Nov 1, 2012

Masters of the Neitlichverse: The Powers of Grayskull

I am reviewing the 3 Mini Comics that came with the following MOTUC Figures:
Thunder Punch He-Man
Snakeman-at-Arms
Dragon Blaster Skeletor

Each of these variants came with a Mini Comic:

The Powers of Grayskull: the Legend Begins!
The Powers of Grayskull: He-Ro Unleashed!
The Powers of Grayskull: the Ultimate Battleground!

The story was written by Scott "Toygur" Neitlich, creator of the Purple Mary Sue that I love to hate and hate to love... I'm talking bout' Spector, foo! This story is allegedly based on the Vintage Powers of Grayskull Mini-comics (We only got to see Part 1)

Needles to say THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!!

Chapter 1: The Legend Begins!
This one is meant to be a Re-Telling of the Vintage comic... Neitlich style! Which translates to TG setting up his canon: snake MAA, Randor returns from Despondos with Miro, Sorceress is dead and Teela is now the Sorceress of Grayskull. So, Soreceress Teela (who looks like Battleground Teela wearing a Zoar Snuggie) tells He-Man that he's gotta go back to the past and Learn the way to defeat the Snake Men! She disguises the sword, but not He-Man and once he's in the past she tells him: "The past belongs to the Snakemen, so don't mess with the timeline... Oh silly me! You need a disguise so your 5000 year old Ancestor doesn't recognize you!!"

So this means that He-Man kidnaps a Snakeman and strips him of his clothes to become: Hamburglar He-Man!! Also Skeletor sneaked past them and went back to the past. In the Past, Skeletor locates Hssss and tells him that HE WILL HELP HSSSS DEFEAT THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE!!

So, King HSSSS and his Snakemen attack Panty Raid He-Man and a Mysterious Shadow shows up and kicks all their asses with Magic... Spoilers, it's He-Ro!! To this Skeletor exclaims: (I'm gonna quote it just for fun)

The Masters? Even in this Era they're a nuisance. This one's Sorcery is more powerful than any I have ever seen!
BUT WHAT THE FUDGE!? Didn't Skeletor say to Hssss 3 Pages back that he was there to help the Snakemen BEAT THE MOTU!? It's nto even a difference between 2 issues...

 Then He-Ro vanishes and He-Man is left off to fend for himself in this brand new world.

Chapter 2: He-Ro Unleashed!
We begin with Megator attacking a city on Anwat Gar. He-Man intervenes and KO's Megator with 1 Punch... He-Man calls it an Uppercut, but that was more like a left haymaker... I blame the Artist for failing at this...
OK where were we... He-Man Shoryukens the hell out of Megator and He-Ro shows up. He introduces himself and takes He-Man to meet the Prehistoric MOTU:
He-Ro: Bearer of the Power Sword
King Grayskull: He-Man's Ancestor
Queen Veena: First Sorceress of Grayskull, He-Man's Ancestor
Eldor: Old man in a Hoodie, also a Huge Sorcerer
Tytus: Giant and Dinosaur Herder
Zodak: Mystic Enforcer
Mossman: Same Mossman from He-Man's time
The Goddess: without any exploding Crotch symptoms (That's a Toy only feature)
Gladiator: Long Russell Crowe Movie with the sleep inducing soundtrack
Beast Lord: 90s Hank Mc Coy painted in Beastman Colors
Blue Poop Knight: Let me have some fun on hating Sir-Loser-Lot...
The Mary Sue: Neitlich's creation, aka the Solid Snake of MOTU if Solid Snake was a Mary Sue (Milla Jovovich level)
(Gladiator and Beast Lord ain't getting toys)

The Pre-MOTU and He-Man are Battling the snakemen when Hordak shows up and mentions the Spell of Separation as the thing that will kill the Snakemen! He LITERALLY SAYS THAT THE SPELL OF SEPARATION IS THE KEY TO THE SNAKEMEN'S DEMISE!!

The Snakemen Retreat like COBRAs while Power Ro and The Van attack Hordak. He-Ro unleashes himself like a Flower Girl from the Slums and KG then pretends Hordak is Mark Hamill (Applause!)
He-Man Stops Skeletor, He-Ro dies, Old Man in a Hoodie sinks the 3 Towers, Hordak runs away like a coward. then Spector reports to his CO who is He-Man from the Future. He-Man changes history as he takes Bionatops into the Future... Insert a cheesy Good Journey reference.

Chapter 3: the Ultimate Battleground!
Present Eternia: We have skipped all the Battles for Etheria (cause of Possible POPphobia) Now the Heroic Warriors and The Great Rebellion are in the Subternian City of Tundaria. Skeletor and He-Man have formed a Deadly Alliance and we're told that ORKO... as in accident prone floating shirt Orko, is the KEY to defeating the Snakemen. Six Splash pages later... Clamp Champ Kills Duncan! Teela Depowers Evil Lyn, by using EL's middle name I guess... Orko commits Genocide and Skeletor gets the Havoc staff back!
Skeletor kills Hordak and a dying Hordak (Buzz Saw variety) wounds Skeletor. The dying Skeletor takes the Techno virus from Bionatops and turns into New Adventures Skeletor.
Hydron and Flipshot... err, Icarius take He-Man and She-Ra to the Future... Primus! the End!


Now let's play a little game that I'd like to call WHY This 3 Part Saga didn't work as it should:
First: The Story was TOO BIG for the Mini Comics.
Look at Issue #1 It took one FULL page of exposition to start the story... Almost two pages worth of narration shoved into one page.
Issue Too had a similar problem. The First Ultimate Battleground was so compressed that it loses its "Ultimateness"
Issue 3 Has the very same problem as Issue 2 , but this time half the issue was used in splash pages... Here the Ultimate Battleground II happens really fast cause we needed the Splash pages... Basically a 96 page story was condensed into a 28 page story and it kinda shows.

Second: The story was a bit inconsistent. I did note some glaring issues (Skeletor's knowledge of the Preternian MOTU, but surprised that there WERE MOTU  in Preternia, The convenience of Hordak revealing the EXACT THING that He-Man came into the past to find out, etc.)

Third: Needless deaths. We know Sorceress dies, Duncan dies, Stratos dies (not shown in comic), Hordak died, King Hssss and his snakemen died and Mekaneck COULD have been killed by Orko.
According to Neitlich, many casualties from all sides did occur in this UB2. (If Glimmer died we're going to be pissed off) Now, don't get me wrong; I don't MIND a few deaths in MOTU. The thing that bugs me is that here the deaths have no rhyme or reason to occur. In fiction, unlike real life, character deaths HAVE a reason. Sorceress dying, while I may NOT like the way it was done; it HAS a reason to be. In order to have Teela fulfill her destiny as successor of Teela'Na. Now Duncan's death makes absolutely NO SENSE AT ALL!! Not even looking at the panels where it happens helps. Duncan's arm is clamped, next panel Clamp Champ is making a Duncan Kabob! It's like there's a few panels missing in between, which brings us back to  point #1...

The story feels rushed due to the cramming of 3-6 real comic books into 3 mini comics... Reminds me of The Xenogears Second Disc with the chair sessions retelling some events that I wanted to play. We would have been better off by having 3 separate stories from different points from the MOTUC canon instead of trying to cram so much story into 3 Tiny tiny comics... Like trying to put 10 people inside a SMART car...

It's not 50 Shades of Grey BAD... although sexing MOTU up wouldn't be such a bad... DC already did it!?

but I digress... It also isn't THAT good either. Some storyline decisions have WTF!? Written all over them.

Yes, I'd kill Sorceress Duncan and Stratos... In fact those 3 were casualties on a Plot outline I did for a series of MOTU movies (just for fun) between mid 08 to 3/4 08... but I wouldn't have killed them like they were in this story.

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