HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE MAGAZINE #11

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Magazine #11 is the Summer 1987 issue – and, as you’ll note from Dolph Lundgren’s shaven thighs and absurdly large one-handed laser rifle on the cover, it’s the movie issue as well.

With the cancellation of She-Ra: Princess of Power Magazine (which featured regular prose stories and no comics because…girls are smarter?) after only six issues, She-Ra now becomes a fixture in these pages. In this issue, that means a three-page prose story featuring as many She-Ra action figures as could be crammed in. And the He-Man of the Issue has been discontinued, as the Princess of Power analog wasn’t brought over.

In this issue’s ridiculous comic story, “Blast from the Past,” Skeletor retrieves his army of gun-toting dinosaurs from the past but loses because he doesn’t keep the Cosmic Key with him, all the new henchmen from the movie show up – including freaking Karg – and the colorist turns in a very sloppy performance.

Aside from the movie characters being thrown into that story, there’s actually very little going on movie-wise: a page and a half of photos and a couple of paragraphs summarizing the plot and lauding the production values in an attempt to whip readers into a movie-going frenzy.  

There are a number of interesting ads here: a Garbage Pail Kids movie I don’t remember at all; a twentieth-anniversary Star Trek commemorative plate featuring Bill Shatner sitting in a pile of tribbles; Lorimar selling single episodes of various cartoons for $15 each; and a Jif ad with an eyeball-destroying amount of color (and dignity-destroying outfits).

Evolving from the previous issue’s feature on dinosaurs, this issue features two pages of summer factoids that have nothing whatsoever to do with He-Man – if you saw these pages on their own, you wouldn’t have the slightest clue what magazine they came from. And one of the few activities here isn’t He-Man-themed either! Man, we’re really going downhill.

This issue’s Norem poster (there’s only one) features He-Dolph fighting Blade, with movie versions of everybody. It’s pretty darn faithful, although Norem’s interior illustration of movie He-Man doesn’t look anything like Lundgren.  

You know what? After this issue, I’m just thankful they didn’t put Snout Spout in the movie.

Read it HERE