This is a quick one.
I just read this news about the upcoming Masters of the Universe /DC Crossover.
Let me be very blunt.
More MOTU comics: Great
Crossover with popular DC characters: Awesome
More exposure and buzz for the brand: Fantastic.

Really, no complaints about the whole thin. If it wasn't for other behind the scene crap, I'd be very excited, this is a good thing for MOTU.
Then I looked at the picture.
The first thought was: "no, please not that bloody new costume"
And then I looked at Teela, and thought about how her costume has been modified in the new comic.

And I finally realized something that will bug me for a long time.
I know behind the new He-Man costume there is a company that for the longest time has been obsessed with covering He-Man's body as much as possible. All notes and concepts for a new movie, probably since 2002, have been about giving He-Man pants and armors.
Because seems like an half naked barbarian is ridiculous and inappropriate. Of course in the middle there was that little thing called 300, but Mattel is slow at noticing trends.
So, they're finally getting what they want: change He-Man's image forever and remove the barbaric aspect, selling us he also need armor. and pants.
I totally disagree, but that's fine, they can do that.

And then there is Teela.
But wait a second. She's getting MORE naked?!
So, men must be covered more, while we can rip more clothes off female characters?
Exposed skin is bad for males but okay for women?
Oh yeah, considered the target audience, this makes sense, but it doesn't make it less wrong.
I still find it rather sexist and dumb, I just can't elaborate more than that, because it can't be elaborated more than that.

See, I don't dislike this new incarnation of MOTU because of the many things that happened in the past that left me bitter. I dislike it, because there is absolutely no values and it's all surrounded byt this hypocricy, that now also show its sexist side.
I don't blame the good people at DC comics for this, or Keith Giffen or the artists that worked on the book so far. The new HM's costume has been probably dictated by Mattel, which seems so concerned about any nudity regarding their male hero, but not so much about their females characters.
I'm a bit disgusted, I admit.

ON a lighter note, here are more full resolution version of my Instagram MOTU pics!
Click on them to see the full rez, much better then those on Instagram or Facebook!

So, the SDCC MOTUC exclusive has been revealed.
And it's Rock People (or Comet Warriors) 2 pack.
Which is incredibly cool and get us more close to completing the vintage lineup of figures.
Of course, every reveal comes with some controversy, but while I'm not personally too fussed about the lack of Granita (just because I wasn't expecting her, while I feel many fans had overstimated expectation for her inclusion in the SDCC Exclusive), I'm more annoyed about the usual misleading PR surrounding them.
Apparently Scott Neitlich's posts on He-Man.org forum are now worthy of homepege news. So, everything that he says is now considered official press release and since He-Man.org is more of a PR tool, here we go, post frontapaged.

Of course, I'm not against spreading useful info for fans, and there are definitely some in Scott's post.
I just wish this stuff was handled with official press releases and so double checked before being presented as such, because it usually can carry incorrect information.
Wait
Did you say that even official press releases often contained incorrect information? Yeah, my bad...

While is known that Con Exclusives usually costs more (and that should be because of the lower number produced, which is probably not the case here) are now told that 2 regular figures costs as much as Ram Man, which is 100% new tooling.  Neither Rokkon or Stonedar are 100% new tooling though. Actually, except the heads, ALL the body parts are 100% recyclyed and the new tooling went into the new armors and rock parts. Which are quite large, that's true. Still we don't get updated body parts, so we're getting LESS than the vintage figure here, something I clearly remember should never be the case in this line, and we're also told that costs more.
So what do we need to expect from Rio Blast, Modulock, Blast Attack etc? Higher price again than regular figures for less new parts?
Please hear me out: I'm okay with paying more, and I'm okay with paying even more if that is what is needed to get ALL the new parts necessary for these guys. I just want them to be honest and not to always try to put a spin on thing that smell like fish gone bad from 10 miles away.

But that is the least.
Here is where Scott keeps telling us stuff assuming we're all idiots:

And yes, also the cross sell does show some legs bands that we couldn't tool. The final figures are the lose figs and the packaged figs in the shots. Often (well, always) the cross sell shots are done off of the prototypes and some things do change along the way. In this case it came down to tooling and we really maxed out. It was leg bands or laser gun accessories and we went with the accessories. Never an easy choice, but that was the mind behind the madness on this choice in what to include (we obviously didn't want to lose the rock armor and both figs have 100% unique rock armor each).
All and all a fantastic set. The armor pieces clip onto the existing joint indents on the elbows and knees. The leg armor also can snap together in the back. There is a "tail" piece in the back that is articulated up or down on a hinge to help with posing and the transformation. They can transform pretty quick and the armor stays on very tight (although if you do full armor it clearly will limit the articulation as you lose elbow and knee movement (like the vintage figs). 

Futhermore, of course those new clips limit the knees articulation.
Now, I could totally be wrong, and please CB or Eric, feel free to call me and tell me I'm a complete idiot, but why I should believe Scott when he says the tooling budget was maxed out for mid thigh clips but was okay for knee clips? It was a mold issue where they had to be in the same mold with other parts and so tooled in the same color? Surely not because those are red like the ones in the prototype.
So, please someone explain to me how is it possible at all that the clips positioning (not their presence) changed costs so much.

Unfortunately as usual, after saying something that is clearly wrong, Scott doen't keep his mouth shout, and has to follow up that puts him in a worst spot:

To clarify some confusion, the "bands" on the leg were not bands, they were new upper legs. Adding this piece put us over our tooling budget. So the new upper leg piece had to get cut to keep the laser guns.

That is wrong.
You can look at the picture on the back of the packaging and it's 100% obvious that those are not new upper legs but they are clips.
The 4H are smart with their designs. True, the tooling budget didn't allow for new upper legs, but at least on Stonedar, the clips were meant to make up for the lack of red bands! But no, someone at Mattel didn't get it and changed it, completely ignoring a wise design decision made by the 4H.

Weather in Palermo is pretty warm, I just spent an awesome week with a good friend from Germany, and I have tons of Transformers work. So what is best time to get flu?
Oh well.
Since I got the iPhone, against all my friends's advises, I started taking some pics and quickly rework them with Instagram and now Pixlr. I think the challenge is to pick the best composition and take the best out of the limited tools. The limits of a phone app are not necessarily a bad thing. What cool stuff can be done with those? How to use them in clever ways, without just putting a silver on each pic? I don't know if I succeded at all in that, but surely I had lot of fun doing that.
The only I don't like is that both on Instagram and Facebook the pics are heavily shrunked down and compressed. So I thought to repost the full size files generated on the phone here (just click on them to enalrge)
Of course one of my favurite subjects are MOTUC figures. Here is a first bunch of them! Most are the first I did, and are pretty rough and uninteresting, but I think I started to get better with Castle Grayskull Man and Granamyr.
(Part 2)

Enough with sarcasm, let's go back to History and Fact-Checking.
Latest Skeleteen's appeareance in the Origin of Skeletor minicomic has stirred some interesting discussions.
Skeleteen is the son of Keldor and Evil-Lyn according the the MOTUC canon by Scott Neitlich, and was shown in a flashback, apparently leading an army of spaceships.
Neitlich claims he got the name and appeareance from an early version of NA/He-Ro Son of He-Man bible.
Which, considering the number of unused treatments and abandoned story synopsis - which are absolutely the norm in the creative process for brands like MOTU - could possibly be absolutely true. And I want to remain open minded about the possibility of something like this existing, even if , until Scott will show more tangible proofs, I will remain skeptical about how much is real and how much he made up.
So, keeping in mind this discussion will remain open, I wanted to group all facts, info and staments made so far about the subject.

For the first mentions of this, we need to take a step back and rewatch the walkthrough MOTUC at 2013 Toy Fair video by Pixel Dan:


The part concerning this topic starts at minute 14:32
At minute 14:38 Scott says that while people don't know that, "the original concept for New Adventures was Dare - He-Ro son of He-Man that became New Adventures. All the villains that were developed for what became New Adventures were actually developed for Dare"
"That shot I showed of Icarius at Comic Con in the Style guide. So there is an image in the Style Guide that basically look like this (he points to the NA He-Man figure) that labels him as Dare"

I made some research, and I spotted the image showns as a slide during the Mattypalooza panel at Power-Con. Most likeley, the same slide was presented in SD 2 months before, but all that matter is that it was actually there:


If you don't want to watch the video (it's at minute 3:00), here is a screengrab from mattycollector FB page:

It's a Skull mask. Like in Karate Kid. (Look close you will see the string). Incidentally, that design (and name) came from the vintage He-Ro SOHM bible. Too cool not to use!

The version we have is from 1988. It is a bit different from the later version I've seen online and is basically Dare set in the NA universe/world vs. the Space Mutants and Skeleteen. From what it appears, this bible became/evolved into what we know as NA He-Man and dropped the offspring aspect. We'll see if we can do a spotlight on it in the near future now that characters from it are appearing in the bios and mini comics. Their are some very interesting tid bits in it including the notion that it would have mixed animation with a live action frame story in each episode.
This is 100% conjecture on my part but based on what I have seen. it appears the 1996 version that has shown up online is a second completely different version that went back and took a look at the Dare character who was clearly dropped from the original 1988 version and gave him a new story. But the origin of the character appears to be from the 1988 version. I don't know if that clarifies or complicates things, but there are clearly multiple early He-Ro SOHM storylines that were mixing around, none of which ever launched. The 1988 one appears to have become/evolved into NA He-Man (based on the look of Dare; his name appears under an image we have come to know as NA He-Man) and the inclusion of the Space Mutants and Guardians (most using their original name like Icarius for Flipshot). I showed a page from this bible at SDCC a few years back.

So, even Scott is admitting that there are multiple versions of what eventualy evolved in New Adventures. I think it's wrong to call them multiple version of the He-Ro Son of He-Man storyline. He-RO SOHM was just one of them, and possibly the very last one, after New Adventures was all done and finished.

To recap, we do have proofs of some existing treatements:

• -"Hero in the Land of Legend", a Lou Scheimer pitch for a new cartoon with a character called Hero (no hyphen) as the lead. No connection to MOTU but the story featured mechanical enanched dinosaurs.
• -The original Power or Grayskull concept, created as a vintage line extension, where the lead was Grayskull himself, name later changed to He-Ro. The concept, planned for late 1987/1988 was abandoned with the demise of the vintage line.
• -The 1986 Military He-Man line pitch, as seen in in The Power and The Honor Foundation Catalog Vol. 1.
• -A live action MOTU series (1987), developed with Gary Goddard and Landmark Entertainment (which eventually did Captain Power). The series most like would have included some of the TV interactive elements later used in Captain Power. Some of the vehicle concept design can be seen in The Power and The Honor Foundation Catalog Vol. 1.
• -This "He-Ro and the New Masters" 1988 treatment, developed, according to Scott, along with Lou Scheimer too. Scott claims this pitch included live action sequences.
  According to Scott, Skeleteen and Dare appear in this bible.
• -The 1989 "He-Man and the Masters of Space" treatment by Filmation. Basically, Filmation's take on the New Adventures before it went to Jetlag. Much closer to the final New Adventures, but no mention of any He-Man's or Skeletor's sons. Skeletor does have a sister and two nephews though.
• -The 1996  "He-Ro Son of He-Man" pitch by Lou Scheimer Production, which is the one more known by fans where Dare character is featured prominently.

At least until Scott will show us scans of the bible. What make me skeptical and suspicios though shouldn't not be shelved as jealousy or hate for Scott. All my criticims have solid bases. Especially this one. In 2008 BCI Eclipse had James Eatock writing bios for the upcoming 2002 cartoon DVD. During proof time, we find out the bios had been altered without any of us knowing. Mattel asked directly to the authoring house to replace the bios (which James wrote based on the MYP bible and cartoon) with modified ones.
What alerted me most was that the new Hordak bio included reference to Horde Prime and He-Ro. Which never existed in MYP cartoon and bible. The MOTUC line was about to launch and we knew Scott had been writing new material for that including He-Ro involvement.
It was a clear case of trying to retcon existing history to justify creative choices for the new line.
Leaving aside psychological implications of such behaviour for a moment, this was the first time I noticed there was something shady going on with how MOTUC was being handled. And it set a precedent.

Knowing that the current MOTUC storyline is set to evolve into a Skeleteen/Dare fight against the Unnamed/Gorpo, replacing He-Man and Skeletor, it's unfortunately tempting to see the same retconning schemes going on, where the lack of confidence in an individual's creative choices are trying to be compensated with the association to existing material. In smaller words: fans may think this story is crap, but if I say I'm using something that already existed in the vintage line, maybe they will accept it.
So, they question is: how much of this Dare/Skeleteen is real and how much was actually in this 1988 treatment?
So far, I can only report facts and speculate. I know Scott has been talking about this subject on the latest RGD recording, and I farily know what he said. But I can't wait to listen to that to check better how he explain things and in which sequence. To my experience that is very telling.
Of course, I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong and see Dare and Skeleteen in that bible.

Some folks also observed that even if all this is true, was it worth including in MOTUC?  A bad abandoned ideas wasn't abandoned for a reason? And maybe shoud have remained abandoned?
Absoltuely. That is however getting into the quality of the choice. Which is a very fair debate. But first, I want to have all the facts.
See you on the next chapter!