***SPOILERS***
He-Man and the Masters
of the Universe #10–12 (DC) are written by Dan Abnett and illustrated by
Michael S. O’Hare and Tom Derenick. Here, the Justice League of Eternia
continues its journey into the underworld, where it turns out that Randor has secretly
been dead for years and years and that it’s actually been King Hssss in
disguise the entire time. No, seriously.
Well then. Maybe
if anybody had ever given us any kind of foundation for these characters, I might care that Randor’s supposed to be
dead. Instead? Meh, and profoundly so.
(While we’re on the subject, is Man-at-Arms supposed to be dead? Does anybody
know? Almost forgot about that guy.)
So here’s the big payoff, and while I’m tempted to say it’s
the first interesting bit of storytelling we’ve had in this series, I have a
feeling it’s going to turn out to be little more than a deus ex machina used to sweep the board clean (following a big,
overlong army fight, of course) for the next round of foundationless,
unengaging “storyline”: Teela becomes the new Sorceress—the old-timey green
Teela snake armor one—so the JLE gets to have Snake Mountain as a base and have
their own army of Snake Men. The irony would be great if this had been anywhere
near competently set up.
Last time, I predicted skipping to get through this story—I
was right. We go straight from Moss Man dying in the desert to Moss Man commanding
a Final Fantasy-style airship with guns on it. All right, fine. But this is a
comic book—why are we getting his recap with close-up face shots instead of
with actual pictures of what happened?
The lack of grounding in this series is bewildering. It’s
well-documented that DC’s not using any of the old mythoi—these absolutely are
not those characters. If there’s any “foundation” to speak of, it’s the little
paragraphs from the MOTU Classics figures’ cardbacks. That’s plenty to go on,
right?
We’ve had a six-issue miniseries and 12 issues of the
ongoing, and we’ve already gotten all three of He-Man’s Big Bads. What’s the
almighty rush? You’d think they were still making toys. Whether Iron Pants
He-Man’s chopping on Horde Troopers, nightmare creatures, or Snake Men for two
straight issues, it gets old equally fast.
For these reasons and others, this arc feels slapped together.
Abnett’s sticking with the tried-and-true fight-while-spouting-exposition
approach to writing comics. Issue 10 is mostly just talking, while issue 11 is
mostly just fighting while talking.
(Battlecat? Battle-Cat? It’s Battle Cat, Abnett, you should
ask somebody, and let’s not even talk about Sarnscepter.)
While it’s certainly better than Giffen’s, Abnett’s dialogue
is just too much at times (“This shot-cannon is most efficacious”? Are you
wearing a monocle? Are you Sir Hammerlock?). And then there’s this, from Iron
Pants He-Man: “You will all pay with your souls!” Like in a Hellraiser kind of way? What does that
even mean?
On the art front, so much for O’Hare. He and his fine work
are gone after issue 10. Derenick replaces him—his art is perfectly competent,
although his faces are chunky. We’ve had a lot worse. More relevant is that He-Man
gets a new outfit that’s even stupider than the one he’d been wearing. Dude
looks ridiculous. Nice space boots, turkey.
Abnett’s not as flagrantly annoying as Giffen. My problem
with him isn’t what he’s doing with the plot and the characters, it’s how he’s going about it. The bottom line
is, these comics, these characters, this Eternia still don’t feel like any
He-Man I know about, mostly because they’re so generic, so cookie cutter, so
one-dimensional, existing only to dash heroically from one colossal melee
combat to the next while lamenting the most recent apocalyptic turn of events the
reader hasn’t been made to care about. So while these issues trot out some story
elements that could be interesting, it seems pointless to talk about whatever
potential this series might have as long as it refuses to invest itself in its
characters or its storyline.
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