Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 5

The Guardian is Clueless about Masters of the Universe

Supposedly, we’re getting a Masters of the Universe live action movie in 2026. Of course, a Masters of the Universe live action movie has been in development hell for almost twenty years at this point with production companies, directors and scripts – many of them sounding absolutely terrible – coming and going like a revolving door.

So most Masters of the Universe fans have fairly low expectations of a live action movie ever happening at all. One of the regulars of the German Masters of the Universe podcast Das He-Manische Quartett is infamous for his repeated statement “Der Film kommt nie” (The movie will never come).  Other fans have taken a wait and see attitude and basically say, “Well, I’ll believe it when I’m sitting in the theatre.” Expectations of the movie being actually good are also rather muted. After all, we’ve already been there in 1987 and while that movie has gained cult status by now, it wasn’t very well liked back in the day, because it took way too many liberties with the source material.

However, the proposed Masters of the Universe live action movie is currently in production again and we’re getting a steady trickle of casting news. Nicholas Galitzine, best known for Red, White and Royal Blue, is supposed to play Prince Adam/He-Man, Camila Mendes, best known for Riverdale, has been cast as Teela and just this week, Alison Brie, whom I mainly associate with her role as Trudy, Pete’s long-suffering and annoying wife in Mad Men, was announced as Evil-Lyn. So far, so fine, but I’ll still believe it when I see it.

That said, the casting of Alison Brie has attracted more mainstream attraction than the casting of Galitzine and Mendes, probably because Brie is better known. And so Ben Child, who has a weekly geek media column in The Guardian, penned a spectacularly clueless article about the proposed live action Masters of the Universe movie.

Even the headline is terrible: “Can Travis Knight’s He-Man movie do for boys what Greta Gerwig’s Barbie did for girls?”

Yes, we all know how fiercely gendered the toy industry is, but must we really perpetuate those shitty stereotypes, especially when we know they’re wrong? Because in the 1980s, Mattel found to their own surprise that forty percent of all Masters of the Universe toys were sold to girls, which is what prompted the introduction of She-Ra. The 1980s Filmation cartoon was eagerly watched by both boys and girls and though Masters of the Universe fandom skews male, there are plenty of female fans, me among them. This isn’t surprising either, because Masters of the Universe has always featured plenty of impressive female characters such as Teela, Evil-Lyn, the Sorceress, Queen Marlena and of course, She-Ra and her entire supporting cast. Finally, there are plenty of male Barbie collectors as well.

Ben Child attempts to establish his fan credentials by pointing out that he used to watch the Filmation cartoon (though the article is illustrated with a promo images for the 2002 cartoon) and even owned a one-armed Man-at-Arms figure as a kid. However, he can’t resist pointing out how silly the cartoon was and it’s pretty obvious that he hasn’t rewatched the show since the 1980s and doesn’t seem to be familiar with later takes on the property from New Adventures via the 2002 cartoon and the 2018 She-Ra and the Princesses of Power to the recent CGI Netflix show and Masters of Universe Revelation/Revolution at all.

Instead, Ben Child’s image of Masters of the Universe seems to be coloured mainly by memes and jokes such as the whole “Prince Adam singing ‘What’s Going On?’ by the Four Non-Blondes” meme (and honestly, what is it with that video? The combination of early 1990s indie music and Masters of the Universe never made any sense).

Ben Child also insists on comparing Masters of the Universe to Barbie, because both are based on toylines, even though Barbie and Masters of the Universe are completely different types of toys. Barbie’s big selling point is that she can be whatever you want her to be and doesn’t really have a defined story beyond some vague basics. Masters of the Universe, on the other hand, comes with a defined story, characters and worldbuilding (even if there are several conflicting continuities). He-Man is not the male answer to Barbie, that would be Mattel’s Big Jim line from the 1970s, which indirectly influenced Masters of the Universe because several toys and accessories (Battle Cat, Panthor, Zoar, Screech, Webstor’s grapling hook and Beast-Man’s whip) were repurposed from the Big Jim line to save costs.

As a result, making a Barbie movie posed very different challenges then making a He-Man movie. Because Barbie doesn’t have a defined story, so the Greta Gerwig had to come up with one and decided to send Barbie into the real world. The result was a lot better than it had any right to be. He-Man, however, has a defined story and most people who go to see a He-Man movie will want to see a version of that story. Part of the reason why the 1987 movie failed was that instead of giving the audience what they wanted to see, namely a live action version of the Filmation cartoon set on Eternia (which to be fair would have been extremely expensive to produce in 1987), the movie instead sent He-Man, Skeletor and their respective friends and associates to Earth and inserted them into a 1980s teen drama. I actually enjoy the 1987 movie now (and I should probably write a detailed review for this blog), but back in the day this film wasn’t what anybody wanted to see.

Ben Child acknowledges the existence of the 1987 movie, but he’s clearly not a fan. Instead, he calls the movie “fiercely po-faced and clunky” and finds it unbelievable that Frank Langella, who’s generally considered to be the best thing about the film and who is on record that Skeletor is one of his favourite roles in his stellar career, would debase himself to appear in such a film. Honestly, has Ben Child had any contact with Masters of the Universe since the 1980s at all?

The main problem with the article is that Ben Child seems unable to view Masters of the Universe as anything other than a joke. He writes:

Yet, it’s also possible to imagine how, in the right hands, Masters of the Universe might be ripe for forward-thinking, culturally adept satire. If Barbie is the stereotypical archetype of a woman, as seen by young girls who haven’t realised that they are viewing the entire world through a male-curated prism, surely He-Man is her XY chromosomed equivalent. Are preteen boys preternaturally designed to imagine it’s impossible to be a hero unless you are willing to destroy your health through extreme steroid use, or is the world they have grown up in telling them this?

I’m sorry, but a forward-thinking, culturally adept satire is not at all what I or any other Masters of the Universe fan wants to see. What fans want to see is a movie that takes the premise and characters of Masters of the Universe seriously. And in fact, we already have a stellar example of a serious and more adult take on Masters of the Universe, which still embraces the beautiful weirdness and absurdity of the 1980s original, in Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution (whose producers Rob David and Ted Biaselli asked showrunner Kevin Smith to take the material seriously and treat it like Shakespeare), while the Netflix CGI show offers an updated take on the premise for today’s kids and the 2018 She-Ra and the Princesses of Power did the same for He-Man’s twin sister. And no, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for humor. Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution, the CGI show and the 2018 She-Ra all have plenty of humor and jokes and Kevin Smith even snuck a fisting joke into Revelation, but they still take their premise and characters seriously. Mere minutes after Fisto makes a fisting joke, he gets brutally killed and has his soul snuffed out be Skeletor and you’ll probably cry, even if you weren’t a huge fan of the character as a kid. Also note that the Barbie movie for its satirical moments does take Barbie and Ken seriously and treats them as characters rather than stereotypes.

What is more, Ben Child is completely wrong when he views He-Man as a stereotype of toxic masculinity, because that’s not at all what he is. Because Masters of the Universe has always subverted gender stereotypes. And so we see Adam engaging in female-coded activities like baking or cooking or reading or bottle-feeding Baby Cringer, while Teela not only has the male-coded job of Captain of the Royal Guard and Prince Adam’s bodyguard, but is also stronger, more athletic and a better fighter than Adam in his untransformed form. Masters of the Universe has shown us men crying, when this was still a culture taboo. It gave us a woman chosing her career as Sorceress of Grayskull over motherhood, it gave us a nuturing single Dad who somehow managed to juggle parenthood and a demanding career and it gave us a female NASA astronaut turned alien queen well before Sally Ryan. There’s even a whole episode with the message “men and women are equal and better together”. Finally, He-Man’s muscles don’t derive from steroids, but from the Power of Grayskull.

But it gets worse. Child writes:

Why does the wimpy Adam of Eternia have to transform into the impossibly hunky and muscley He-Man before he can actually get anything done? Perhaps Adam and Cringer (the pathetic alter ego of space tiger Battle Cat) can emerge as the true heroes of Masters of the Universe, gaining the keys to the cosmos via a balanced view of gender politics and deep understanding of the nuances of feminine strength and leadership, rather than just smashing Skeletor’s skull with a sword.

Again, every single word of this is wrong. There are many examples of Adam and Cringer being heroic and brave without turning into He-Man and Battle Cat, from the Filmation cartoon onwards all the way to Revelation/Revolution, which makes it very clear that Adam is the heart of the story. Adam is also smart and resourceful, both as himself and his alter-ago. He-Man isn’t a mindless brute, except for the roughly fifteen minutes when he becomes Savage He-Man in Revelation and beats the ever-loving crap out out Skeletor, a scene which is so remarkable for how uncharacteristic that behaviour is. As for the “deep nuances of feminine strength and leadership”, have you met Teela? Or the Sorceress or Queen Marlena or Lyn or Andra?

Honestly, if you think that He-Man is just about smashing Skeletor’s skull with a sword, something he never does anywhere in the history of Masters of the Universe, though Savage He-Man whacks Skeletor with a battle axe at one point, you really need to rewatch the Filmation cartoon (try “The Problem with Power”) or the 2002 cartoon or just watch Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution.

I’m not the only Masters of the Universe fan to take issue with Ben Child’s very simplicistic take on He-Man. Here is a Twitter thread by Dad-at-Arms, which counters Ben Child’s claims with multiple examples of Adam being heroic and Teela being amazing.

Some Comments on the 2024 Dragon Award Winners

The winners of the 2024 Dragons Awards were announced today at Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia. The full list of winners may be found here.

I’ve been following the Dragon Awards since their inception in 2016, so I guess  I’m committed/cursed to cover the Dragon Awards at this point. Though I skipped covering the nominations this year, because I was on route to Worldcon in Glasgow when Dragon Con announced them and my travel laptop is so slow that posting to the blog while travelling wasn’t really possible. Plus, I have a backlog of things I need to cover and am also busy with translation work and other stuff, so I never got around to covering the Dragon Award finalists this year.

So I’ll just refer you to Camestros Felapton’s coverage of the 2024 Dragon Award finalists as well as of a minor scandal which erupted when one of the finalists in the Best Illustrative Category was disqualified for having used generative AI to design the cover, even though the Dragon Awards did not specify that AI covers were not eligible. Plus, it seems other covers on the ballot used AI as well, but were not as honest about it as the disqualified finalist. Much as I dislike generative AI, stating your policy on AI and disqualifying finalists after the fact is not a good look, though on par for the shambolic nature of the Dragons.

Anyway, since I don’t have a lot of time to deal with this stuff right now, let’s delve right into the categories:

Best Science Fiction Novel

The 2024 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel goes to Starter Villain by John Scalzi. Now a lot of people seem to view Starter Villain as a lesser Scalzi, but it was a Hugo finalist this year and its Dragon win isn’t a huge surprise, since John Scalzi is very popular and the Dragons are a popular vote award. Besides, John Scalzi winning a Dragon Award will also royally annoy those far right writers and fans who decided that position the Dragons as an alternative to the Hugos, where the real nutty nuggets could win.

The rest of the ballot mostly doesn’t look very surprising either. The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera was also a Hugo finalist this year and System Collapse by Martha Wells would have made the ballot, if Wells hadn’t declined the nomination. The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu and These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs were both novels which got a lot of positive buzz. I’m not familiar with Beyond the Ranges by John Ringo and James Aidee, but John Ringo and his co-authors have been popular with Dragon Award voters, particularly in the now defunct military science fiction category. The only surprise finalist in this category is Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen, a self-published science fiction novel by an author who seems to be more notable for weird conspiracy theories about how feminism is to blame for the US obesity epidemic than for his writing. Still, we’ve seen self-published authors with enthusiastic fans make the Dragon ballot before.

Best Fantasy Novel

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel is Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. This isn’t a surprise at all, because Rebecca Yarros is a hugely popular breakout romantasy author and her novels Fourth Wing and Iron Flame are Twilight/Da Vinci Code/Fifty Shades of Gray level mega-bestsellers. In fact, I’m surprised that Rebecca Yarros didn’t even make the longlist for the Astounding Award let alone the ballot this year, unless she wasn’t eligible. Because like her work or not – and I have to admit that I haven’t read it – she’s huge.

The rest of the ballot also doesn’t hold any surprises. He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan also made the Hugo longlist this year, plus Shelley Parker-Chan won the Astounding Award in 2022. House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky and The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang got a lot of positive buzz and My Brother’s Keeper is a new novel by Tim Powers, who is always worth checking out. Rounding out the ballot, there is Three Kinds of Lucky by Kim Harrison, who is a hugely popular urban fantasy author who came up during the massive urban fantasy boom of the early 2000s.

Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

The 2023 Dragon Award for Best Young Adult and Middle Grade Novel goes to Midnight at the Houdini by Delilah S. Dawson. Again, this isn’t a hugely surprising win, because Delilak S. Dawson is a very popular and this is probably the best known finalist in this category.

I’m not the target audience for YA and middle grade books and I have to admit that the only other author in this category I’ve ever heard of is Shami Stovall, a self-published/small press author who was a finalist in the same category last year.

Best Alternate History Novel

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel is All the Dead Shall Weep by Charlaine Harris. Once again, this isn’t a surprising winner at all, since Charlaine Harris is hugely popular as the author of the Southern Vampire Chronicles series that the True Blood TV series was based upon. There was a time during the heyday of that TV series that Charlaine Harris has ten books on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time. Even if the SFF community never really acknowledged Charlain Harris, probably because she started out as a mystery writer, in the wider world she’s as well known as George R.R. Martin.

The rest of the ballot isn’t overly surprising either. Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford was a mainstream hit and just won the Sidewise Award. Meanwhile, Harry Turtledove and the late Eric Flint (plus co-authors) are probably the best known authors of alternate history in recent times and Tom Kratman is a Baen author with a big fanbase. The only book I wasn’t familiar with is Devil’s Battle by Taylor Anderson, though apparently the series hit the New York Times besteller list, so it’s clearly popular. In fact, the most surprising thing about the alternate history category of the Dragons may be why it still exists, when all the other smaller subgenre categories like post-apocalyptic fiction, military SFF or media tie-in have long been eliminated.

Best Horror Novel

The 2024 Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel goes to Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig. Once more, this win isn’t even remotely surprising, because Chuck Wendig is a very popular horror author. Plus, his Dragon win will also infuriate the usual suspects who hate him, because he dared to put gay characters into a Star Wars novel.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due got a lot of acclaim and also won this year’s Stoker Award. The Dead Take the A Train by Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw got a lot of positive attention and F. Paul Wilson is a very popular author with a big following. The remaining two finalists in this category were a bit surprising, at least to me. The Hollow Dead by Darcy Coates appears a paranormal cozy mystery rather than a horror novel, but since there is no category for paranormal mysteries, this category was probably the best fit. Dead Storm Rising by Shane Gries, finally, would have felt more at home in the defunct military SFF or post-apocalyptic fiction categories, but since those no longer exist, it ended up in the horror category. However, considering that the first ever Dragon Award winner for  Best Horror Novel was a religiously tinged space opera rather than an actual horror novel, this isn’t too shocking.

Best Illustrative Book Cover

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Illustrative Cover is Kelly Chong’s cover for Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen. This is a beautiful cover and a highly worthy winner.

Best Comic Book/Graphic Novel

The 2024 Dragon Award for Best Comic Book or Graphic Novel goes to Monstress by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda. This isn’t a huge surprise, since Monstress is also a multiple Hugo winner in this category and has some of the most beautiful artwork in comics right now.

A look at the rest of the ballot shows that this category is very DC heavy with Batman, Nightwing, Canary and Wonder Woman all nominated, while X-Men Forever holds up the Marvel flag.  It’s also notable that this is the first time in three years that the winner in this category was not a Dune graphic novel.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series is Fallout. This is another unsurprising winner, because Fallout was very popular and also a lot of fun.

The rest of the ballot is basically a rundown of popular SFF TV series that aired during the eligibility period. We have 3 Body Problem, Ahsoka, Loki, Good Omens, House of the Dragon, Star Trek: Strange New World and For All Mankind. The only finalist in this category that’s remotely surprising is Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, a kaiju series. And even that one got a lot of buzz and besides, you can never go wrong with kaiju.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

The 2024 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie goes to Dune, Part 2. I guess you can’t have a Dragon Award ballot without Dune somewhere and I vastly prefer the movie to the tie-in graphic novels. I also fully expect to see Dune, Part 2 on the Hugo ballot next year, if not winning.

The rest of the ballot consists of Barbie, Godzilla Minus One (which could win an Oscar, but can’t manage to win any of the genre awards) and Furiosa, none of which are very surprising finalist. The two finalists which do surprise me a little are Wonka and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, because no one seemed to like either film very much and both are prequels to stories that didn’t need a prequel.

Best Digital Game

The winner of the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Digital Game is Baldur’s Gate 2, which also won the Hugo Award in this category. No surprise there, it’s so popular that even I have heard of it.

Best Tabletop Game

The 2023 Dragon Award for Best Tabletop Game goes to D&D The Deck of Many Things. This is another unsurprising winner, because it is D&D, which is hugely popular and the thousand pound gorilla of SFF tabletop games.

***

All in all, after nine years the Dragon Awards do exactly what they were intended to do, namely award broadly popular SFF works with big fanbases. We still see some of the more offbeat finalists that characterised the early years of the award on occasion, but they no longer win. Camestros Felapton pointed out that Dragon Award ballot was quite Baen heavy this year (no surprise, since Baen traditionally has a big presence at Dragon Con), though it’s notable that no Baen title won.

So in short, the Dragons have became exactly the sort popular vote/popular winners award that the puppy-adjacent organisers envisioned back in 2016. However, I suspect they wouldn’t be too happy with the winners, which are heavy on the girl cooties (Rebecca Yarros, Charlaine Harris, Delilah S. Dawson) and on male authors the puppies dislike (John Scalzi, Chuck Wendig).

Finally – and this is an unintentional, if not unexpected result – the Dragons have also become the award for urban fantasy and romantasy series that sell like the proverbial hotcakes, even though the SFF community and other genre awards like to pretend these books don’t exist. And personally, this makes me happy, because I have always been irked by how the Hugos and Nebulas tend to ignore urban fantasy and romantasy, even though I have zero interest in Iron Flame.

Last but not least, two other awards also announced their winners at Dragon Con. The winner of the 2024 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction is “The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones, which was also a Hugo finalist this year.

Meanwhile, the winner of the 2024 Mike Resnick Memorial Award for the best unpublished science fiction short story by a new author is “When I was Your Age” by Sam Brown.

 

Cora Goes to Erasmuscon, the 2024 Eurocon in Rotterdam

After the con is before the con. In this case, two days before the con, because only one and a half days after I returned from the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow, I’m off again to the 2024 Eurocon in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. This means that you’ll have to wait a bit longer for my Worldcon report and Hugo commentary (and Dragon Award commentary), because I barely had time to do laundry and unpack and repack my suitcase today.

Two cons in two different countries on two consecutive weekends is not great timing and normally, I would have skipped one of them. However, I absolutely wanted to go to Erasmuscon, because it’s in Rotterdam, where my Dad worked from 1983 to 1990 and where I spent some very happy times indeed. What is more, I actually saw the location of the con, the Beurs World Trade Center, being built from my Dad’s kitchen window, though I’ve never been inside. So of course I had to go.

I’ll also be on the following panels:

Panel Female creators, how far have we come?

Time: Sunday, August 18, 2024, 11:30
Location: Mees

Description: Once upon a time, our female authors hid their identity with a male or unisex pen name so they were treated equally as men. Works created by women were taken less seriously. Finding an audience was harder for women than for men. Has this changed? Or do we still need to put these statements in the present tense? Come listen to the women who have been creating books, art, and movies for at least ten years. What has changed during their careers? Have they bridged the gap with their male colleagues and left the bias behind them, or is there still work to do?

Moderator: Kim ten Tusscher
Panelists: Bo Balder, Kathryn Sullivan, Cora Buhlert

Panel DIY: the ins and outs of self publishing

Time: Sunday, Sunday, August 18, 2024, 16:00
Location: Penn

Description: How to get your work published? This modern day and age give you many options. This panel will discuss the self-publishing option, including authors who found non-conventional ways to get their work published and to fans. They will discuss the paths they took and welcome questions from the audience.

Moderator: Cora Buhlert
Panelists: Jasper Polane, Sophia Drenth, Joost Uitdehaag

So if you’re at Erasmuscon, say hello to me.

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.