He-Man and the Masters of the Universe #1 (Ongoing)

I've already reviewed the first issue of the MOTU mini-series, so I felt a little obligated to review the first issue of this new ongoing series.

This issue begins where the last series left off, with Eternia holding a memorial to the fallen Sorceress. It's nice to see the flow of continuity not interrupted between the two series. Readers can easily get right back into the world of Eternos without feeling like they need to catch up on anything. In fact, if you missed the original mini-series, this first issue does an excellent job of catching you up with the previous events with only a few short lines.

Now that we've moved on from the threat of Skeletor, who will fill the void of the big bad? Well, Hordak, of course. Or, to start out with, Hordak's daughter. Her army makes it's way to Eternia and immediately cuts a path directly to the royal palace. Her army is impressive, and sets up a grand battle for this opening arc.

Keith Giffen does a marvelous job getting into the personalities of the individual characters right away. There's no question of what anyone's role is. Teela is the fiery soldier (who finally gets her famous red hair after having blonde locks for some strange reason in the mini-series), Man-At-Arms is the fatherly protector, and He-Man is, well, He-Man, the greatest warrior of all. Giffen also makes the Horde out to be a menacing, calculated army, something quite opposite of Skeletor's rag-tag group of villains. The Horde is something to be most definitely feared.
Pop Mhan draws a wondrous Eternia. At once grand and epic, as well as simple and meager. You can see the difference in class of the citizens of the empire. His redesigns of the classic character's costumes are instantly recognizable, but still just new enough to be original. His best quality might be in the way he draws the Horde to be a precise military unit. Between his art and Giffen's writing, I think the Horde is going to have it's best representation it's ever seen.

The first MOTU series did a great job of introducing these beloved '80's characters to a whole new generation, yet making them seem new AND familiar to the original audience. The only drawback was the fact that it took until the final issue to get the characters to where we remembered them. This series won't have that problem and immediately feels like the He-Man comic we all deserve after all these many years. It might be a little more grown-up than younger readers should be reading, but the core audience is going to be readers that grew up in the '80's, so it hits it's target audience perfectly. And the surprise twist ending (that hopefully hasn't been spoiled by the time you read the issue) sets up a whole new world of possibilities that will get longtime fans talking for quite some time.