I used to love toys. What kid doesn't? Often the comics characters we grew up on were, in the minds of most of the creative teams of the day anyway, nothing more than vehicles to selling lunchboxes, underwear, and, of course, toys.

All that said, I think the fact that Dave Manak, the editor of DC Comics Presents #47: Superman and the Masters of the Universe felt he had to, well, explain himself in the letter column of the issue was a little telling. He explains that the idea for the MOTU characters were brought to DC by Mattel Toys and that (and I quote) "there was some amount of fun to this, especially...playing with a million and a half dollars worth of prototype action figures, accessories, and playsets." Hmm.

Manak rounds up his post-comicomercial (think 'infomercial') disclaimer by saying "So maybe every story doesn't spring wholly from the minds of the comic creators, but give us even the smallest bit of inspiration—or a whole cast of it like the MOTU characters—and we'll come up with something we're proud of." Reading this little vignette, you get the feeling he has NO sense of irony at ALL about the fact that, just two paragraphs earlier, he explained that, aside from the 'smallest bit of inspiration,' DC was also getting a boatload of money thrown at it to hawk a line of toys.

Comics as a way to sell something to kids (as opposed to, say, comics as a form of art and entertainment) is nothing new, but DCP #47 has got to be considered some kind of low point. I'm sure it's right up (or down) there in the Annals of Bad Ideas in Comics with Secret Wars II and Atari Force. Or at least Genesis.

The story itself is, as you might expect, mind-numbingly bad. We're quickly introduced to the statuesque and blond Adam, Prince of the hover-car-flies-by-a-medieval-castle world of Eternia who, despite the fact that all he wants to do is party like it's 1999, is impossibly muscle-bound. Figures... his type never has to work at it, you know?

With him is a stern taskmaster type of a trainer called, appropriately enough, Man-At-Arms, who is wearing what can only be described as a green and orange smoothie maker, accented by a tiny set of fur-covered panties. In a perfect world, M-A-A would have a few more wrinkles on his face, a Morgan Sprurlock mustache, and would doff the smoothie maker to spank some sense into that bad boy Prince Adam. Unfortunately, we're only here to sell toys, and not the Good Vibrations kind, either.

By panel two, we're already looking at the first "accessory", sure to come in the "Man-At-Arms' Dungeon Training Room" set, a spinny thing that will be easy to make cheaply from plastic in Hong Kong. Again, I was sort of hoping for some kind of, oh, I don't know... sling or ball gag or whatever. But again, this is for kids.

Just when things are getting really gay, we meet the voluptuous Teela, curvaceous member of the Royal Guard, who shows she is no slouch by tossing Adam a gargantuan barbell... which he ties into a bow. See what I mean about things getting really gay?

Pretty soon, we get a page on Superman, who is also in this story, like some kind of special guest appearance of Mary Tyler Moore appearing on the first episode of Rhoda. Then we flash back to Eternia, where Adam's evening of partying with his giant yet cowardly green and orange tiger (I shit you not), is interrupted first by the annoying "Vreeett!" of Teela's Royal Guard-issue type II phaser pistol as she saves him from a brawl with a guy called The Crusher, and then by the "Skreeee! Skreee!" of a swooping falcon, Adam's personal Bat-Signal from some sorceress or other who seems to have the same tailor as Man-At-Arms.

We see the sorceress transform Adam and the tiger into He-Man and Battle Cat respectively, though I have to question her methods of keeping Adam's apparently secret identity a secret (we know his dual life is secret because he scoots away from Teela when he sees the falcon). Transforming Adam into He-Man in this case merely means a magical change of clothes: the by now familiar fur panties, a harness over a bare chest, and no facial coverage at all. Even Battle Cat gets a full-on helmet to protect his true identity (assuming, of course, that talking green and orange tigers are available at the pet store in the Eternia Mall). I guess despite having had them invent flying cars and energy weapons, the use of glasses as a method to protect secret IDs is strictly the province of Earth-1.

Without boring you as much as this story would have bored even the 13-year-old me, the evil Skeletor (who else?) is attacking the mysterious Castle Grayskull, behind whose gaping, but presently tightly shuttered maw lay secrets that will allow the castle's conqueror to rule all Eternia. Now I don't want to tell tales out of school, but I hear that Skeletor left his stash of E in the castle the night before after a Craigslist J/O party, but in the story he kept going on about the "secrets." Hey, Skelly... it's no secret that you're an Internet hookup fiend! I mean your Yahoo! username is "BoneyBonerBoy." At least He-Man puts on furry panties to protect his real ID.

So, Skeletor (along with his ex-lover/groundskeeper Beastman) are trying to get into Grayskull and they cause a mystical explosion which draws Superman to Eternia, where he fights Skeletor and eventually He-Man and Man-At-Arms show up and Skeletor magically possesses Superman and he fights He-Man and oops I fell asleep.

I suppose that, once upon a time, my love of toys (or maybe my juvenile tastes) may have convinced me this story was really cool, but I find that hard to picture, considering the story that got me hooked on comics was Zatanna's reunion with her mother back in JLA #165. In other words... it's the story, stupid!

I suppose I should speak for myself, though. The MOTU characters must have been popular on some level: not only did Marvel and CrossGen both publish them; they've had a new incarnation under the auspices of an outfit called MVCreations. On their website, the MVCreations team recounts getting the license to produce the revival a MOTU comic, saying they wanted to be "the best it can be; a true reflection of its 1980s glory."

Way to shoot for the stars, guys. Just be sure not to hit the falcon.

When Kyle Minor speaks the words "By the power of Quizno's... I'll have the Classic Club with Bacoooon," he is transformed into He-Person, politically correct defender of his West Virginia hometown, and his adopted world, the distant planet San Francisco.

All images and characters TM and © 2005 of DC Comics Inc., Mattel Inc., and Filmation. Review © 2005 Kyle Minor.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).