Memories #19 - "James Eatock, you are not He-Man!"

In an effort to make a note of all my He-Man and She-Ra childhood memories I've decided that every once in a while I will make reference to them here! There is no particular order to these; just amusing little anecdotes from years gone by.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, both the toys and the cartoon, were huge at our school. We were all running around back then shouting out "I have the power!" I remember though at one point the teacher actually saying to me "James Eatock, you are not He-Man!" This became an infamous joke-quote in the Eatock household for a good few years. I would like to visit that teacher and show her how creatively fulfilling and financially profitable my life has been thanks to my love for all things He-Man and She-Ra! Heck, my association with both series earned me a place on Wikipedia! Take that, teacher! :)

"My Friend No More" #1

Here is a very memorable story from issue thirty-one of the UK Masters of the Universe comic titled "My Friend No More". Many consider this to be one of the best of the entire UK run; a story which focuses heavily on two characters that we would not really think twice about. The writer not only tells an entertaining story, but also makes us care for these two characters! Here are pages one to five...



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Memories #18 - See him fall!

In an effort to make a note of all my He-Man and She-Ra childhood memories I've decided that every once in a while I will make reference to them here! There is no particular order to these; just amusing little anecdotes from years gone by.

It is amazing what memories the brain will hold in place for a number of years. As I have explained before, in the UK the He-Man series only aired twice on terrestrial television; so if you missed an episode the first time around and did not have the opportunity to catch the rerun, chances are you would not see it at all. I managed to record about seventy-something episodes from terrestrial television, so all I had of other episodes were brief memories of certain scenes from watching them the first time around! For years I had the memory of a villain falling out of a building and towards the camera. Twelve years later during my tape trading with Scott White I watched the episode "The Defection" and there was the sequence I so distinctly remembered!


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Come to their senses...

In this panel from issue twenty-two of the UK He-Man Adventure comic we see Skeletor and his Mutants looking a little the worse for wear. One thing that always puzzled me is that the artist who illustrated this comic had previously worked on the UK Masters of the Universe comic. Now, this may be due to Skeletor's new costume, but I always found his illustrations of Skeletor during this latter series to be quite comical. It may be the way the helmet accentuates his skull, or his tiny beady eyes; but something was amiss...


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Memories #17 - To be cotinued!

In an effort to make a note of all my He-Man and She-Ra childhood memories I've decided that every once in a while I will make reference to them here! There is no particular order to these; just amusing little anecdotes from years gone by.

For those that know me personally, they have probably heard this story before. I remember watching "House of Shokoti" Part 1 as a kid and not realizing that it was going to be a two-part story; even though the title card at the beginning of the episode was a bit of a giveaway. The image of Shokoti's face at the end of the episode accompanied by Lou Scheimer's booming voice declaring "To be continued" took me by surprise. During the years that followed I was haunted by the image of Shokoti, and as I never caught the one rerun of the episode, it would last a lot longer than it should have. Into my teens and early adult life I still thought about the evil glowing face and questioned what episode of the series it was from. Back in early 1996, a few months after getting on-line, I struck up a friendship with a fellow named Scott White. He had a bulk of the He-Man series recorded from when it aired on the USA Network. The first thing he did was kindly put fifteen episodes of He-Man that I had not seen in years, and in some cases never seen, on a video cassette! The first episode on the tape was "House of Shokoti" Part 1. Imagine my joy upon seeing the end of that episode for the first time in over ten years!


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Falling groundward!

Here is an action-packed sequence of three panels from issue three of the UK Masters of the Universe comic. I love the second panel which simply shows the action of He-Man throwing the tree in the direction of the escaping Trap Jaw. Interestingly in the first panel it appears that He-Man has torn the tree down, as we see a nearby matching stump, and yet the text in the second panel specifically states that the tree was already "dead". My theory is that the artist intended for He-Man to be tearing the tree down, whereas the writer possibly looked at He-Man's attitude in the animated series in which he would never harm a tree. Either way, Trap Jaw ends up in a world of pain, but has time to utter the phrase, "Falling groundward!"


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Memories #16 - My parents illustrated, too!

In an effort to make a note of all my He-Man and She-Ra childhood memories I've decided that every once in a while I will make reference to them here! There is no particular order to these; just amusing little anecdotes from years gone by.

Some say I can draw, and to a degree I would agree with that. Looking back I would attribute all of my creativity to my parents. When I bought the Masters of the Universe action figures I would always keep the card backs. For some reason I used to ask my parents to illustrate the poses of the small character illustrations. And they would! My mother is an amazing artist, she had that talent passed down to her from her mother; my father was not an artist, but could still copy the character illustrations. They did this for a while, and I would trace the pose and re-draw it with a different character in place. Without a doubt tracing those characters at a very early age taught me the basic fundamentals of how to draw; or at least how to hold a pencil! I seem to remember that the illustration of Tri-Klops was the one I traced the most...


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The only woman for me!

Here is an interesting panel from issue sixty-eight of the UK Masters of the Universe comic. Here we see Man-At-Arms announcing that Evil-Lyn is the only woman for him! This is of course due to a spell that Evil-Lyn has placed on Duncan, which results in him fighting He-Man at one point in the story. This panel is powerful in the sense that it really conveys Man-At-Arms' feelings to his former friends; Prince Adam's reaction is amusing, as is Orko's very confused look.


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Memories #15 - Technical difficulties...

In an effort to make a note of all my He-Man and She-Ra childhood memories I've decided that every once in a while I will make reference to them here! There is no particular order to these; just amusing little anecdotes from years gone by.

Because the UK terrestrial channel ITV aired the He-Man series in batches, this meant that sometimes we would have to wait months for a new batch of episodes to air. When the series came back after a three month absence on the 1st September 1986, "Journey to Stone City" was the premiere episode. I remember being very excited that a new run of He-Man episodes was about to begin and so I prepared my VHS for this, the first new episode of the series. However, about five minutes into the broadcast something went wrong at ITV and all we saw for the remainder of the episode was a test card that stated "technical difficulties". I remember being very annoyed by this as a kid, because we had to wait roughly three years until the episode was shown as a rerun in order to see it in its entirety!


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For the next few hours...

In this awesome panel from issue fifty-three of the UK Masters of the Universe comic we see Skeletor now in control of all the villains across the planet Eternia, including the Evil Horde and the Snake Men. The angle of this illustration makes Skeletor look impressive. Once again notice that the artist ensures that his illustrations are highly accurate to the action figures. On this occasion though it appears that the colorist has made Skeletor's skin look a little too blue...


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