Castle Grayskull is a 1983 Masters of the Universechildren’s book; no author or artist is credited. It’s a read-along book with a record/audio cassette; I’m only reviewing the book itself, which relates the origin of Castle Grayskull and (briefly) the account of how Prince Adam got the Power Sword.
This book follows Michael Halperin’s series bible pretty closely, and it reads like a preview for the show: there’s no He-Man-Skeletor conflict here; only promises of conflicts to come (disappointingly, contrary to the book’s cover, there’s no scene with Skeletor getting blasted comically into the air by the castle).
The book features black and white art, presumably by two artists. First, there are a couple of really good, very detailed drawings of the Castle Grayskull playset that get re-used several times throughout the book. Second and more common are some extremely simple and crude line drawings of characters; these are, frankly, terrible. The book is written with a considerable amount of descriptive detail – enough to stand without art – and one wonders whether the illustrations were just thrown in at the last minute.
There’s nothing here that’s not in the series bible, but awful art notwithstanding, this book succeeds as a kid-friendly version of the Filmation origin story.
RECOMMENDED
Read it HERE
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