Saturday, October 27, 2012

KING OF THE SNAKE MEN (mini-comic, 1985)


King of the Snake Men is a 1985 Masters of the Universe mini-comic written by Steven Grant and illustrated by Bruce Timm and Mike Van Cleave. Here, Skeletor enlists King Hiss to help him defeat He-Man, and King Hiss recounts his origin story.  

Here’s the third and final faction of He-Man villains, and it’s a welcome one. Hiss, on his worst day a more competent villain than Hordak, is reminiscent of Ricardo Montalban’s Khan from Star Trek, and whether intentionally designed thus or not, the parallel works.  

Grant does a nice job with the story, although here’s yet another instance where they capture He-Man but let him keep his sword (although in fairness, He-Man artists hide it in hammerspace half the time). Grant handles the diplomacy between the villains well, and he gets points for incorporating the flying fists in a non-stupid manner.

This isn’t the best art we’ve seen from Timm, but his pencils are still above average for the mini-comics, and he always does good work with faces and poses. Van Cleave’s inks lend to the atmosphere, but the colors are on the garish side.  

On the whole, this is a pretty good mini-comic, and I, for one, welcome our new ophidian overlords.

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Read it HERE

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