It's a new year, but I'm still up to my old nonsense. As the '80s revival fad cooled, a new He-Man title attempted to excite readers. I revisit the launch of 2004's Masters of the Universe ongoing series this week at CBR.
It's a new year, but I'm still up to my old nonsense. As the '80s revival fad cooled, a new He-Man title attempted to excite readers. I revisit the launch of 2004's Masters of the Universe ongoing series this week at CBR.
2 comments:
Artist Emiliano Santalucia has commented on my article on Facebook. Just for posterity's sake, I'll repost it here:
In general, that story doesn't feel like an ongoing series, because we knew it wasn't. We had to advertise it like that, but all the boundaries and red tape Mattel had put on us at that point forced us completely discard they stories we were planning.
So I came up with a new plot, something we know it would have been approved -we couldn't do anything beyond the cartoon - and run with it, knowing our days were numbered. Since we couldn't tell our story anymore, I made that big vision panel just to hint about our plans, without actually using any name or changing anything from the cartoon.
At that point Mattel was just shutting down everything. We were receiving approvals months after issues were printed and distributed and I think none at all for some of them.
It wasn't a fun run. Six issues knowing we were shutting down were painful.
Writer and MotU archivist Jukka Issakainen also had this to say:
You kinda leave out a HUGE CONTEXT about Volume 3 and its first issue (And one that makes for an Interesting article pov)…..
This story for Volume 3 was not the intended story from MVCreations. They had BIG plans for it originally. To really go in a bold direction, incorporating story elements and characters from the 80s that never got their due (He-Ro etc). An ongoing comic that would be geared for the older fans, and not simply being confined what the cartoon was doing. Because one Fact was that the Mattel producer (Ian Richter) had a say in, that what the comic guys could do. So for example the comic guys never fully got to dive into Evil-Lyn’s origins because the cartoon already had plans on that topic (which was just a quick flashback of her meeting Keldor).
The Mattel legal team had changed during 2003 and they put a lot of restrictions on the comic guys. In a way that resulted in the Rise of Snake Men miniseries adaptation.
And of their planned Vol3, had to scrap atleast one full comic’s worth of art, possibly parts on issue 2.
The comic guys then had to do a complete do over. Hence why Vol3 issue didn’t come out in Jan/Feb ’04 as marketed, but until April.
Plot idea by Emiliano, with some suggestions from Val. And Lori Ann handling the scripting.
Both Emiliano and Enza did the pencilling. And with their very tight pencilling skills, they were able to skip the art getting inked. The lines got digitally enchanced when needed, but you can see on the Pages that its pencil lines (and not clean inks). THAT’S how dedicated they were in getting the comic continued. Story itself is set between the cartoon’s episodes 38 and 39. 😎 And that directly ties to the legal ’red tape’….
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