Nostalgia is my friend. I compare everything new to all the old stuff I used to love. Stuff like music, movies, tv shows, comics, books… whether its good or not is usually directly related to whether or not it was as good as something else that I used to enjoy.
So imagine my reaction when I saw that the Cartoon Network had a new He-Man series on.
I’ll admit that I haven’t seen very much of the new He-Man, so I shouldn’t probably be writing anything about it. But that’s hardly stopped me before, so…
When I was a kid, I used to watch He-Man religiously. If they’d have made a video game about He-Man, I’d have cried because my parents wouldn’t buy it for me. Just like I did with all the toys.
A lot of people like to focus on the fact that He-Man STARTED as a toy line, and the cartoon series itself was only made in order to try and sell more of the toys. Frankly, I could care less if it started as a way to force young boys to watch muscular men in underwear and pink shirts in an attempt to make them all gay. The fact was, this cartoon kicked all ass.
Allow me to break it down for you:
He-Man: Here’s the obvious place to start. He-Man was strong, sort of almost smart, and had a really big sword. And every so often, he’d ride around on a TIGER. C’mon! He was cool cubed!
Plus, his alter ego was a Prince! Granted, he was a lame prince with a horrible haircut who wore pink and got yelled at by women with boob armor, but still, a Prince is a Prince.
He was the protector of the people, beater-upper-of-bad-people, and he made friends with all kinds of people. There wasn’t much this super awesome muscle man couldn’t do.
Except math. And read. Well, ok, anything that required brainpower.
But he had a cool voice! Beat THAT, Optimu* er, nevermind.
Teela: I’ll be honest here. The only thing I remembered about Teela at ALL was that she was a girl.
Since I remember almost nothing about her, I did a little back ground research.
She was Adam’s mentor, who thought he was a lazy moron, cause that’s how he acted (so that people wouldn’t guess that he was He-Man, who looks exactly like Adam, only with a tan and bracelets. Even Superman has GLASSES at least.
Anyway, she was the daughter of the Sorceress of Greyskull, and her real father was a hero before He-Man was around (who gave his life for Eternia, where everyone lives).
Somehow she ended up being a good person, despite being the daughter of a witch and raised by a guy with a penis helmet named ‘Man-At-Arms’.
Sorceress: Once again, I don’t remember a whole lot about this character. I remember that she was a heck of a lot cuter than Teela, and she had wings… I’m pretty sure she never flew around or anything though.
Unless you count her turning into an eagle. Which you probably should. Since she did. Its name was Zoar!
I’m tempted to point out that she looks EXACTLY like Teela being swallowed by an Eagle, but then I remember that she’s supposed to be Teela’s mom. So it kind of makes sense.
She guards Castle Greyskull because its really powerful. And everyone else is too busy doing other things. What things, I don’t know. I’d assume that a powerful castle would be something everyone would be interested in, but instead some chick in feathers is wholed up inside by herself. Guarding it.
But since she’s a woman, she really sucked at keeping it safe, so she had to give Prince Adam a sword and a catch phrase so that he could turn into a barbarian and come to her rescue. I’m guessing she’s not a very good sorceress.
Orko: So far, I’m not off to a very good start. I don’t remember much about Orko either.
His main responsibility was to announce when the commercials were over, but every now and then, they’d squeeze him into the actual show too.
I seem to recall him having a really weird voice, and having the hots for some chick… I don’t remember who. He was a magician from another land. A land where magicians really sucked, apparently, cause everytime he’d do ANYTHING magical, Man-At-Arms would have something terrible happen to him.
One time, Orko was miles away from the palace with He-Man, and he needed to conjure up a rope. So he did. Meanwhile, back at the palace, Man-At-Arms was eaten by cabbage.
He lived, of course, but you can’t deny the awesome power of Orko’s blundering magic.
If fact, I can only think of one person who’s magical inadequacies top The Big O here. If you don’t know who this is, I feel sorry for you. That show rocked. The casba, even!
Cringer: I remember a good deal about Cringer. Cringer made the Cowardly Lion look like Braveheart.
Cringer was afraid of everything and anything. If it had substance, he feared it. If it DIDN’T have substance, he feared it. The ironic part of this whole situation was of course that whenever Princey Adam turned into He-Man, Cringer became the powerful Battlecat. And Cringer was afraid of that too.
Cringer was always trying to avoid turning into Battlecat. Everytime he knew someone was up to trouble, he’d try to sneak off. Sometimes he actually got away with it, and didn’t have to turn into Battlecat and become a hero. When He-Man would finish beating up Skeletor and making him cry, he’d come looking for Cringer.
I like to pretend that He-Man beat the shit out of him before turning back into Adam.
Skeletor: That pretty much leaves the main villain. Yeah, there were a lot more characters involved, but I either can’t find anything funny to say about them, or couldn’t find enough pictures to make it worth while.
Skeletor was Pure Evil given body, if that Pure Evil were to have grown up eating paint chips, spent his entire childhood being repeatedly dropped on his head, and then had acid thrown in his face.
Skeletor LOOKED cool, and even sounded cool, but he was the stupidest villain ever seen, until Shredder showed up.
He surrounded himself with idiots, he kept trying to attack Castle Grayskull, which was OBVIOUSLY a favorite hang out of a guy that kicked his ass EVERY TIME…
I kept waiting for the episode where he discovered that He-Man’s true identity was Prince Adam, so that I could see the mental breakdown that would most assuredly occur from learning that the greatest foe you ever faced was the lamest looking prince in the history of ever.
