Masters of Grayskull – EP 122 – Captured The Comic!!

This is Man at Arms, and you are listening to

the Masters of Grayskull. I am Adam, Prince of

Eternia, defender of the secrets of Castle Grayskull.

This is Cringer, my fearless friend. Fabulous

- Hello, this is optimus solo and welcome to

the 122nd chapter in our powers of great skull

series Yeah, you thought you were done with us

You can't get rid of us that easy with me for

this journey into the masters of the universe

franchise is TFU and Mike Hello. Hello. Oh if

they The plans I have ladies and gentlemen, you'll

find out much later than this podcast episode

So sir, are you ready? Somehow? We're we still

we're gonna return to Eternia Yeah, we are sort

of All right, in this episode of Masters of Grayskull,

we'll be giving you our thoughts on the unaired

episode that got turned into a comic book, and

that is called Captured, basically episode 40

called Captured. And this is a comic book that

was created, illustrated by Emiliano Santalucia.

and involves Cobra Khan and Skeletor and kind

of how they're interacting and deals with King

Hiss and all kinds of other stuff. So I know

you're more of the comic expert out of the two

of us. Ladies and gentlemen, it is so crazy every

time I ask him to do some sort of Masters of

the Universe or Back to the Future or something

I know he's going to. At least a franchise that

I know he's like, I would never ask Optima Solo

to sit here and review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Power Rangers with me because I know he doesn't

like Power Rangers. So I'd have to get somebody

else for that. But screenplay originally obviously

done by the late great Dean Stefan. The comic

adaptation script was done by Ryan Foley. As

you already mentioned, the illustrator, the colorist

was Val Staples. Most of you probably know who

Val is. Val has had a storied comic book career

working on various comics. He is also the head

guy over at He -Man .org. I'm hoping to get Val

on the show at some point here in the future.

What were you going to say? He -Man's grabbing

a snake and it's like a multiple snake heads,

but there's like one, two, three, four, five,

six. I don't know what character this is that

he's grabbing, but there's more involved than

any character I've ever had. But I do like the

art on this comic. I think it's very and I especially

like how they do Skeletor. I think that's well

done. I think the artwork on Tila is really good.

I was pretty good. I always find that no matter

what people do with He -Man or Prince Adam, that

it's always comes across almost as inconsistent

to me, almost in the same way as like in the

pullback when we talked about Marty McFly. I

think it was kind of how Like I feel like even

just throughout this comic like Prince Adam and

he man changes a little tiny bit here and there

But that is like the most major nitpick I guess

more like a minor nitpick that you can possibly

come up with because I think from an illustration

point Everything else is great. Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

The art is amazing in this I'm not so sold on

the story. Maybe it's because it's only a 22

page comic Maybe it's because it's because they're

adapting a script that was supposed to be a 22

minute episode. Maybe if this had gotten more,

maybe if this had gotten more issues to, to say,

okay, we're done with the cart, the cartoon series,

but here, here's a continuation of comic form

kind of thing. Uh, maybe that would have worked.

The thing that I am kind of screwy on here is

there's a, it's, I forget which page it is. I

think it's like. Page three There's a picture

of there is a panel of Adam and Tila and man

-at -arms and whatever Adam's colors are not

his vest color is not dark enough. It's almost

like old filmation It's not pink, but it's not

a dark enough red to me and his sword should

be the other way It should be over his left shoulder

not his right shoulder because in the entire

series He was left -handed with his sword I never

noticed that. Yeah. Oh, I think it would be a

benefit for us because obviously a die -hard

human fans probably have access to this in some

way shape or form I'm sure it's leaked onto the

internet somewhere but technically this is on

like you have to have the DVD ROM you have to

have the DVD of This series in there. You have

to have it in your computer You have to be able

to pull up the DVD ROM drive to open a file that

has the comic. Yeah Be having it so I'd like

to at least somewhat kind of give like the cliff

know what happens in this because nobody else

is gonna have a clue unless they're Access to

this so let me kind of go through a little bit

by a little bit. So it starts off Which is the

newly reformed snake Mountain which snake Mountain

because Serpos has been back and banished back

to his form back where he is now surroundings

Well, etc. Yeah, so we start there and Skeletor

is kind of you know bemoaning the fact that you

know His his layers still then we kind of saw

this a little bit in the last episode That's

why I said like yeah, I get it could have been

like foreshadowing to future episodes I just

wish we would have got a little bit more Skeletor

last episode But this is kind of the culmination

of that where he's upset about this and he's

gonna do something about it but basically King

his Is not around His he's headless I guess we

didn't talk about that in the last episode, but

King Hiss somewhat died in the last episode as

much as a snake can. So the thing is that King

Hiss was taken out, so now Skeletor doesn't have

that to worry about, so he's saying he's going

to get his revenge on anybody else, all the other

snake men, etc., etc. We have Cobra Khan appearing

and he's seemingly switching his loyalty to Skeletor

and saying that he'll be loyal to him and he'll

do what he needs to do, etc., etc. So that's

kind of how it starts and then we go to a panel

where we have man -at -arms kind of showing off

the new Snake prison we already had this is this

is the part that gets me in this comic. This

is what rubs me the wrong way We've had a snake

prison For most of the series because snake face

or whatever you call them. Mm -hmm That character

has been in prison the whole time without ever

getting out I'm until you know I get I get at

the end that we had rattler got out etc etc but

for the most part that was a pretty fail -safe

prison that seemed like it worked yeah but now

they need to redo it so he's installed all these

other things that are gonna have snake sensors

and are gonna be able to detect cold -blooded

snake metabolism and Any type of reptilian things

like so nobody's gonna be able to come anywhere

near to let them out All this type of different

stuff, right? Even though they already had an

attorney I'm lying to prison they needed all

this and even if that doesn't work it says that

there are laser security grids. And obviously

we have light that comes in all the time because

that's gonna prevent some king has from regenerating

so this is the first time that we can see that

can his isn't dead and that there is a chance

that you like regrow his head I guess. So they

have to make it light at all times, which means

in my mind that you're like setting something

up where. They're going to have to find a way

to. Stop the light, make it dark, you know that

I was thinking that's where it was going to go.

Like the people were going to do different stuff

to this prison to try to like shield the light

or shield the light from the royal palace area

or whatever the case may be. That's not how they

went. They went a different route, but so we

have all this right. And he just, there's literally.

Two comic book pages dedicated to describing

this new snake prison. Like we have one two three

four five six seven eight cells is that what

they're called individual. Talking about this

thing right and it goes to the snake man and

they're talking about oh you know it's going

to take the bait from con etc etc and then. The

evil warriors show up Get on top of the snake

dome prison thing cut a hole in it Take the glass

out Drop down through the laser field. Mm -hmm.

We're talking about beast man is one of these

characters Pick up snake face and king hiss and

take them away. Mm -hmm. Okay So you're telling

me that the stuff that was like the shackles

that King Hiss is entrapped in are that easily

undone? First of all, the lasers are that easy

to repel down like your freaking Tom Cruise and

and not touch any of them and then pick up another

human being body, you know, another snake body

carried. Notice this snake has like five heads

that are waggly all right. So Beastman is going

to carry King Hiss and all his snake heads back

up through the laser field, never touching one.

Not to mention the fact that no alarms go off

when this place is broken to begin with. When

a hole is cut in it by Trapjaw. Head and Arms

is like, oh, I built this to prevent snakes from

breaking him out. I never thought the evil warriors

would break him out. We just spent eight panels

of you telling how this is like. Fort Knox the

hardest place to break in there's lasers. There's

all kinds of security things and it was this

easy Yeah, I don't care who it was doing it.

It shouldn't have been that easy So I have a

big problem with the head is the main jugs of

this so then we have a prison break They got

King has they got snake face. They're going out

and then we have to have you know the the masters

and he meant are basically gonna Go off to try

to stop it because they don't want King his to

come back to life. So we have Quite a few panels

there where it's the chase between he man and

the masters trying to track down triclops trap

drop Eastman Merman and their and their. Their

prize you know snake face and King Hess so that's

all fine you know the panels are fine for that

it shows some good action I'm sure I could have

seen this being a cartoon this part of it. So

all this is fine cuz we're finally getting evil

warriors involved in the master or is what we

kind of go for right. Really the masters fail.

Um, so the evil warriors get away with their

prizes and then we have, you know, Stratos and

man -at -arms and Tila and He -Man, et cetera,

who are kind of, I guess, commiserating in their

failure. And then man -at -arms just takes off.

Yep. Like a renegade master of the universe.

Yeah. He -Man actually has to order Stratos to

go stop him. So I have a problem here too, because

This is out of character Like I get man -at -arms

is very stubborn and he's his own person and

he does all these inventions or whatnot But when

in a hundred and twenty one episodes covering

multiple episodes of different series throughout

the last eight to ten years that we've been doing

this Have we had man -at -arms single -handedly

go try to take on an entire? Force Yeah, I mean,

there have been times in the episodes where he's

wanted to do so, but. And there's been times

where he's been mad about his inventions not

working on this side and the other, but dude

literally with no discussion just takes off and

it's like, I'll just take on everybody myself.

Yeah. Anyways, we go back to Snake Mountain,

Skeletor's there, Beastman brings in King Hiss,

who doesn't have a head still, and he leaves

it up to Beastman to decide where he's going

to put King Hiss. I do like the fact that he

says, oh, I can put you in a cage with the serpent

of tours because that, hey, reference to a past

episode or the end or the shadow beast. So we're

all getting those cool little things right there.

Yeah. But of course, he has to mention that the

shadow beast can only exist in total darkness.

King is is able to talk. So he says, oh, you

know, blah, blah, blah. You probably don't have

somewhere where they can exist. So, of course,

he throws them in the total darkness, which is

then going to allow him to regenerate his head.

His head. Yep. So then we have beast man standing,

you know in the throne room basically and it's

almost like They almost could have shown him

being killed right there Like I expected when

he fell to have there be a knife in his back

or something Yeah, something like the way that

he just falls and King his is standing behind

him Yeah, he says basically he gave him some

of his venom so then we have a battle between

King has and Skeletor my favorite part of this

is in the animation or in the cells in the illustrations

here. King has talks about hey you know I used

to live here so I know everything about this

and he basically pulls down a part of the wall

and there is a staff behind it a snake staff.

Yep. Almost like a havoc staff but it's a snake

version right in this the staff that the toy

of Tila always for some reason has. I think so

when she becomes the goddess because she at some

point in her future. Becomes the goddess who

I was confused as a kid Because Tina always had

the snake staff yet. I had never saw her with

a snake staff in the show Yeah, maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I just missed it. I mean, let's see her

staff. Hold on It looks almost identical to that

So that's what King Hiss is wielding and he is

going to use that to kind of battle with Skeletor

and Skeletor's Havoc staff and we have a pretty

cool sequence of about You know three pages actually

almost Almost six pages where King Hiss and Skeletor

are battling back and forth and that part is

very cool Yeah, cuz that we've been waiting to

see Yeah, there's a cool Panel where Skeletor

is grabbing King Hiss's foot while he's dangling

over the cliff There's a lot of stuff dealing

with like the lava We have another instance where

the snake men's skin can be molted off and then

we don't have to worry about it. So that's kind

of cool and ultimately King has basically is

looks like he's about to get the better The better

of him we have evil in Who kind of interjects?

Good and then we have man -at -arms who comes

in and interjects So this whole battle has been

going on multiple people have been coming in

we got snakemen We got evil warriors and now

we have man -at -arms involved as well Stratos

is somewhat involved, but he kind of gets pushed

to the side right away And then we have a whole

page where he man and tila are basically like

holding each other like lovers. Kind of weird

cuz she's got her hand on his chest. And i know

it's just like a more of a comforting thing like

where he's just trying to hold almost looks like

their husband and wife and picture. Yeah and

there have been in other comics where they like

the comics that a despair and i have covered

over on the pool bag. There have been a time

where he man and tila were married right so i

mean that. Yeah that's sort of strados comes

back and informs him that he couldn't help man

at arms and then we get the final page which

is man at arms and king has king has is telling

him that he's going to create. inventions and

weapons and vehicles for him. He says, no, you're

not. They kind of do a reference here because

of the, um, the Fidians spire, which we've seen

before, uh, somewhere along the way. And, you

know, man in arms says, yeah, but you don't have

the whatever the other MacGuffin, the snake ring

or something like that. And it says, yeah, but

you've already been stabbed with this and you've

already been a snake man. So I don't need it.

So he stabs man in arms and man in arms becomes

one of the snake. Now this goes back to when

in the show they were snake people. Right, so

now he becomes a snake person once again. And

he says, yes, how may I serve you my king? And

then it has the end with a question mark. Yeah.

What do you think? I love the art. Art's good.

I love the colors. King Hiss looks better on

this than he did in the show. He does. He does.

I love the shadows of when he's in the darkness.

I love the fact that they play up the whole beast

man being a moron angle because most of the time

beast man is a moron. He's not one of Skeletor's

evil warriors that's gonna come back and, and,

uh, right. You know, try to do smart things.

Um, Evelyn is not here at all. Is she? Yeah.

She comes in at one point and then it's on page

like 21 or 20 or something where she. Use her

power to stop king has one time. Okay, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, Of Evelyn trying to bring back Hordak like

she basically all but besmirched Skeletor the

last two episodes of the show and then Skeletor

just fades away in the show. And this comic doesn't

even address that at all. And I, I understand

where they're going with it, but I don't think

man at arms being turned back into a snake person

should have been the cliffhanger. If this was

supposed to be. And I know they're running off

of Dean Stefan. His script and like i said at

the beginning of this may the man rest in peace.

I wish this what like if we had one more like

this was deans thing but if they had done one

more thing or if somehow some way like i said

within the next two years they come back and

say hey we want to give you guys. A true finale

whether skeletor is defeated or not what even

if it's a cliffhanger but just. A better, I liked

this more than I liked the last episode, but

at the same time, I still wanted more from this.

I think this could have been an episode, five

episodes ago or so, like where we had some of

those other ones that seemed like it was just

filler where it wasn't doing much. This would

have been one of those episodes that was leading

towards, that happened along the way of the snake

men eventually getting to Serpos and whatnot.

That I would have been fine with. I think where

they made a mistake was teasing Hordak and then

not bringing Hordak in. That's where we wanted

to go. We were done with the Snakemen. We've

dealt with them for a while now. Like, have them

have their climax, have Hordak take over as the

new bad guy for what would eventually have been

a new season. Even if we didn't get it, I would

have rather stopped at that. Like that's where

I wanted to go is more to the Hordeck because

then that also opens the door to She -Ra coming

in eventually. It just opens up a lot of good

stuff. So I forgot to mention, and I know this

has nothing to do with what we're talking about

right here, but I did notice it when I was looking

at one of the cells of He -Man that we forgot

to mention in our last episode. I didn't get

to ask you a question I wanted to ask you, which

was what did you think of the power sword? opening

up as it did in the final aired episode. There

wasn't enough explanation for that. It's like

it had an extra extra amount of power once it

opened up. Yeah, somehow it got a new power and

whereas man at arms had a good explanation for

getting snake D the snake armor like he actually

built the snake armor. I didn't see any. Any

explanation at all as to why he might he meant

sword split open and some other snake gem something

or other came out of it and I It was weird to

me because it was very weird Like it would have

been different if it was like Oh all of a sudden

you can do something else that you didn't know

you could do with a sword But now it like became

a different sword like a different chemistry

and not chemistry different physical properties

to it almost i was like where did this come from

but yeah it was very confusing i like that you

can finally summon the the true power of the

elders and do stuff like that i just thought

it was weird the way that they did that with

the sword but that's another deck but um so that's

kind of episode 40 guys so we end up with man

at arms being a snake man yep so i mean if i

was great in this one i'd probably be around

a three um If I'm grading the visuals of the

comic, I'd give it a four and a half and five

maybe. I'm right at like a three and a half or

four for the comic specifically. Yeah. I just

think that there was a problem with the cell

being so easily broken into. And I know that's

getting hung up on plot point, but whatever,

that stuff bugs me. I really enjoyed the King

Hiss and Skeletor back and forth, which is the

majority of the comics. So I get how that's good,

but it's like, we basically have like the first

couple of pages, which explains how they get

broken out. We have the majority of the comic

that's dealing with their fight back and forth.

And then we just have like the end right at the

end where it's like, Oh, and man in arms is a

snake man. So I feel like the beginning and the

end could have been fleshed out differently.

The middle I have no problem with. So I'd be

three, three and a half somewhere in there. Um,

that's three and a half or a four. Yeah. We've

exhausted everything we can talk about with this

series outside of, uh, summarizing the whole

series overall and giving our general thoughts

on the series. Pretty much. This is, this is

all we get. This is all we get and next time

around is when we'll do the He -Man 2002 recap

where we've got our overall thoughts on the entire

series. I'm sure we'll do like top five or top

10 favorite episodes. We'll do the same thing

that we did with all the other series. Then we'll

let you know in that episode what else you can

look for. We're not done with He -Man. No, we're

not done. So we'll just eat some stuff. We're

kind of done with He -Man, but we're not done

with He -Man. We'll tease themself. We'll keep

telling them that they're making a new series.

They're going to keep the content coming and

they're going to keep us coming back. I just

had somebody say to me, sent us a, and this is

a while ago by the time this podcast will air,

but somebody sent us a message through Facebook

through the GeekCast radio thing asking us if

more from the Command Center stuff was going

to happen with the Power Rangers series with

the current generation of the last three series.

And I'm like, there's sort of a plan, but I don't

know when it's gonna happen kind of thing. So

hey, people with the two series that were being

planned for Netflix, I don't know. Yeah, I like

I said last episode, I don't know if it's in

last time's episode or not. I might have said

this to you off air. I have no no clue what's

going on with MOTU right now, other than the

fact that Mattel is releasing the origins line

for toys. I have like, as far as I saw, I've

seen when I've actually looked, I think the Kevin

Smith Netflix thing is on hold. And I think the,

um, the other movie thing, I don't know if it's

in theory. There was two different series. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. The Kevin Smith

thing. And then the Noah Emmerich movie thing

is two different thing. There's two different

series plus the movie. Oh, really? Yeah. And

there's a Kevin Smith one, but then there's an

all a whole different one as well. Um, series

that's also being planned. So I just, I'd have

to do some research to see what happened with

COVID and how it puts stuff on hold or whatever.

Cause I know that they will even had a voice

cast for the Kevin Smith one already. Um, recent

cast as their characters, et cetera, et cetera.

So, um, we'll keep you in touch as stuff happens,

but. Yep. And the last thing I want to bring

up because they've been sitting on my computer

this whole time that we've been recording this

episode last week's episode in the. at two episodes

before this. Funko finally got the masters of

it's they've had it back but there was a time

last year in 2019 or it might have been 2018

where it was like oh my god Funko's gonna lose

the MOTU license and they lost it for a while

but they came back and brought in new stuff.

I have a Prince Adam Funko pop he looks just

like Filmation Prince Adam pink purple white

uh, with his power sword. Very, very cool. And

I actually had to grab this off eBay because

some of the Fun Co does limited convention shared

exclusives. So if you're going to something like

Emerald City Comic Con out here in Seattle, Washington,

and you go, you get a con sticker on your pop,

but it's also shared with something like GameStop

or Box Launch or Hot Topic or whatever. I went

on eBay and I had to get Slime Pit He -Man. It's

basically He -Man in his classic filmation with

the classic filmation sword, but it's translucent

green plastic. It doesn't glow, but it's translucent

green plastic. He's all in green. The sword's

in green. He's got red eyes. It's so freaking

cool. I love it. Excellent. Yes. All right. So

how can people keep in touch with us and what

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lots to do, folks. You guys have homework. Thank

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We hope you enjoyed the Grayskull goodness and

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we will be recapping the 2002 Mike Young Productions

He -Man and the Masters of the Universe. For

now, I am TFU and Mike with... One and only Optimus

Solo. By the power and for the honor of Grayskull,

we have the power. Oh, whatcha doin', He -Man?

Practicing! Why? You're He -Man! You're the best!

And practice helps me stay that way, Orko. You

learn your lessons and you put them into action.

That's the key to success. Gotta go! Where to?

Gotta practice my magic! Until next time!