Friday, September 28, 2012

THE STENCH OF EVIL! (mini-comic, 1984)



The Stench of Evil! is a 1984 Masters of the Universe mini-comic written by Christy Marx and illustrated by Larry Houston and Tom Luth. Here, Skeletor enlists Stinkor to pollute the forest; his heroic pine-fresh counterpart Moss Man is also introduced.

Skeletor’s up to some genuinely small-time antics this time – driving the animals out of the forest to no useful purpose is just rabble-rousing (granted, there’s only so much you can do with a villain with stink powers). The story itself feels cobbled together – there’s a message about not trying to domesticate wild animals tossed in, and a moral that doesn’t logically follow from what’s gone before. And He-Man doesn’t actually do anything – not that there’s anything wrong with that every once in a while.  

Houston’s art is generally solid. Many panels are quite good, but some look extremely rushed (e.g., everything on page 9). The shaded coloring helps quite a bit.

This one does some things well, but the small-scale, slapdash story holds it back.

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT

Read it HERE

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