Duncan is one of the few real names from early canon. I believe Filmation established it? I know him raising Teela wasn't established until the second run of minicomics.
I think the problem with a lot of the earlier bios is that the writers frequently have a very distinct preference for the MYP cartoon. Like as far as density of information is concerned, Rohad would have been pretty easy to slip in here. Lose an adjective. Feed a nerd.
And the whole electronic Power Sword thing is because there's this (officially discarded) MYP meta where Skeletor Won and they had to build a new Power Sword, quick, thus the overly mechanical look. No clue how that would have worked out, magic-wise.
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In the original comics, not all Bird People (as they were called) could fly, but Filmation had it so they all could if they didn’t stray too far from the Egg of Avion. They were also called Avionians in it, though. Frankly I hate the mouthfeel of that so like, this is better imo. Not that they stick with it long.
The jetpacks have always been around but the reason behind them was codified in the MVCreations comics.
Honestly not much to say about this one. They didn’t include a lot of lore.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
god fucking help us all, but the magically cloned daughter of the Sorceress thing is basically canon. It was The Goddess fulfilling the exact same role as the Sorceress.
Her staff was named Kobra in the 80s, but I guess they didn’t read the Ladybird books, so they gave it this new “Staff of Ka” shit. They also made it much, much older; it had never belonged to anyone but Teela in previous canons.
Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
yeah, so. the Great Unrest is kind of a floating event in time, but I’m not getting into that here because i have a fuckin’ serial killer board in progress trying to unpack it all. only 8 alternate timelines so far & i’m almost out of Preternia
so randor could be one of several ages and miro might not have disappeared. keldor might still be on his side.
kind of telling that scott they made him king for building a wall, though, huh
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
See that weird rectangle around her real name? Yeah, that’s because it’s a sticker. She was initially named K’yrulla, presumably until they decided they should fit some actual lore in there. They changed it to Sharella, from the Powers of Grayskull style guide; she was the “tribal chieftess” who helped raise He-Ro. MOTUC will be doing some wacky shit to her.
This is one of the earlier references to the “Sword of He”, which is, in my opinion, the second stupidest thing MOTUC did to their canon. Like what are you, a second grader? “Oh, ‘He’ is the Trollan word for power” that’s crazy, did you know their highest compliment is pronounced exactly the same as “kill yourself”?
God. Sorry. Anyway. There are exactly zero other He-Men, so this was all the setup for fucking nothing. No elaboration on what the fuck a “spirit guide” is or does.
Note here that it says “five centuries”, implying a worthy heir was born 4500 years before Adam and Adora. Super tight writing.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
rubs my temples. So He-Ro’s name being Ro is an invention of MOTUC, justified by the whole “Sword of He” thing, accidentally implying that He-Man should be going around named He-Adam.
The techno-organic virus is literally just the T-O virus from Marvel. Look, I hate to make this entire series a complaint about Scott’s shitty writing practices but come the fuck on.
The sequence of events presented here raises several anachronisms within the MOTUC timeline, most significantly the “Horde Invaders”, who were supposedly sent to Eternia to finish him off.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
MOTUC was supposed to be about combining all the disparate canons, right, but it was also about selling as many versions of each character as possible, because money. So we have Zodac from the 80s and Zodak from the MYP show.
Fun fact: He was originally gonna be a space alien, but Mattel wanted more racial diversity in the toyline and, though they considered Stratos, it was eventually decided Zodak would be the better choice (being otherwise a boring white dude with weird feet).
His name was spelled both ways back in the day, so this was an opportunity to finally lay that shit to rest: White guy’s Zodac, black guy’s Zodak.
The 4 Horsemen, who did a bunch of the designs (they were in charge of the toys, see) gave him a bunch of armor upgrades and sick tattoos, which I’m told glowed in the dark originally. Honestly seems like a huge win.
All of the He-Fans who complain about King Grayskull being black in MOTUR seem to agree Zodak’s a huge win, but simultaneously insist that you shouldn’t alter a known character’s design or backstory etc.
but i digress.
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And here he is: White Zodac. The timing, as I said, changes. So does the basic purpose of a Cosmic Enforcer. And when Zodac became one.
He’s tasked with maintaining neutrality because he was supposed to be a neutral figure in the original toyline. He was officially a bad guy, but for symmetry’s sake–he helped the heroes and the villains, and was just straight neutral in the Filmation show.
The idea of them maintaining balance is crazy given what we know the Cosmic Enforcers do, canonically. Like they’re supposed to combat evil, how can they maintain a balance? It don’t make any sense.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
Yeah alright so the “extra-dimensional being” thing is more because in Skeletor’s first iteration he was a demon from another dimension. He wanted to unite both halves of the Power Sword so that he could open a portal to said other dimension and let the rest of his species through.
The whole ‘combining canons’ thing really bit them in the ass here, because Someone decided that the best way to approach that was to double down on the extra-dimensional demon by literally just… combining him with Keldor.
[rubs hands over my face]
The 1983 minicomics gave Randor a brother named Keldor (who writer Steven Grant later confirmed was intended to be Skeletor) who had been lost to another dimension while fucking around with powerful magic. The MYP cartoon also alluded to but never stated the connection, with Keldor being a warlord that tried to kill Randor.
I think that’s where them being half-brothers originated? They made blue people a distinct species (not race) and like, Keldor was blue. But iirc MOTUC is the first time they were explicitly called such. The CGI show has them as full brothers, but they also made Keldor white so. shrug emoji. And then MOTUR seemed like they were going with the extra-dimensional demon thing but that turned out to be false memories and he was in fact just Randor’s half-brother. afaik. have not actually watched that
Skeletor has… a long and storied history.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
Yeah so this is just Faker’s scrapped plot from the MYP cartoon. Man-At-Arms made a holographic fake that flashed to Faker’s colors when it was deactivated as an allusion to its eventual future.
He had been a robot in the German audio plays, but I don’t actually think he was intended to be a fake He-Man or Adam? He kind of just got his head chopped off.
I can’t even blame MOTUC for it tbh, I’d do the same thing with SPOP if I had the power.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
Well, in the Ladybird books he had like a throne, but he wasn’t king of the seas MVCreations comics, affiliate media of the MYP cartoon. Which plays out as above. Squidish Rex is a damn stupid name, though.
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hghhhh. so in the Golden books (edit: and the Halperin bible) he was an earth scientist named T.E. Scope that came to Eternia with Marlena & got turned into Tri-Klops by crazy evil magic. Someone decided that Trydor Esooniux was a normal name for an earthling.
No idea where the inter-dimensional shit came from. He was once stranded in another dimension with He-Man? Did they put Earth in another dimension?
The blinded thing is from the MVCreations comics. Gammavision was originally X-ray vision but in the UK World Annuals it was the ability to see around corners. Think it’s a bit stupid myself, but I’m biased. Little confusing that he didn’t have an eye with normal vision but I guess they just wanted to squeeze in the night vision from the earliest minicomics. S'pose the guy can just see super far all the time now.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
Far as I remember, this is the introduction of the Arachna. Much less stupid as far as MOTUC names usually go. Webstor was defeated by the Snake Men in the MYP cartoon, so this might be a parallel…?
He’s always been extremely smart, though, like every canon. And good at breaking out of p much any jail. I like this bio tbh. Don’t mind it.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
Oh, Scareglow. He’s a ghost, he’s a skeleton, he glows in the dark! I think every origin story he’s ever had is just ‘Skeletor summoned him from another dimension’ or 'Skeletor made a scary clone of himself’. In the MVCreations comics he was the ruler of the other dimension, but nothing about a backstory iirc. In the 2012 DC comics scareglows were like, a species akin to the bogeyman. Naturally, Skeletor was able to summon them anyway.
No clue where Karak Nul came from, but at least I can pronounce it.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
Later down the MOTUC pipeline, this was retconned into Hordak being sent after He-Ro, but whatever. It was also more than ‘several’ centuries; it was 5,000 years. For no fucking reason, but it was.
It’s fucking insane to me that Scott changed Hordak’s name to Hector and Mattel just fucking let him. He already had a 'real’ name available if one was willing to dive into the source material. In the MOTU newspaper strips he went by the alias 'Tylgar’. Could have just used that!
Like he probably just knew somebody named Hector and wanted to give them a shout out, but to me Hector is the guy that killed Patroclus. Which, if one follows Plato, would mean King Grayskull bottomed for He-Ro. And like somehow I just can’t see Scott writing that. You know, for some reason.
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Bios are all transcribed and searchable here
