In thinking about the MOTUverse...

[dayraven]

ok, feeling a tad more alert here... to be honest with you, i'm not a fan of the filmation cartoon much. so while i'm very interested in the "savage" motu history, to the point to belonging to the savage masters fans group on facebook, the more filmation i get offered, the less interested i become. even in the case of critters and one off characters.

far more intriguing to me are the comic and mini comic characters of a similar bend, demons, wizards, background characters that he-man had to stomp or ally with for a short story... case in point was procrustus. i still think that character is one of the most intriguing ideas introduced into the mythos... and then motuc released a sub-par giant figure of him, which i don't own and don't intend to own. it's a damned shame, cuz four, five years ago, i honestly thought i'd never get offered the character, but that i'd jump through a flaming hoop for a shot at one... and then we got than unarticulated lump of rotocast chicanery and my heart sank.

so herein lies my dilemma... i like a savage he-man, and to be honest, i don't think motuc is the line to provide that. motuc doesn't have the personality, which is why when you see a third partier or a caster offering kits that savage up the barbarian, half of them look out of place. for example, the recent huk kit from zombihamma, looks GREAT, i would love to own that set, but let's get honest for a moment here, it wouldn't look fully like it belonged on the same shelf as king he-man, stand-or, and vikor. so like, for example, the mask of power demons... i don't trust that motuc would give them to us in what i would consider an acceptable form. i think they'd be grafted onto the gy-gor body, which i personally don't have much respect for. i feel like i paid an articulated figure price for a vinyl funko POP! figure. so there's that. i'd love more savage elements from motu, but i want them in a new line that isn't motuc.

separate but related thoughts, that veebee dude kind of raises my hackles. sometimes, he seems very reasonable and well thought out, sometimes he seems very sycophantic and apologetic. i don't broker that. so like, he writes this piece, which in theory, is on a subject matter i'd appreciate. but then he gushes on filmation, which is just not my cup of tea. that's fine, i know some people like that filmation stuff, that's great for them. my issues lies in him using the two as if they were complimentary concepts, and i don't think they are. the savage barbarian era of he-man is clearly, at BEST, a pg-13 concept, but filmation is all ages, all the time. the look, the design, it's just aimed at a simpler, kinder, gentler motu. i'm curious to see if you agree with me or not, and what your reasons are for that position beedo. i know you like both executions, but do you think they're compatible?

[Beedo Sookcool]

Well, mate, there are aspects of the Filmation series that I like. Specifically, introducing more characters than were simply made in the toyline, building the world beyond what storylines might be necessary to sell the next toy, and developing the characters and mythos into more than just easy 2D cookie-cutter dudes who have a couple of lines and then show off their action feature.

But, as good as some of the stories are -- and some of them are pretty darn good * -- they are kids' cartoons, and the action and violence are watered down considerably. The MYP version was much closer to the mark of what I was expecting from MOTU, I thought. But it still wasn't quite there.

* anything involving Granamyr, Kothos, or General Sunder, for example, or the episodes "To Save Skeletor," "The Rainbow Warrior" and "The Price of Freedom"

I'm happy to pull in Filmation characters, references, and details that flesh out the MOTUverse, but when it comes right down to it, I'd rather have Kothos blow the absolute starfruit out of Colonel Blast with a lightning bolt so that little damp bits of him rain down upon the countryside, rather than just having his armour fall off and his hair singed a little bit. Trap-Jaw doesn't have all that gear because he needs to open tins of anchovies in novel and amusing ways. And so on.

Having said that, I could easily see Oo-Larr and Wun-Dar and Ka-Linsk being absolute vicious bastards as He-Men, but Adam trying to be a kinder, gentler He-Man, mainly because he's still young and idealistic and had a pretty non-threatening life.

[dayraven]

i don't fundamentally disagree with your points of view here, but i do wonder if motuc is the platform to see that reality fleshed out. i don't think it is. i think you'd need a more detailed buck to really do those kinds of stories justice, both in terms of functional articulation and design aesthetic.

one story that deserves, nay, begs for a savage, visceral motu moment, is modulok working over adora en route to despara. there's some straight up clockwork orange/videodrome/marathon man scenes there, and looking at my motuc collection, i'd have to build my fright zone (not a problem, i get that), and modulok might very well make the cut as is... but adora? no mangosteen way. i'd need interchangable heads or at least faces, czu at some point, i want her to look stressed. and we'd have to have a hair material that lets me take advantage of her neck articulation. i HATE that so many of the motuc girls essentially can't move their heads, and poor engineering means getting anyone to look up or down is pretty implausible (or possible due to ab crunch rather than neck) i would also love some torso articulation, because i should be able to get a flexible, strong warrior to writhe in pain a little. i don't ronda rousey style flexibility in my toys, but tower torso is no good. i need flexion, extension, and side bending ability, it's just part of what i want my collection to look like moving forward. ab crunch/waist swivel combos were nice, until we started getting better torso balls, but now, the bar has been raised, and i want the good stuff. i know, i'm spoiled.

seriously though, have you seen the DCC thrasher armor batman? that torso ball gets STUPID range of motion, better even than my beloved foxbots. i didn't honestly think i'd see that. it has changed my expectation for that joint, and it inspires me to wonder at what could be next for an even better system to get my figures in motion. especially when you're giving me barbarian warriors where i can see their bodies, correctly representing human range of motion is critical. it still pains me that motuc can't even give me wrists that can correctly execute a sword slash, and swords are the default weapon of the mythos.

[Beedo Sookcool]

Have you seen the teases of the super-detailed "Realistic" 12-inch MOTU figures that are being worked upon?

http://www.he-man.org/news_article.php?id=4758

[Beedo Sookcool]

And howzabout this bit of sickness . . . .

http://www.strangekidsclub.com/2015/07/ ... pages-1-3/

[dayraven]

And howzabout this bit of sickness . . . .

http://www.strangekidsclub.com/2015/07/ ... pages-1-3/

that's funny, when i saw this the other day on facebook, i immediately thought of you. i thought the writing was a little sloppy, but the art style was very 2000AD/pulp comic kind of stuff, which i enjoy greatly. the gore was nuts, but it's what i've said for sometime, if you accept he-man as a superman-conan hybrid, a lot of his conflicts would look more like that than the filmation "draw the sword only to parry a laser" kind of kiddie combat. i prefer my he-man a bit more human in scale, but really, all of the other characters have some form of superpower or magic to weild, all our hero has in a claim to be the most powerful man in the universe... so he should be a skull popper. and i'm a huge fan of the norse sagas, and this version of he-man definitely puts him on par with say gunnar of njals saga or sigurd of the volsunga saga... which is why, from an aesthetic standpoint, i like the tony guerro he-man prototype, and the barbarian vykron and vikor figures so much, they appeal to that more savage, visceral mode of storytelling.

side note: even as a kid, i was obsessed with the idea of he-man killing skeletor's minions, and of skeletor raising them as undead warriors (i don't use the word zombie here because i didn't play them like modern zombies, i played them like villains resurrected and enslaved to the sorceror) but i realize now, this was young, i was writing these kinds of stories in my head at like 6, 7, 8 years old... and that's kind of morbid for a kid that age. is that weird?

back to the point, thanks for the tip off on the mondo statues, i'd heard something about them but not seen anything yet. interesting control art... have you seen the sideshow statue for he-man? http://www.sideshowtoy.com/blog/behind- ... e-universe
i'm intrigued by it. if we got a life action film, i suspect it would look a lot more like this than the extant "classic" costume. i've read some gripes about the mixing of motifs, like he-man wearing a skull when skeletor's thing in the skull, but frankly, i don't think those people are very smart. the castle of power is graySKULL and he-man calls upon the power of graySKULL to become superhuman. it's a tad "on the nose" but if we're calling that out, some of the best fiction we've enjoyed in pop culture is guilty of similar motif misdemeanors. i mean, 3/4 of the DC pantheon literally wears their namesake on their chests. he-man also bore an iron cross on his chest, and i can see why perhaps, we'd like to alter that motif a tad. i actually quite like though that are elements of evil lyn and hordak and skeletor in the iconography of he-man, because it illustrates a shared history and culture... which there is! just like on earth, where swastikas pop up all over the damned place, and serpent iconography is so universal, i expect it's the first thing we'll carry to mars with us. it's totally ok, for example, for evil lyn's headdress to appear on a magical symbol, as she is the daughter of a respected mage, who belonged to an order thereof, and it would stand to reason that the trappings she wears are derived from an earlier, shared source of chthonic power and wisdom. plus, i love the proportions of his sword, not anime style ridiculous, but clearly way too massive for the ease of use of a mere mortal.

and don't get me started on the raven iconography on skeletor, i know, i'm a mark for ravens, sue me, but i love the influence in his armor. in my experience, crows and ravens are often called upon to teach lessons of esoteric necessity, but those lessons are not always benign or offered as a token of friendship. perhaps there's something larger to skeletor's mission than mere conquest of the castle?

it's fun to me to see more non-mattel groups getting in on the he-man mythos, as honestly, i think those outside sources are far more likely than the in-house team to do something creative and wonderful with it.

[Beedo Sookcool]

I've seen a bunch of the re-imaginings and statues and figures and all that, DR, and they're just not for me. They look nifty, but when it comes right down to it, I'm not a huge fan of re-imaginings. The MYP cartoon and Millennial MOTU designs of the 4H were just about as far as I'd be willing to accept re-designs.

They muck about with it too much, and it just doesn't look like MOTU any more.

And, um, the dictionary definition of zombies are undead people raised up by a sorcerer to do his bidding. Nothing about eating brains in there. I blame George Romero.

[dayraven]

no, i know that, that's why i said the "modern zombies" as in, the "analog for plague" zombies, rather than the traditional zombie. but skellie was straight magic, no drugs required. interest in drugs wasn't for some time yet.

[Beedo Sookcool]

Yeah, I suspected you knew that, mate. I just find it weird how the concept has gone from the original one of walking dead in thrall to a magician to ravenous, brain-eating plague spreader.

For me, zombies will always be the former. However much I liked Shaun of the Dead.

[dayraven]

george has actually commented on that, that he loved the old zombies, and had not intended to create something new with his... but really, he did. the "plague zombie" was his thing, and man, it was a needed horror trope, cuz it very much plays on a biological suspicion and fear of the sick and dying. it's so obvious that it almost defies explanation how george was the first to create the form language. the medieval woodcuts of the reaper are nice, but the very humanoid zombie is entirely superior. makes us paranoid to boot... and people have the gall to wonder when we'll "get over" the zombie trope... we won't, not until we're immortal god machines. the fear of inevitable death will compound over paranoia over who's sick, and the every present disgust in the face of entropy will be with us forever. it might wx and wane, and it may slightly alter it's character, but it'll be there, forever in the shadow of our nightmares. asking when zombies are going to go away is like asking when natural disaster movies will go away... they won't, get over yourselves, get a bucket of popcorn and a large soda and count your lucky stars you're seeing it in a movie theater. cuz when the real thing knocks on your door, you're mangosteen over.

shaun of the dead was great, but i must say, i loved 28 days later, especially because of how few people understood the subtext... it should be obvious, with "the rage," the blood, the 28 day cycle, the lead character adopting not one but two women, (the wife and daughter archetypes)... but a ton of folks missed it.