Review: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Newspaper Comic Strips

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Newspaper Comic Strips

Creators:

Writer: James Shull, Chris Weber, Karen Willson
Artist: Gerald Forton
Colorist: Connie Schurr
Cover Artist: Gerald Forton
Released: 14 February 2017

For over four years, Masters of the Universe had its own newspaper comic strip! This story continued the tales from the Filmation cartoon bridged the saga to the space-themed New Adventures of He-Man cartoon relaunch. The comic strip only ran in selected newspapers and was never reprinted, so most fans have never read it... until now! For the first time ever Dark Horse brings you a collection of these strips, restored and ready for you to unleash the Power!

A quick page through the book and the intro suggests just how much work went into the creation of this book.

Lots of scanning of old comics and talking to the strip's creators, lots of phone calls and emails to people and places around the world, tons of internet searching/research, lots of interlibrary loans and countless hours spent at libraries, and a couple of trips to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. made this book possible.

Unfortunately, despite the vast amount of work put into tracking down scannable copies, the collection is 35 strips short of complete. With those 35 missing I really hope that an artist can draw them up or that the original strips will turn up sometime in the future.

The He-Man and the Masters of the Universe newspaper strips ran every day for four and a half years (1986-1991) in newspapers and comics collections all around the world. In the US, where it was created and distributed, the strip ran in only a few newspapers - about 10 of them from what could be find. But it was also published in Brazil, India, Greece, Serbia, Australia and other countries, and translated into a variety of languages.

The majority of the Sunday strips where in color. It really depended where it was printed, and what content was discovered, but the daily strips were black and white.

Full-length scripts were written for each and every newspaper strip storyline. 14 of the 15 stories were written by Chris Weber, and the first one was written by Jim Shull.

Gérald Forton, Filmation alumnus and the artist who illustrated the entire run of the strip, still has a few original pieces. 
 

Here’s a comparison shot to help illustrate what the amazing restoration team did to clean up these strips. The original strip below, from the story “Attack on Snake Mountain,” comes from one of Chris Weber & Karen Willson’s photo albums. Over the years, the lines on the album pages “seeped through” onto the newspaper strips. About a third of the weekday strips that was used came from these albums.

Just look at the difference:

This project owes so much to the amazing talents and hard work to the restoration team, which consisted of Dušan Mitrović‎, Leanne Hannah, Eric Marshall, Justin Huehn, Val Staples, Brett King-Ruley, Joey Cacciatore, and James Eatock (who restored the last week of strips a few years back).

Many cool stories await you. You'll see familiar friends such as He-Man, Skeletor, Battle Cat, Teela, Man-At-Arms, the Sorceress, Hordak, Ninjor, Orko, Clamp Champ, and many, many more. You'll also see all new characters, places, and beasts such as Duke Tiberon, Lady Miranda, the Faultmaster, Queen Iandir, the mysterious tomb of Kartan, the ancient Thamalia Tower, the frigid Northern Isles, fierce Stiganors, ravenous Snow Sharks, and more!

YouTube Preview by Penny Dreadful:

YouTube Preview by MOTU Newspaper Strip Creators, Weber & Willson:

Overall:

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Newspaper Comic is an awesome book that fans of the MOTU franchise will love. It’s strips are a great read and it includes tons of exclusive content available nowhere else.

This collection features four and a half years of comics strips, the majority of which have never been seen by most fans! The newspaper strip comic continues the Filmation MOTU & POP cartoon adventures and bridges the story to the New Adventures of He-Man cartoon.


This is a must-have for He-Man and She-Ra fans.

Click here to preorder today!

Just a big thanks to Penny Dreadful. A lot of the above information I got from her YouTube review and from the He-Man.Org Forum!!!!