 AM my time, which is why I did not follow them live. Normally, I would have already posted my Nebula winner commentary post by now. But I had an appointment north of Hamburg this afternoon, which normally means a one and a half to two hour drive, i.e. I expected to be back by six PM.

However, it turned out that Autobahn A7, one of the main North-South routes for Germany and all of Europe was closed today because a highway bridge in Hamburg was being demolished. Unfortunately, this closure also affected the Elbtunnel, which is the best and fastest way to get to the other side of the river Elbe (and my appointment was north of Hamburg, i.e. on the other side). I heard about the closure, but didn’t cancel the appointment, because it was Sunday, so traffic wouldn’t be too bad and besides, I could still take Autobahn A1 and/or make my way to through the city of Hamburg via the Elbe bridges. I also left half an hour early, so everything should have been fine.

However, what I did not know until I was already on the way is that Hamburg also hosted a biker meeting and religious service today, which meant that the city was full of bikers. Even worse, there was also a massive bicycle protest as well as the women’s run street race, which meant that much of the inner city and several of the bridges were closed down for those events – on a weekend where the Elbtunnel was also closed, which is fucking terrible planning. Oh yes, and there was a European parliament and local council election, too.

As a result, there was a twenty kilometer traffic jam on Autobahn A1, the alternate route past the city. The Elbe ferry from Glücksstadt to Wischhafen, which many people use as a way to bypass Hamburg (not suitable for my route and besides, I hate ferries) had a four hour waiting time. I eventually got fed up with the traffic jam on the A1 and left the Autobahn, but because half the city was shut down for the various events, traffic was hell everywhere. It took me two and half hours to make my way through Hamburg, while my GPS kept trying to redirect me to the closed A7 and the Elbtunnel. It also doesn’t help that I don’t know my way around Hamburg all that well – unlike Dad who commuted from Bremen to Hamburg for almost twenty years and knew every obscure shortcut. Though Dad hated driving through Hamburg or at least driving to anywhere on the far side of the Elbe, because the traffic was often so terrible. Once, he even paid for a pricier plane ticket, so I could fly from Bremen rather than Hamburg, because he didn’t want to take me to Hamburg airport (which is on the far side of the Elbe and which I actually passed today).

BTW, I crossed the Elbe at the so-called Neue Elbbrücke (New Elbe Bridge), which isn’t actually new, but was built in 1887, though the turrets which made the bridge special were removed in 1959 in a postwar urban planning crime against architecture.  Here is a before and after photo of this architectural crime.

Unsurprisingly, I was late for my appointment and then I still had a long way back ahead of me. This time, I didn’t drive through Hamburg again – which was still full of bicycles, motorbikes and running women – but made my way through the sleepy commuter towns and villages north of Hamburg back to Autobahn A1, where the monster traffic jam had mostly dissipated by that time.

Anyway, that’s a long-winded way of explaining why the Nebula commentary post is later than usual. But back to the main event, that is the 2023 Nebula Award winners. The full list of winners may be found here and my commentary on the 2023 Nebula finalists may be found here.

So let’s take a look at the 2023 Nebula winners:

The 2023 Nebula Award for Best Novel goes to The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. I have to admit that this was my least favourite novel on the Nebula ballot and that it doesn’t work for me. Some of the author’s comments on social media also don’t make my inclined to voter for him. Still, others clearly feel differently. And at the very least, this win will pacify the usual suspects who complain that men cannot win Hugos and Nebulas anymore. Okay, who am I kidding here? It obviously won’t pacify them, because the winner is a man of colour from Sri Lanka and for the usual suspects, only white American men count.

The winner of the 2023 Nebula Award for Best Novella is “Linghun” by Ai Jiang. I haven’t read this one yet, but I’m very happy for Ai Jiang who only burst onto the scene in the past two years and has already made a big impression.

The 2023 Nebula Award for Best Novelette goes to “The Year Without Sunshine“ by Naomi Kritzer. I enjoyed this novelette and Naomi Kritzer’s work in general a lot, so I’m happy that it won.

The winner of the 2023 Nebula Award for Best Short Story is “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200“ by R.S.A Garcia. I enjoyed this story quite a bit, when I read it last summer, and it was on my personal Hugo longlist, though in the end it didn’t make my ballot. Nonetheless, I’m glad that it won.

The 2023 Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and YA Fiction goes to To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose. This is another book I haven’t read yet, even though it’s also a Hugo finalist, because I usually leave the Lodestar finalists for last. However, it did get a lot of buzz last year.

It’s also notable that three of the four winners in the fiction categories are writers of colour, two of them international writers. What is more, three of the four winners in the fiction categories (plus three of the four recipients of the special and lifetime achievement awards) are women. Do I hear the heads of the usual suspects exploding?

The winner of the 2023 Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation is Barbie. Now I have to admit that this win surprised me a little. Not because Barbie isn’t a good movie – it is – and besides, it was the highest grossing film of 2023. However, the ballot for the Ray Bradbury Award was very strong this year and personally, I thought that either the amazing The Last of Us episode “Long, Long Time” or Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which is shaping up to be a dark horse favourite for this year’s SFF awards, would win.

The 2023 Nebula Award for Game Writing goes to Baldur’s Gate 3. Once again, I can’t say much about this category, since I’m not a gamer. But Baldur’s Gate 3 is a huge and popular game in a huge and popular franchise, so popular that even I had heard about it, before it was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula.

Several special and lifetime achievement awards were awarded along with the Nebulas as well.

The recipient of the 2024 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is Susan Cooper. Now I have to admit that I have never read her famous The Dark Is Rising YA fantasy quartet nor anything else by her. The reason is that children’s and YA books were extremely regional before the 1990s and so I never read many English language children’s and YA classics, because they simply weren’t available in (West) Germany. The intense prejudice against fantasy fiction for children and teenagers in 1980s (West) Germany didn’t help either. But even though I’ve never read anything by Susan Cooper, I have no doubt that she is a most worthy Grand Master.

The Infinity Award, basically a posthumous Grand Master Award for authors who did not receive a Grand Master during their lifetimes, mostly because they died too young, was awarded for the second time this year and the recipient is Tanith Lee. Now Tanith Lee won plenty of awards during her lifetime, including a Stoker and World Fantasy lifetime achievement award, but nonetheless this win made me very happy, because publishing didn’t treat Tanith Lee very well in the last twenty years of her life, because her work was simply a little too weird and too queer for an industry which increasingly demanded that writers write the same kind of book over and over again, preferably in a long series. What is more, I wrote a profile of Tanith Lee for an upcoming issue of New Edge Sword and Sorcery, so the Infinity Award win was a nice note to end on.

The Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award goes to game designer Jennell Jaquays this year, also posthumously, because Jennell Jaquays died in January, much too early. Not only is this award highly deserved, but it also demonstrates that game writing is now an integral part of SFWA.

Finally, the recipient of the 2024 Kevin O’Donnell Jr Service to SFWA Award is James Hosek. This is another posthumous award, because James Hosek died in December 2023.  I have to admit that I wasn’t familiar with his work and had to look him up. Turns out that he’s better known as a mystery writer, though he also wrote science fiction and – more importantly – was SFWA’s Nebula Awards commissioner. Here’s a nice tribute on the SFWA website.

All in all, this is another good year for the Nebulas and associated awards. There’s only one winner I don’t care for and plenty of other people obviously felt differently.

Comic Review: Masters of the Universe Revolution Prequel #1 by Ted Biaselli, Rob David, Tim Sheridan and Daniel HDR

Earlier this year, I reviewed Masters of the Universe: Forge of Destiny, a four issue mini-series by Dark Horse Comics, who currently hold the Masters of the Universe license and have been putting out several comic mini-series. First, there was the Masters of the Universe Revelation prequel comic by Tim Sheridan and Mindy Lee, next there was Masterverse, an anthology type series showing us different iterations of Masters of the Universe throughout the Multiverse, by Tim Seeley and various artists (I never got around to reviewing that one, though I did read it), and finaly there was Forge of Destiny by Tim Seeley and Eddie Nunez. There’s also an upcoming Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover comic mini-series.

And now there is a new Masters of the Universe comic mini-series, the first issue of which just dropped last week. This one is a prequel to Masters of the Universe Revolution and that’s also the title. The story is by Ted Biaselli and Rob David, who are two of the executive producers and masterminds behind Masters of the Universe Revelation and Revolution (Ted Biaselli is also the voice of Gwildor). The script is by Tim Sheridan, one of the writers of Masters of the Universe Revelation and Revolution as well as the voice of King Miro. He’s also the writer of the very good Alan Scott: Green Lantern series from DC. The art is by Daniel HDR with inks by Keith Champagne.

When they announced that the Masters of the Universe Revolution comic would be a prequel, they certainly weren’t kidding, because issue one literally starts with the creation of the universe and Eternia or at least one version of that creation story. In this version of the Eternian creation myth, at the beginning of the universe, all magic is one, floating in a dark void. Then two types of magical deities emerge – Zoar, the deity of nurturing and protection whose avatar is the falcon, and Ka, the deity of passion and carnal desire whose avatar is a snake. Together, these two magical forces beget Eternia and the rest of the universe and then become locked in an endless battle that threatens to tear the newborn universe apart. Until a third power arises, Ha’vok, the deity of mayhem and change whose avatar is a ram or a fuzzy goat. Ha’vok brings balance to the two opposing forces and the three types of magic were at a stalemate, while Eternia and the universe thrived and grew. But, so the unseen voice who tells that story says, over time this stability became stagnation and time is ripe for a change. All that’s needed is the champion of Ha’vok to wield its power. Note that this is clearly the creation of Eternia and the universe according to Ha’vok. We already saw the creation of Eternia according to Zoar in Teela’s and Lyn’s visions in Masters of the Universe Revelation.

Like much of Masters of the Universe worldbuilding, the theology of Eternia was literally made up by several generations of writers, artists and toy designers as they went along, largely because no one ever expected that a fantasy world created for a kids’ toyline would ever need such a thing as a consistent theology and creation myth. Indeed for a long time, there was preciously little in the way of Eternian religion and theology. The early mini-comics introduced us to a character known as “the Goddess”, who is at this point is a female figure portrayed initially with green skin who walks Eternia and hands magical weapons and a harness to a passing wandering Barbarian warrior. This goddess shows up a few more times, though later appearances portray her with white skin, and eventually morphs into the Sorceress by the time the Filmation cartoon came around.

As for the Filmation cartoon, there are several times where characters exclaim, “By the ancients”, hinting at some kind of ancestor worship. And in the moral segments, He-Man, She-Ra, Orko, Man-at-Arms, Teela, Loo-Kee or whoever delivers the moral this week occasionally advises to “talk to your minister or rabbi”, which baffled me even as kid, because a) there are religions other than Christianity and Judaism on Earth, so why isn’t their clergy mentioned, and b) Eternia is an alien planet, so how do these characters even know what a minister or rabbi is? The Filmation cartoon even had a He-Man and She-Ra crossover Christmas special, which at least tries to address that most of these characters have probably never heard of Christmas. Indeed, there is scenes where two adorable Earth kids explain the meaning of Christmas to Orko, a moral segment where Prince Adam and Orko explain that not everybody celebrates Christmas, but that the Christmas spirit is for everybody and that no, Christmas is not just about presents. Finally, there is a scene where Queen Marlena remarks to King Randor that the preparations for Adam and Adora’s birthday party remind her of Christmas back home, whereupon Randor asks her what this Christmas thing is, which prompted me to yell at the screen, “You’ve been married for twenty years or so and yet you never even thought to ask your wife about her religious and cultural traditions before?” That said, it makes sense that Adam and likely Randor and Adora at least have some idea about earthly, specifically Christian religious traditions, via Marlena. Especially since Marlena gave her son a very meaningful name.

But while the Filmation cartoons occasionally refers to real world religions, particularly Christianity and to a lesser degree Judaism, we learn almost nothing about Eternian religion. Occasionally, we see ruined temples and sometimes we see more or less sinister priests. Often these temples house ancient monsters and Lovecraftian horrors which will run amok only to be finally subdued by He-Man. Sometimes, there is a magical artefact in that temple which Skeletor or some other lowlife will try to steal. Meanwhile, Zoar is not a deity, but just the name the Sorceress uses when she transforms into a falcon. Just as the Havoc Staff is simply the name of Skeletor’s weapon at this point.

In the 2002 cartoon, Zoar is still just the name of the falcon form of the Sorceress, but we learn that Skeletor’s Havoc Staff is but one ram-themed magical artefact originating in the desert city of Zalesia, which is full ramskull imagery and guarded by a powerful sorcerer known as the Faceless One. If the name Zalesia seems familiar, that’s because it’s Evil-Lyn’s hometown and at least in the 2002 cartoon, she is actually the daughter of the Faceless One and has a complicated relationship with her father. The 2002 cartoon also introduced Serpos, a deity worshipped by the Snake People who appears in the form of a giant three-headed snake. Sometime in the past, Serpos was turned to stone and is now known as the snake wrapped around Snake Mountain.

However, the idea of the three Eternian deities – or rather the three different aspects of the same deity – did not appear until the “Eternity War” comics published by DC Comics from 2012 onwards. The three deities here are Serpos the snake deity, worshipped by the Snake People, Zoar the falcon, worshipped by the humans of Eternia, and finally Horokoth the bat deity, worshipped by the Horde as well as Evil-Lyn and Skeletor. Hereby, Serpos represents birth, Zoar life and Horokoth death and destruction. One of the writers of the “Eternity War” comics was none other than Rob David, who’s also one of the producers of Masters of the Universe Revelation and Revolution and one of the writers of the Revolution prequel comic.

Both Zoar and Horokoth also appear in the CGI He-Man series, as a falcon and a bat avatar summoned by Teela and Evil-Lyn respectively. The CGI series also established Havoc as a form of dark and evil magic that corrupts everybody who tries to use it, including King Grayskull and even He-Man at one point, and which turns Keldor into Skeletor.

Masters of the Universe Revelation then gave us a look at the Eternian afterlife and their versions of Heaven and Hell or rather Valhalla and the Underworld. Though both Preternia and Subternia go back much further than Revelation. Preternia first appeared in the late 1980s in the vintage mini-comics and the planned Powers of Grayskull expansion of the Masters of the Universe toyline that was abandoned with only very few toys actually being produced. Though the Preternia of the 1980s was just a prehistoric Eternia, hence the name, and not Valhalla. Though several aspects of the prehistoric Preternia like bionic dinosaurs, the Three Towers and He-Ro do show up in the afterlife version. As for Subternia, it first appeared in the 2002 cartoon. Though again, Subternia was not the lands of the dead, but an underworld realm of lava and caves inhabited by two warring races, the alligator-like Caligars and the bat-like Speleans. Meanwhile, Scare Glow, the ruler of Subternia, goes back to the vintage toyline, though here he was just an evil ghost from another dimension (a lot of villains from the 1980s Masters of the Universe toyline and cartoon were evil beings from other dimensions) and not the lord of the underworld.

Of course, Zoar appears in Masters of the Universe Revelation as does the destructive bat deity Horokoth – when Skeletor makes Evil-Lyn the Sorceress of Grayskull, she wears a bat-themed outfit. We also see the snake and ram deities in visions experienced by Teela and Evil-lyn respectively. Masters of the Universe Revolution finally explicitly mentions three deities and three types of magic: Zoar the falcon, Ka the snake (which is clearly another name for the snake deity Serpos) and Ha’vok the ram or goat whatever he is. There is no mention of Horokoth this time around, but that doesn’t mean that this force isn’t out there somewhere. Especially since Masters of the Universe Revolution does have several bat-themed villains in the Evil Horde.

But while the religion and theology of Eternia are fairly recent retcons, they are based on motifs which have appeared in the Masters of the Universe toyline since the very beginning. Because the original Masters of the Universe toyline is full of animal imagery which pops up in costumes and armour, weapons and vehicles. The ram horn imagery as well as the weapon eventually known as the Havoc Staff shows up in early sketches of Skeletor by Masters of the Universe designer Mark Taylor, who seemed to have a thing for horns and skulls in general, since they show up a lot in his drawings.

The snake imagery was first associated with the Goddess character who had the snake armour and the snake staff known as the Staff of Ka. Alas, the Goddess was never produced as a separate figure in the vintage toyline, so her snake armour and the Staff of Ka ended up with Teela. The original idea was that the Teela action figure would represent both female characters – Goddess with the snake armour, Teela without – but most kids didn’t really understand this, so toy Teela just wore snake-themed armour and had a snake-themed weapon. Teela didn’t have any snake-themed armour or weapons in the Filmation cartoon. She does wield the Staff of Ka in the 2002 cartoon, but it’s just a weapon here, not a magical object. Snake imagery also shows up elsewhere in Masters of the Universe. Skeletor’s fortresss not only sports a giant snake wrapped around it, but it even called Snake Mountain. Viper Tower, one of the three towers of the Eternia playset, is also snake-themed. Finally, an entire fraction of villains known as the Snake Men was introduced towards the end of the original toyline. They are still going strong and gaining new members almost forty years later.

Zoar the falcon has probably the strangest backstory, because Zoar and her evil counterpart Screech only ended up in Masters of the Universe, because Mattel reused an existing mold for an eagle toy with flapping wings that had originally appeared in the Big Jim action figure line, which also was where the mold for Battle Cat and Panthor originated. The name Zoar, meanwhile, stems from a larger flapping wing eagle toy that Mattel produced in the early 1970s. Initially, Zoar was just another animal companion of He-Man’s (and male), but the Filmation cartoon gave the snake-themed Goddess character a bird-themed makeover and turned her into the Sorceress of Grayskull. Zoar was her bird-form, which allowed her to leave the castle. She was not a deity or an aspect of one originally, that only came in with the “Eternity War” comics. Bird of prey imagery also shows up elsewhere in Masters of the Universe, particularly in vehicles like the Talon Fighter, Blasterhawk, Road Ripper or Laser Bolt.

Bat imagery, finally, has also a long history in Masters of the Universe. Skeletor’s armour features a bat motif from very early sketches on. The Filmation cartoon introduced a bat-themed one-of villain named Batros, a thief who raids the royal library. The 1987 movie added Karg, another bat-like villain, and the 2002 introduced an entire race of Eternian bat people, the Speleans. Finally, the Evil Horde literally made the bat the symbol of their entire Empire, sported by every member of the Horde in some form. That’s also why it makes sense to retcon Skeletor into a member of the Evil Horde, because he wears the bat symbol on his armour as well.

So in short, animal motifs which kept recurring in the original toyline because some designers back in the 1980s thought that snake imagery, ram skulls and horns and birds of prey were cool – and in the case of Zoar was only there, because Mattel still had the mold for a bird toy from a completely different toyline – were eventually combined into a semi-coherent theology by later writers, which is personally find quite funny. It also shows how a lot of the worldbuilding in Masters of the Universe was just made up by the writers as they went along.

Now I’m on record that I don’t like religion in my SFF or only like it in small doses. And I have seen some people complain that Masters of the Universe: Revelation and Revolution delve too much into Eternia’s religion(s). Most commenters seem to blame Kevin Smith, who is a practicing Catholic and has introduced his beliefs into several of his works, for the religious content in Masters of the Universe: Revelation and Revolution. Though personally, I suspect that Rob David is actually responsible at least for the three gods or three aspects of the same god, since he did something similar in the “Eternity War” comics. What is more, the religious content in Masters of the Universe: Revelation and Revolution (and other incarnations of Masters of the Universe) doesn’t bother me, because a) it’s relevant to the plot and doesn’t overwhelm the story, and b) it makes sense here, because magic is actually real on Eternia and works, the afterlife realms of Preternia and Subternia are actual places that we see on screen (ditto for the creations myth according to Zoar and Ha’voc) and the avatars of the Eternian gods are actual characters in the story. It’s also notable that not everybody believes in the Eternian gods – Gwildor, for example, explicitly doesn’t. All this is very different from that endless Luminist subplot in season 1 of Foundation, which basically consisted of priestesses of some religion we’d never heard of before delivering sermons about goddesses we have no reasons to care about and that have no real bearing on the plot. That said, turning Zoar from a bird the Sorceress transforms into when she leaves Castle Grayskull to an actual deity means that Duncan – and Adam or that matter – are literally having sex with the deity their people worship, which is a little weird.

But enough about Eternian theology, because after giving us the creation of the universe according to Ha’vok, the Masters of the Universe: Revolution prequel comic jumps forward to events in the much more recent past – roughly twenty-five to thirty years before the main timeline – and gives us an amazing splash page of the Horde invading Anwat Gar. We do see brief flashbacks of the Horde invasion of Anwat Gar in the Revolution series, but we see a lot more here, including several familiar Horde members engaged in battle with the Gar forces. The Horde members we see invading Anwat Gar are Grizzlor, Mantenna, Leech, Modulok, Dragstor (who isn’t seen in comics and cartoons very often for a character dating back to the vintage toyline), Tung Lasher (who’s actually a Snake Man, but has been shown to work for Hordak on occasion) and Squeeze. This surprised me a little, for while his fellow Snake Men Tung Lasher and Rattlor have been associated with the Horde in the past, mostly notably in the Filmation She-Ra cartoon, Squeeze never worked for the Horde as far as I know. That said, he is sure having fun throwing around Gar warriors.

Finally, we also meet two brand-new Horde members, Tarangela, a spider woman, and Succubug, a chubby tick lady. They’re cousins and were created by Tim Sheridan and Axel Gimenez (see an early concept sketch here) as stand-ins for the female Horde members tied up due to the She-Ra rights mess. And of course, the usual suspects immediately complained about Succubug being chubby, though they oddly enough had no problem with the much more alien and less traditionally feminine looking but skinny Tarangela. It’s stunning how certain people will only rate female characters by how fuckable they are. Dudes, trust me, you don’t want to fuck with Succubug, because she’ll suck you dry and leave a withered husk and infected with lyme disease or meningitis, too, cause she is a tick after all. And she’ll go off with Mosquitor or Scorpia or Modulok or whatever her preference is.

Anyway, I like Tarangela and Succubug. They fit right in with the Horde, because not only does the Horde have the highest number of female characters of all villainous fractions in Masters of the Universe, the Horde also features a lot of insectoid and/or vampiric characters. Coincidentally, a glimpse of those two new Horde ladies in a preview for the comic also inspired my Evil Horde recruitment ad. I hope they’ll get figures eventually.

One Horde member, however, is notable by his absence and that is their leader, Hordak. Indeed, the Horde warriors wonder where he is and why Hordak has ordered them to invade Anwat Gar anyway, since Gar technology isn’t any more advanced than Horde technology and the Gar are also putting up a pretty good fight against the Horde.

As for where Hordak is, we see him shortly thereafter in a very familiar location, namely the Fright Zone in its toy look. Many characters and locations looked quite different from their toy counterparts in the Filmation He-Man and She-Ra cartoons, but none more so than the Fright Zone, Hordak’s base of operations. The Fright Zone as seen in the original She-Ra cartoon as well as the 2018 reboot is an H.R. Giger inspired spider-like techno-industrial fortress that literally seems to burrow itself into the surface of Etheria, leaving pollution and a dying devastated land in its wake (and indeed, the “Eternity War” comics explained that the Fright Zone literally corrupts and poisons the land). The toy Fright Zone, on the other hand, was a rocky outcropping with a lone withered tree and two caves, one of which housed a monster and the other a prison cell. The toy Fright Zone also perfectly fits the horror movie monster theme of the original Horde members. I was sorely tempted to buy one during my recent trip to the Los Amigos Masters of the Universe convention in Neuss.

As for why the Fright Zone looks so different in the cartoon and as a toy, the in universe explanation is that there are actually two Fright Zones. The Fright Zone seen in the cartoon is located in Etheria, whereas the toy Fright Zone is located on Eternia. Both are linked by an interdimensional portal.

We did get a glimpse of the toy Fright Zone in Masters of the Universe Revolution in the flashback scenes which show Hordak and Keldor training together. The comic, however, not just shows us more of this version of the Fright Zone, it also shows us where on Eternia is is located, namely on Anwat Gar, specifically on the dark side of the island. This is interesting, because this suggests that Anwat Gar is located on the border between the light and dark hemisphere of Eternia (Eternia is tidally locked and probably directly inspired by Roger Zelazny’s 1971 science fantasy novel Jack of Shadows, which also has the science versus magic theme), whereas the various maps of Eternia floating around usually show Anwat Gar as an island off the coast of the main continent on the light hemisphere. In the 2002 cartoon, Anwat Gar is definitely in the light hemisphere, but also deserted. Though come to think of it, the Anwat Gar scenes in Revolution and the Forge of Destiny comic mini-series all seem to take place at night, so maybe Anwat Gar is in the dark hemisphere after all or right on the dividing line.

Two Masters of the Universe themed YouTube channels, Dad-at-Arms and For Eternia, both interviewed the three writers of this comic and in one of those interviews (I forgot which one), Tim Sheridan said that the Fright Zone isn’t necessarily always on Anwat Gar, but that it is a sort of interdimensional gateways, which appears wherever it needs to be. And right now, it needs to be on Anwat Gar, because that’s where Hordak is. Sheridan likened the Fright Zone to the Dark Side tree on Dagobah from The Empire Strikes Back, though I immediately thought of the infamous “pub with a tree inside”, which is located somewhere in the backstreets of Soho in London (and yes, it’s striking that all three – the Fright Zone, the Dark Side tree and the pub with a tree inside – all feature twisted trees). Many, many people have been there and variations of this pub show up in various novels. However, for some reason it’s difficult to find it again, even if you’ve been there once. At any rate, I never found the pub again, after someone invited me there for a drink in 1996. And yes, the three pints of Guinness I had may have had something to do with that. However, I later talked to other people and while lots of them knew the pub, no one seemed to know where exactly it was beyond “somewhere in Soho”, which made me wonder whether the pub was actually in another dimension and the location of the entrance shifted around Soho. Luckily, Google not only knows the pub – even if all you have to go by is “pub with a tree london soho”, but also where exactly it is. It’s this place and yes, it still exists 28 years later.

Hordak enters the caves of the Fright Zone and encounters – no, not a latex handpuppet monster which falls apart after not quite forty years – but three women in rather familiar purple cloaks surrounding a pool. The women introduced themselves as “fortune’s sisters, the guardians of Aries, weavers of shadows, keepers of power untold”. “Guardians of Aries” is clearly a reference to Ha’vok, the Eternian ram god, since aries is the zodiac sign of the ram. And indeed, we later see that these three guardians of Aries are guarding the Havoc staff. Presumably, these ladies are priestesses of Ha’vok.

“Weavers of shadows” is of course a reference to another purple robed woman from Masters of the Universe lore, namely Shadow Weaver, the sorceress who is Hordak’s chief magic wielder and second-in-command in both versions of the She-Ra cartoon. And yes, the comic strongly hints that one of these women is indeed Shadow Weaver, which is interesting, since I wouldn’t have expected to see Shadow Weaver on Eternia at all. For in both versions of the She-Ra cartoon, Shadow Weaver was a renegade Etherian sorceress who betrayed the Etherian rebellion to the Horde and stole a magical gem, whose power left her withered and disfigured. But if Shadow Weaver is on Eternia, does this mean that she is Eternian in this versions of the story and maybe even that she is a Gar? Or did the interdimensional nature of the Fright Zone allow her to appear on Eternia, even though she is Etherian?

Hordak, however, is far more interested in something else, for according to legend, these three women can see and foretell the future. And Hordak is very interested in what the future holds for him. The parallels to the Weird Sisters from Shakespeare’s Macbeth as well as to the Moirai of Greek mythology, the Parcae of Roman mythology and the Norns of Norse mythology are very obvious. And anybody who has any familiarity with any of these examples at all will immediately know that asking three hooded women gathered around a scrying pool or cauldron to foretell the future is a very bad idea indeed. And since Hordak knows very little about Earth mythology or classic literature, the sisters even spell out the catch for him. Cause now Hordak’s future is still wide open with an infinite number of possibilities. But once the sisters have foretold his future, there is no going back and that future is now set in stone. It’s the classic self-fulfilling prophecy, as found in Macbeth, Appointment in Samarra and many, many others. The protagonist has their fate foretold and by trying to avoid it, they manage to bring about just that fate.

But once again, Hordak’s knowledge of classic literature and mythology is sorely lacking. He is, however, ambitious. At this point, Hordak is already Supreme Commander of the Horde Fleet and second in line to the throne of the Horde Empire. The first in line is of course Horde Prime, who in most versions of the story is Hordak’s older brother. However, Hordak isn’t content to be second. He wants to be first and he wants the throne of the Horde Empire for himself and he’s willing to take any advantage he can to get what he wants, including consulting fortune-telling women in creepy caves – and note that Hordak doesn’t like magic. It’s fascinating how the two main villains of Masters of the Universe, Skeletor and Hordak, are both motivated by an extremely toxic case of sibling rivalry, which proves again that at its heart, Masters of the Universe is a story about family, both good and bad, found and biological.

So Hordak gets his prophecy and is told that is destiny is entwined with that of another, a young half-Gar man named Keldor. What is more, Hordak is also told that Grayskull’s heir, yet unborn, will ground the ascendant bat, i.e. the Horde Empire, and ultimately destroy Hordak. This is of course not at all what Hordak wanted to hear, so he asks how he can ensure that the heir of Grayskull remains unborn. Two of the sisters tell Hordak that there’s no way to avoid that future now and point out that they did warn him. The third sister, however, tells Hordak that there is a way to cheat fate, namely by using ha’vok. She also levitates the Havoc Staff out of the mystic pool – against the objections of the other two. Hordak wants to grab the staff, but the third sister – who is strongly implied to be the sorceress we know as Shadow Weaver – tells him that contact with the Havoc Staff is corruptive to a sorcerer not trained to use it and absolutely lethal to someone without any magical abilities like Hordak. No, in order use the Havoc Staff Hordak needs to place it in the hands of another, one born in the fires of ha’vok who can wield the staff on his behalf. And we all know who that someone is…

This is an absolute textbook case of a self-fulfilling prophecy, for Hordak’s attempts to avoid the fate he has been foretold will obviously bring that very fate about. For starters, by recruiting and manipulating Keldor, Hordak creates his greatest rival and most dangerous enemy Skeletor. And of course, Keldor is also an heir of Grayskull, though already born at this point (and illegitimate), and he does stab Hordak in Masters of the Universe: Revolution, though the post-credits stinger reveals that Hordak survived. But the “heir of Grayskull yet unborn” clearly refers to the Eternian wonder twins Adam and Adora and is also likely what inspired a certain infamous baby snatching operation, of which we see a glimpse in a flashback scene in Masters of the Universe Revolution. Now in most versions of the story, both He-Man and She-Ra fight the Horde, but Adora is usually the one who ultimately brings down the Horde Empire and takes out Hordak and/or Horde Prime. Because Adora is the more ruthless of the twins. He-Man doesn’t kill, not even a villain like Skeletor or Hordak, but Adora has killed before, when she was Force Captain of the Horde, and is absolutely willing to kill again, if necessary. And the very reason Adora is a lot more ruthless than her brother is because Hordak kidnapped her and raised her in his own image. So yes, he absolutely brings his own fate about and highly deserved it is to.

As for Keldor, he is a young man at this point. We first see him as a cloaked and hooded figure, cutting loose with his magic to fight off the Horde, throwing around Horde Troopers and zapping Leech. The Horde members are stunned, because the Gar are not supposed to have magic. And as we know, the Horde has no real defence against magic – especially since Hordak doesn’t have a magic wielding acolyte at this point – so Keldor is definitely evening the odds for Anwat Gar. Though the Gar aren’t exactly grateful, but seem to be more horrified to see one of their own use magic than they are bothered by hostile aliens invading their island and setting their city on fire. I’m beginning to suspect that the Gar are their own worst enemy due to their fanatic isolationism.

While Keldor is fighting the Horde, we get a few flashbacks to his life on Anwat Gar. We see him as a young boy shortly after he was kicked out of the royal palace and shipped back to Anwat Gar, wide-eyed and marvelling at his mother Saryn using magic, in a scene that mirrors Adam being dazzled by Keldor showing him holograms of Anwat Gar’s technological marvels in Masters of the Universe: Revolution. Young Keldor points out that the teacher on Anwat Gar say that magic is bad, but Saryn replies that magic can be good or bad, depending on the intent. She also tells young Keldor that teachers don’t know everything and that young people should eventually grow beyond their teachers. Saryn also insists that Keldor’s father King Miro should have told him that. Keldor replies that his father believes in magic, though he cannot do it himself. “And so, as I said, you will exceed him”, Saryn says and tells Keldor to try again.

We learn quite a few things in this brief scene. For starters, it is confirmed that Keldor’s mother is indeed Saryn, since he did have a different mother in the Classics continuity,  who was actually married to King Miro and then died, because Mattel required that characters had to be married before having children. It doesn’t matter if you’re begetting the Lord of Destruction, you have to be married first. We also learn that Keldor got his magical abilities from his mother, which makes sense because neither Miro nor Randor nor Adam and Adora have ever shown any magical abilities. Saryn also flaunts the laws of Anwat Gar and clearly wants more than what the island has to offer. We also learn that Saryn is ambitious and wants her son to exceed his parents.

This does match her first appearance in the DC “Eternity War” comics, where Saryn was introduced as a young Gar handmaiden at King Grayskull’s court. Saryn clearly harbours an unrequited crush on Grayskull and is also desperate to have a baby and not just any baby either, but a special baby with a special destiny. However, Adi, the Gar member of the Council of Elders, conspires against Grayskull and enlists Saryn in his conspiracy by telling her that Grayskull must be stopped or Eternia will be doomed. And since Saryn has access to King Grayskull via her work at the palace, she is the one who firsts poisons and then stabs him and also steals the Sword of Protection for her special baby with its special destiny. Then she runs off into the forest and hides in a cave on Anwat Gar for centuries – she’s been cursed with immortality due to her crime – until King Miro is shipwrecked on the shores of Anwat Gar. Saryn finds him and nurses him back to health. She also has sex with Miro, which results in Keldor, so Saryn finally has her special baby. She gives the baby to Miro, so he’ll have a better and brighter future in Eternos, though she makes Miro promise to send the boy back, once he comes of age (which Miro never gets around to doing in that continuity). Then retreats back to her cave on Anwat Gar and turns into a withered old hag, until She-Ra finally puts her out of her misery. The writers of those comics were Dan Abnett and Rob David, who’s also a producer for Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution and co-writer of this comic.

So Saryn was not exactly a positive character in the “Eternity War” comics. Of course, we don’t know if any of her backstory of murdering King Grayskull (which was a retcon anyway, since we see King Grayskull perishing in battle with Hordak in the 2002 cartoon) applies in the Revelation/Revolution continuity. The whole thing always seemed rather far-fetched to me anyway. However, this version of Saryn is clearly ambitious as well and believes that Keldor has a special destiny and is meant to exceed his parents. She’s also clearly someone who doesn’t fit in on Anwat Gar, since she is a sorceress on an island where magic is banned. We don’t get any hints of how Miro and Saryn got together. Was it true love, only that Miro chickened out and didn’t marry Saryn? Or was there some degree of calculation involved in that Saryn deliberately seduced Miro to either get out of Anwat Gar (and who could blame her?) or to produce a kid with some Grayskull genes? Because once Keldor is introduced as Skeletor’s alter-ego, you quickly run into the problem that Keldor’s existence makes Miro – who was an unambigiously good and sympathetic character in the Filmation cartoon – look like a womanising arsehole, who had no problem sleeping with a hot blue chick, but then wouldn’t marry her and also wouldn’t fully acknowledge the kid he fathered. The alternative is to make Saryn an ambigious or downright villainous character who seduced Miro because she wanted some of that sweet Grayskull sperm.

The brief glimpse we get of Saryn in this comic does not make her seem villainous – even though she does violate the laws of Anwat Gar. She also clearly cares for her son, though she’s also ambitious and wants her kid to be more. But while both Miro and Amelia as well as Saryn clearly played a role in setting Keldor on the path to villainy, the jury is still out to which degree each of them is ultimately responsible.

We get another flashback to a young adult Keldor practicing his magic, while having a telepathic communication with his absent mother. Keldor asks when his mother is coming home, but Saryn or rather her voice merely replies that the expedition is taking longer than they thought. She also cautions Keldor that he needs to be patient and that it has been foretold that he is destined for greatness, that he is the champion destined to wield and unify the ancient magics suppressed by Grayskull and that soon he will be handed the power that is his birthright and that Grayskull and the universe will then belong to him.

If there were a child-raising manual entitled “How to raise your kid, so they will become a supervillain”, Saryn clearly studied it and took its lessons to heart, because in this scene she is doing her damndest to set Keldor on the path to supervillainy.

Though it should be noted that we have no idea if the person Keldor is talking to really is Saryn. For starters, Keldor is clearly mentally unstable and spends most of Masters of the Universe: Revolution having a conversation with himself. So it’s possible that he is hallucinating the voice of his absent mother, especially since Keldor probably already has abandonment issues due to being kicked out of the palace and shipped off to Anwat Gar by his own father.

And even if the voice is real, someone else might be posing as Saryn to manipulate Keldor. Hordak is obviously a suspect, though the three sisters of havoc from the Fright Zone are much likelier suspects. In fact, it’s possible that the woman eventually known as Shadow Weaver is manipulating everybody, including Hordak.

Another question that arises is: Where on Eternia is Saryn, since she’s apparently been absent for a while? And did she really embark on some expedition or is her absence involuntary, since she’s imprisoned or maybe even dead? After all, magic is banned on Anwat Gar and the Gar are clearly terrified of magic, as seen by their reaction to Keldor trying to defend the island against the Horde? So what would the Gar do to someone who repeatedly violates their laws and uses magic? Coincidentally, if Saryn is dead, it would give Keldor another reason to snap.

But for now, Keldor is still using his magic to fight off the Horde invasion, until he stumbles and falls on his face and finds himself lying at the feet of Hordak, who has finally deigned to join his forces. Hordak not only knows who Keldor is, but also stretches out his hand – a scene which we also see in one of the flashbacks in Masters of the Universe Revolution.

Keldor understandably wants to know how Hordak knows who he is and why the Horde are invading Anwat Gar anyway? Hordak replies that the whole thing was never an invasion at all – which I’m sure will be a great comfort to the Gar soldiers and civilians killed and to all the Gar who lost their homes, because the Horde burned the city. Keldor is the reason the Horde came to Anwat Gar, because Hordak knows that Keldor has been denied the power and the life he should have. And now Hordak offers Keldor the chance to seize control of his own fate.

The voice inside of Keldor’s head – whether it’s Saryn or someone else’s – rejoices that this is the moment they’d been waiting for. Destiny is calling. So Keldor accepts and the finale page shows him kneeling before Hordak, who is surrounded by his troops, while Anwat Gar burns around them. And above it all looms the havoc staff.

I found the Masters of the Universe: Revelation prequel comic mini-series somewhat hit and miss, though two of the four issues were very good (and one of those stories has since been retconned). I enjoyed the first issue of the Revolution prequel comic a lot more, even though it is a) a prequel, and b) a Masters of the Universe stories without He-Man.

For starters, the franchise is called Masters of the Universe, not He-Man. And while He-Man is the main character, he doesn’t have to be the focus of every story. I’ve always enjoyed it when other characters get to have the spotlight for a while. The cartoons usually don’t have that much room to focus on characters other than He-Man, though the 2002 cartoon was pretty good about letting secondary characters take the spotlight for an episode – one of the most memorable episodes is a prequel featuring King Grayskull – and gave origin stories to characters who never had any before like Stinkor or Two-Bad. And both the 2002 tie-in comics and the 2012 – 2016 DC Comics run had issues that focussed on characters other than He-Man and their backstory. There was a geat issue focussing on Cringer and telling us what happened to him before Adam found him and just why Cringer is always terrified and there was another great issue focussing on a young Randor being forced to make a terrible decision. There’s even a pretty good issue focussed on Sir Laser-Lot, a much disliked character created for the Classics toyline.

Regarding a), prequels tend to get a bad rap – probably due to the Star Wars prequels being rather underwhelming, though those are currently undergoing a reappreciation – but prequels don’t need to be bad or superfluous. Masters of the Universe has had some very memorable prequels over the year, such as the Filmation episode “The Origin of the Sorceress” or the episode “The Power of the Grayskull” of the 2002 cartoon, which introduced King Grayskull, or a great issue of the DC Comics run which showed us a twelve-year-old Prince Adam accidentally tapping into the power of Grayskull to save his father’s life.

The story of how Hordak met Keldor and how Keldor became Skeletor has been told several times before, most notably in the 2002 cartoon and the Classics mini-comics, which devoted a whole issue to Keldor’s journey to becoming Skeletor. The DC Comics also retold the story of how Keldor became Skeletor in a slightly different way, because in those comics, Keldor didn’t betray his brother and turn evil until Adam was already about twelve, i.e. that version of Adam had known Keldor as an uncle and mentor he admired, which means the betrayal must have hurt him even more. The Revelation/Revolution continuity is different from any of the above, so it makes sense to tell that story again.

Seeing more of Hordak and the Evil Horde is always welcome, specially since we didn’t see very much of them in Masters of the Universe Revolution due to time constraints. As for Keldor, the reason writers keep delving into his backstory – beyond the fact that he becomes Skeletor, arguably the second most important character in all of Masters of the Universe – is that Keldor also adds a lot more complexity and ambiguity to Skeletor. Because when Skeletor was still a demon from another dimension, he was a very one-note villain, who wanted to conquer Castle Grayskull and Eternia, because that’s just what demons from another dimension do apparently.

Oddly enough, the Masters of the Universe Revelation prequel comics, written by Tim Sheridan who also wrote this comic, were the only time the demon version of Skeletor was given a more compelling backstory than “He’s evil, because he’s a demon and that’s just what demons do.” That story introduced Skeletor as the leader of an uprising of enslaved skeleton people agains their enslavers, who helped to free his people, only to have his wife and daughter (who also had skull faces) murdered by his former enslavers, whereupon he turned to Hordak for help to gain his revenge.  It’s a pity that story was retconned away as a false memory implanted by Hordak, though I still like to think that it’s someone’s backstory (maybe that of the character known as Demo-Man), even if it’s not Skeletor’s.

But once you add Keldor into the mix, Skeletor suddenly becomes a lot more complex, because now he actually has a very good reason for wanting to conquer Eternia beyond “It exists”, namely the fact that he should have been King of Eternia, but was passed over in favour of his younger brother. Furthermore, the story of Keldor asks the question how could sibling rivalry and parental favouritism turn so toxic that they literally turned Keldor from a sweet little boy into a monster. Because the blue-skinned little boy we see in a flashback in Masters of the Universe Revolution and also in this issue clearly is not evil. He’s just a boy who loves his little brother and wants to be loved by his father. Never mind that Orko actually spelled out in Masters of the Unvierse Revelation (to Lyn) that no one is born evil.

So the question is what turned the sweet boy who loved his little brother into the skull-faced monster who tries to kill his brother and helps to kidnap his own baby niece? We’ve seen a few versions of that story over the years and this comic will give us yet another one.

 

Cora’s Adventures at the Los Amigos Masters of the Universe Convention in Neuss or the Six Hundred Kilometer Roundtrip, Part 3: The Road Home… and Tecklenburg

Last Saturday, I attended the 2024 Los Amigos Masters of the Universe fan convention in Neuss. For the three hour trip to get there, see part 1 and for my impressions of the con itself, see part 2.

The Quest for a Place to Eat

Once I’d had my fun at the con and spent quite a bit of money – luckily, I’d headed for the ATM to get cash on Friday evening and some of the bigger shops also took cards – it was time to embark on the long drive home. So I carried my haul to the car, paid for the parking (4 Euros, which is a reasonable price, considering how ridiculously expensive parking is in Bremen and Oldenburg these days) and realised I’d made a mistake.

Because as I mentioned in the previous post, I hadn’t eaten at the con due to a lack of food options other than currywurst or crepe and indeed hadn’t eaten since the night before, because the apple cake that was meant to be my breakfast turned out to be not edible due to being covered in some gloopy glaze which would trigger an allergy. So I was hungry and since there was still time for a late lunch, I’d meant to find a restaurant somewhere. However, I was in a city where I’d never been before and that I didn’t at all. Now my phone would give me restaurant options in the wider area and my GPS navigation system also has an option to look up restaurants (you can even specify the cuisine) and direct me there. However, both options require a bit of time to look up restaurant, check if they’re actually open – like I said before, many German restaurants no longer open for lunch hours – and program the GPS. However, I’d already paid for parking, which meant that I had to get the hell out of the parking lot, lest I need to pay extra.

So I programmed the GPS for home, drove out of the parking lot and decided to just stop en route and find a place to eat. Maybe I’d pass an open restaurant on my way back to the highway or I’d just stop somewhere and use my phone and the handy restaurant list in my GPS system to locate a suitable restaurant.

There was just one problem. My GPS directed me onto a major road almost immediately and there was nowhere to stop nor was there a restaurant, open or otherwise. I eventually passed the Rheinpark Center mall, a 1970s Brutalist slab of concrete. The mall had a parking lot where I could have stopped and likely food options as well. However, it was Saturday just after midday and the parking lot and likely the mall as well were packed with shoppers. So I drove on and crossed the bridge over the river Rhine into Düsseldorf.

Now Düsseldorf has a great restaurant selection, particularly lots of Japanese and Asian restaurants in general, since Düsseldorf has Germany’s largest Japanese expat population. However, I no more knew my way around Düsseldorf than I knew my way around Neuss, so I had no idea where those great Japanese and Asian restaurants were to be found. Also, I was still on a major road with nowhere to stop. So I drove on and found myself back on highway A46.

So I thought, “Okay, I’ll just drive onto the nearest highway parking lot and then check if there is a place to eat nearby.” Normally, along German Autobahnen, there are service stations every 50 to 60 kilometers, which have a large parking lot, a gas station and some kind of restaurant. There also are Autohöfe – basically truck stops – just off the Autobahn, which also offer a large parking lot, a gas station and some kind of restaurant. Autohöfe cater to truckers and are somewhat basic, but the food is generally better and cheaper than at the service stations. Finally, there are parking lots, i.e. just a parking area with a few picnic tables and maybe a toilet, along the Autobahn every twenty kilometres or so.

In short, parking lots are quite common and a good place to stop and get your bearings, should you need to.  However, I was in the Ruhrgebiet, where there are more highway junctions and interchanges than exits. So I passed several junctions, but not parking lot or other place to stop. I also passed a few exits, but pulling into a random highway exit is always a gamble, because you have no idea where you’ll end up. It might be in the middle of an industrial zone or a residential neighbourhood and there might not even be a good place to stop your car.

Rastplatz Höfgen

After twenty minutes of driving, I finally spotted a parking lot, Rastplatz Höfgen, so I pulled off the highway. I parked the car, pulled out my phone and perused the restaurant search function of the GPS system as well as the map function to check if there were any restaurants in reasonable distance. However, Rastplatz Höfgen is situated in one of the few parts of the Ruhrgebiet, where you don’t have one city bleeding into another (which is probably why they found the space to put a parking lot here. The nearest town is Haan, which is quite small. Neither my phone nor the GPS in my car showed many restaurants nearby. There was an Italian restaurant and a German country inn, both closed, as well as McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, neither of which I was in the mood for. Also, it was already half past two PM and those restaurants which are open for lunch hours normally close at three PM, so even if I found a restaurant, I might arrive just before closing time and probably wouldn’t get anything to eat anyway.

So I decided to scratch lunch and stop at a bakery café for afternoon coffee and cake further along the way. If I was still on the road around six PM or so, I would stop somewhere for dinner. It was a good plan, but there was only one problem. I was really hungry. Luckily, I’d packed a bar of chocolate as a quick sugar rush and pick-me-up, should I need one. So I opened up my bar of chocolate and ate a few pieces, which somewhat soothed the hunger.

At around this point, someone suddenly knocked on the window of my car, half scaring me to death. However, it was only a Polish truck driver who asked if I happened to have a cigarette lighter. Alas, I don’t smoke, so the poor guy had to find someone else.

My hunger satisfied for now, I drove onwards. I passed Wuppertal, which surely has plenty of bakeries. However, I’d decided that I wouldn’t stop until I’d left the unpleasantly narrow A46 behind and was back on the nice and broad highway A1. Not that there were a lot of exits anyway, most of them were junctions.

Once I’d made it back onto the A1, I wasn’t feeling overly hungry anymore. I briefly considered leaving the highway in Hagen with its five monuments and two ruined castles on hilltops over the Ruhr valley. But it was a hot day, too hot to go hiking up a hill to see a monument. So I drove on.

Kamener Kreuz

I finally left the highway at Kamener Kreuz or rather at the exit just before Kamener Kreuz that goes to Kamen proper. Because on the way out, I had spotted a large shopping park right next to the highway and a shopping park would surely have a bakery café or coffee shop. And if not, no problem. I’d just drive back onto the highway and find another exit.

However, no sooner had I pulled onto the big parking lot of the shopping park that I spotted a bakery café operated by Bäckerei Grobe, a Dortmund based bakery chain active all over the Ruhrgebiet. So I went inside and ordered a latte macchiato and a slice of spelt rhubarb cake. The coffee was much better than the sorry and soapy excuse for latte I’d had at service station Dammer Berge on the way. The cake was delicious as well and the slice was nice and big, so hunger shouldn’t be an issue for the next few hours.

Latte macchiato and spelt rhubarb cake, courtesy of Bakery Grobe at Kamener Kreuz

After I’d finished my coffee and cake and perused the toilet, I made a brief detour to the Smyths Toys superstore (Smyths Toys is an Irish chain which took over the European Toys R Us stores) right around the corner from the bakery café. Of course, I’d just been at a con, which had all the toys you could ever wish for, so a trip to Smyths Toys was somewhat superfluous. However, I’d promised a friend to check Smyths for a rare He-Man variant (which uses a torso type it shouldn’t use) that had been spotted in some European shops, so that’s what I did. Alas, the Smyths Toys superstore at Kamener Kreuz did not have this particular He-Man variant, so I returned to my car and drove onwards.

I left the Ruhrgebiet behind and passed Münster. When I approached Osnabrück, I started to feel a little tired and achy again. Time for another stop and a cup of coffee and some leg stretching. But where to stop? I knew that service station Tecklenburger Land was not far, but after my underwhelming experience at Dammer Berge that morning, more overpriced and soap service station coffee was the last thing I wanted. Especially since service station Tecklenburger Land doesn’t even have the benefit of a cool bridge restaurant.

But then I spotted a sign pointing to the next exit ahead. The exit is called Lengerich, but the sign listed a bunch of towns including Tecklenburg and Bad Iburg. It was the latter that prompted me to drive off the highway. Because my Mom was at a physical therapy clinic in Bad Iburg (which in retrospect did fuck all to help her) in the summer of 2022, so I knew the town and knew that there were lots of cafés and bakeries there. I also knew where I could park my car.

Alas, once I actually left the highway, I realised that Bad Iburg was twenty kilometers away. Which I should have realised, since we never took the highway to get there when visiting Mom. The nearest towns were Lengerich and Tecklenburg. Tecklenburg was the closest, only 4 kilometers away, so that’s where I went. And I’m really glad that I did.

Tecklenburg

Even though Tecklenburg was only 4 kilometers from the highway, the road there led through a forest and up a mountain – Tecklenburg is situated on the northern edge of the Teutoburg Forest. Since North Germany is super flat, I’m not used to driving in the mountains, even fairly small mountains like those of the Teutoburg Forest. The road twisted and turned and the forest was dense to the point that I wondered whether there actually was a town nearby or whether I had taken a wrong turn and would just drive ever deeper into the Teutoburg Forest.

However, I eventually did reach the outskirts of a small town. There were business and a hospital here, but no sign of a bakery or café. So I drove further into Tecklenburg and spotted a public parking lot next the townhall, a disappointingly modernist slab of concrete. I pulled onto the parking lot and checked my phone for bakeries or cafés nearby. There were two in easy walking distance. In order to get to the closer one, I’d have to cross a busy road, while the other café was a little further away, but in a pedestrian zone. Since I wanted to stretch my legs anyway and didn’t fancy getting run over, I opted for the further café.

This choice was absolutely the right one, because the pedestrian zone led into the medieval city center of Tecklenburg. Now I knew the name Tecklenburg, because there is both a highway exit and a service station named after the town (and it’s remarkable how many towns I only know because their name is on a highway exit sign). However, I’d never actually been there and knew nothing about the town itself.

Turns out Tecklenburg is beautiful, a medieval town of winding streets and timbered houses on top of a mountain in the Teutoburg Forest. Okay, the mountain is only 200 meters, but by North German standards that is a mountain.

The spire of the city church looms above timbered houses in the town of Tecklenburg.

The café I’d been looking for, Kaffeehaus Louise, was located in one of the timbered houses. It was delightfully cozy and filled with antiques, the sort of café which looks like your grandma’s parlour. I’ve always preferred these cozy and slightly old-fashioned cafés to the minimalist hipster look that unfortunately fashionable right now.

I ordered a latte macchiato and decided that yes, damn it, I wanted another slice of cake. I picked chocolate cake and the waitress asked me if I wanted ice cream and warm fruit with that. Oh boy, did I ever want that.

Latte macchiato and chcolate cake with ice cream and hot fruit, courtesy of Kaffeehaus Louise in Tecklenburg.

The cake tasted just as good as it looks, by the way. I also chatted a bit with the owner of the café (at least, I think she was the owner) and another guest who turned out to be a local handyman and remarked on my He-Man t-shirt. I told him that I’d been at a HeMan con in Neuss and was on my way home, which led to some commiserating about long drives and particularly the thirty kilometer road construction zone on the A1 between exits Lohne/Dinklage and Neuenkirchen/Vörden.

I also learned a bit more about Tecklenburg. It’s the northernmost mountain town in Germany – from here it’s all downhill until the North Sea. “I know”, I laughed, “Where I live, the highest elevation is 80 meters above sea level and we call it “Hoher Berg” (high mountain).

Since I commented on how pretty the town was, I was told that the people of Tecklenburg were very glad to have been spared both WWII bombings and postwar modernisation efforts aside from “that ugly silver cube” that houses the townhall and city administration. “Yup, I saw that one”, I said, “That’s where I parked my car.” Someone than pointed at a photo of a beautiful turn of the century Art Noveau villa on the wall and told me that building stood where the ugly townhall now stands until the 1960s. It was a hotel, the best in town, and even the Kaiser stayed there once. They didn’t specify which Kaiser, though it must have been Wilhelm II, since the hotel was built in 1904, when Wilhelm I and Friedrich III were both long dead.

I also learned that Tecklenburg has a castle ruin, as the name implies, and that bits and pieces of the castle have been integrated into buildings all over town. The ruined castle now houses an open air theater – the largest in all of Germany. The open air theater opened in 1924 and is hugely important for the town, since it’s a major tourist draw. The local handyman frequently builds sets and backdrops for them. The theatre used to stage everything from boulevard comedies to operas, but nowadays they most do musicals and children’s plays, because those are the most popular. They also host pop concerts on occasion. This summer, the open air theater Tecklenburg is staging Mamma Mia!, Madagascar (based on the eponymous CGI animated kids film) and a musical version of The Three Musketeers. Personally, I’d prefer operas and operettas or regular plays (Shakespeare should be great on an open air stage in the middle of a ruined castle), but money talks and musicals are popular with people who’d otherwise never watch musical theater or otherwise set foot inside a theater.

The fascinating thing is that Tecklenburg is only a one and a half hour drive away from where I live and yet I never had any idea that all of this existed. And it’s not as if my parents never took me to all sorts of touristy places – when Mom was still well, we went on a day trip almost every public holiday. As for why we never went to Tecklenburg, I guess my Dad had no idea that the town was so pretty either. Though considering how motorbike friendly the winding roads leading to the town are, I’m surprised he never discovered it. Anyway, I’ll definitely return to Tecklenburg for a day trip in the future to explore more of the town.

After I finished my coffee and cake, I decided to walk around the town a bit more rather than go straight back to my car. Below, you’ll find some impressions of Tecklenburg:

Two timbered houses in Tecklenburg. The one on the left houses an inn and was built in 1550. Between the houses there is a staircase leading up to the church. Since Tecklenburg sits on a mountain top, there are several staircases around town.

This plastic granny welcomes visitors to “Granny’s Preserves”, a shop offering homemade cookies, preserves and gifts.

Timbered houses in Tecklenburg. The one in the middle was built in 1655. Once again, you can see how hilly the town is.

This timbered house in Tecklenburg was built in 1587 and now houses a gift shop. The proliferation of gift shops shows that this town very much caters to tourists.

The market place of Tecklenburg with yet more cafés, a maypole and a fountain.

The fountain is a lot more modern than the rest of the town. It dates from 1971 and was designed by Josef Baron. The fountain is apparently somewhat controversial and was almost demolished in 2015 for supposedly not fitting the surroundings. Luckily, it was saved and became a listed landmark, much to the annoyance of those local politicians who wanted to see it gone.

Personally, I don’t get it. Yes, the fountain obviously dates from the 1960s/70s, but it is based on the style of old town fountains, it does fit the surroundings and it’s not ugly at all. One of the articles above explicitly mentions that it’s a popular spot for photos, so visitors obviously don’t think it’s ugly either. I guess this was a case of some local politician wanting to leave his mark on the town.

Once I’d reached the market place, I originally wanted to go back to my car. But then I spotted an archway and decided to explore further.

The so-called Legga archway in Tecklenburg is a former city gate with a timbered house on top. Built in 1577, it originally was a place to inspect the quality of linen, linen weaving being a major industry in Tecklenburg. Now it’s an art center.

A look through the Legge archway in Tecklenburg back at the market place.

The so-called Legge archway viewed from the other side.

Behind the archway, there was a terrace with an open air café/beer garden and a beautiful view across the town.

View across Tecklenburg from the terrace that leads up to the castle ruins.

The path spiraled further up the mountain and if I’d followed it, I’d eventually have gotten to the castle ruins and the open air theater (which is still closed, since the season doesn’t start until July). But though the sun was still fairly high in the sky, it was getting late and I still had a one and a half hour drive ahead of me. So I decided to make my way back to the car, this time taking a steep staircase rather than going back via the archway and the market place.

This rather steep staircase leads back down into the town from the terrace behind the archway.

All in all, I spent about two hours in Tecklenburg. I’m definitely coming back to explore the town further, since this was a delightful and completely unexpected discovery.

Once I got back into my car, I drove back onto the highway and continued home without any further stops along the way. It was theoretically dinner time by now, but I was still full from the cake, so I decided to just have a quick dinner at home. That said, I did stop one more time, when I passed a gas station some six kilometers home and saw that the price was low, so I stopped to refuel my car, since the 600 kilometer drive had depleted the fuel tank.

Once I got home, I unpacked my haul and the overnight bag I’d packed and put the rose, which had miraculously survived the con and the trip home, into a vase. I also had a cup of instant noodles for dinner and went to bed, since I was really tired.

All in all, I’m really glad I went on this trip. Not just because I got to visit a great con and picked up some wonderful things, but also because it gave me the opportunity to test my limits and see how far I could get by car on my own. So now my travel radius by car has expanded to roughly three hundred kilometers both ways or roughly six hundred kilometers one way. Three hundred kilometers gets me north to the Danish border and somewhat beyond (which I actually knew, because I have driven to Rendsburg near the Danish border on my own), eastwards as far as Berlin and Leipzig (not that I would ever go to Berlin by car), westwards quite deep into the Netherlands and southwards to the Rhine Ruhr metropolitan region and almost to Frankfurt. That means a lot of places I could theoretically visit, if I want to. Since I don’t like train travel very much – bad German, I know, but I never liked trains and find train travel extremely stressful, though it’s not supposed to be – this is a good thing.

What is more, I’ve also figured out how long road trips work for me. I’m not my Dad. And while I appreciate his strategies for long trips, mine are a little different. For starters, Dad always said that music made him tired, but talking on the radio (or from fellow passengers kept him awake). I’m the opposite. Music keeps me awake and alert, while too much talking makes me tune out and literally sends me to sleep – a combination of a what I think are mild audio processing issues (which is also why audio dramas on cassette tape never had the same meaning for me as for other Germans my age, because they literally sent me to sleep) and a response to Dad listening to people talking on the radio on long trips, which led me to just tune out the talking, which annoyed me.

Dad also liked to drive onto a parking lot or service station for what we would now call a power nap, though he did it long before power naps were a thing. I have done this is in the past and would have done it during this trip, if necessary, but I much prefer stopping for a coffee and walking around a little. I also learned not to bother with the highway service stations, unless I need a toilet or it’s a time where nothing else is open, because the offerings there are overpriced and the quality isn’t great. Which I actually knew, but the lure of Dammer Berge and its bridge restaurant was just too great.

So in short, this was a great trip and I’m really glad I did it. So expect more roadtrips and also more con visits in the future.