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Penny Arcade - Comic - He-Mania
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - He-Mania
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Tycho: OK, now you're just making up silly names.
-Tycho Brahe
I guess we're all supposed to forget about the 2002 reboot. Or the 1990 continuation. I guess since it only had 65 episodes it didn't count.
The new She-Ra series poked fun at this quite a bit.
In one of the very early episodes they're at a council and someone asked Netossa what her deal was.
Netossa:"I toss magical nets! It's right there in the name!"
Spinnerella:* pats her arm* "And they're lovely nets. "
The best part was even though they were basically there just for that joke in season 1, by the final season they were both real characters and kind of badass to boot.
The She-Ra reboot was really good.
Cuz they were shown back to back and were basically the exact same show?
And then we lied to our friends about watching She-Ra, because girls were gross?
And deep down we all knew we all watched them both and were lying about it?
That's, like, part of the quintessential He-Man and the Masters of the Universe experience, I'm sure of it.
For whatever reason, I never watched She-Ra. Wasn't because I thought it was for girls or whatever. We watched any cartoon we could get our eyes on, so I'm pretty sure we would have watched it if we could. I mean, we watched Scooby Doo, and that was terrible. It was so bad that I realized at that young age that it was terrible. But it was still a cartoon, so we watched it.
Edit: Wikipedia says He-Man first run was 1983-1985, and She-Ra started in 1985. I think I probably saw He-Man before She-Ra started. We had very sporadic access to cable, so I'm not sure I would have seen it when they had both on back-to-back.
Also thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that J. Michael Straczynski "was a fan of the cartoon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. He wrote a spec script in 1984 and sent it directly to Filmation. They purchased his script, bought several others, and hired him on staff. During this time he became friends with Larry DiTillio, and when Filmation produced the He-Man spinoff She-Ra: Princess of Power, they both worked as story editors on the show. However, when Filmation refused to give them credit on-screen, both left, finding work with DIC on Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors."
It also looks -so- similar to the 2002 one, too.
Comic-wise, I love the subtle, but flavorful arm breaking at the elbow.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when watching it. You could have cut that trailer using the 2002 animation, and I would have been just as credulous.
The Rock would like to have a word with you.
Seriously, though, this is squarely aimed at adults, not kids. I'm not sure what that will mean for content, but that's what they're going for. Adults whose childhood roots were intertwined with the original show. So it's a grown-ups version of He-Man. The muscleman part is not that important either way. Just a holdover from the original. Though I see they slimmed down, which helps fix a part of the story you realized was pretty dumb as you got older. Even the 2002 one had him being pretty buff.
Also, somehow I missed that Skeletor will be voiced by Mark Hamill. Unbelievable. Yes, there a bunch of other Hollywood stars, but Hamill is an actual talented voice actor as well. That gets me far more excited.
It was this instinct that led me to watch Watership Down, and thus I took the fork in the path that led to the person I am today.
In any case the animation looks slick and in very intrigued to see how they handle the silliness: do they try to make Cringer and Orko and Skeletor cool or do they lampshade it all, interspersed with action scenes?
I watched the show as a kid, but it wasn't until several years later that I read about how He-Man's mother was actually an astronaut from our Earth who ended up on Eternia and eventually became the Queen. I want to see more of that story.
I guess we'll see if that's a sufficiently-sized audience to support this endeavor.
As a kid one of my favorite toys was a large plastic He-Man sword. I remember it being a yellowish-greenish color? I went looking for an image, but surprisingly I didn't find one on Google. Of course, I kept it "sheathed" in the back of my shirt when I wasn't swinging it around. It was a sad day when that sword broke. lol
EDIT: I think it was this one. I don't remember owning the shield though!
-Tycho Brahe
Once I found the picture I posted, I was pretty sure that was the sword. Maybe it was a birthday present and some classmate robbed me of my shield and kept it for themselves. haha
-Tycho Brahe
There's a scene in the trailer with Orko, where he puts up a barrier to deflect a bunch of spectral ghosts.
And yeah, the original series was part of the Early Toyetic Era of American animation, better known as the Age of Schlock.
The Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe film is pretty schlocky but fun. IIRC, Frank Langella played Skeletor cause his kids were into the cartoon, and apparently had a blast chewing the scenery. Sort of like what happened with Raul Julia playing Bison in Street Fighter.
This new one seems to be trying a higher-cost version of what the 2002 remake did. I hope the shift to Netflix and changing markets make that viable, because the '02 one seemed neat but got cancelled before I found out about it (ditto the serious Thundercats remake that happened later on).
I remember watching a few episodes as a kid and thinking "WTF? Where's Cringer? Where's Orko? Where's the fantasy stuff like Castle Greyskull and magic?"
The most surprising thing about this is that anyone would ever ask, "Where's Orko?"
Orko gets a major role in this version and is true to his original personality or I walk.
He's doing a spinning magical shield in the trailer, I think?
Edit: I just paused on that frame and he kinda looks like Senketsu from Kill la Kill. Weird.
Also, Netflix posted an interview with Kevin Smith on the series:
And he pretty much reveals the big twist for the series obliquely: