Cora Buhlert's Blog

April 28 was apparently Masters of the Universe Day as declared by Tom Bradley, the then mayor of Los Angeles in 1987 on occasion of a stage show called the He-Man and She-Ra Power Tour playing in the city. For more about that, see He-Man.org, who even have a full cast list as well as a link to a recording of the show.

Also on Masters of the Universe day, sad news have reached us that Roger Sweet, the Mattel employee who co-created He-Man together with Mark Taylor and designed many of the characters and action features from the vintage toyline, has died aged 91. Mark Taylor died on Christmas Eve 2021, so none of the two men who were so instrumental in creating the character and toyline that brought joy to so many kids will be around to see the new live action movie.

What is more, Michael Halperin who wrote the series bible for the Filmation cartoon, died this February. We lost Alfredo Alcala, artist of many of the early mini-comics, in 2000, Tony Guerrero, the artist who sculpted the prototypes of the early figures, in 2012 and H.G. Francis, who wrote the German audio dramas, in 2011. Of the people who shaped Masters of the Universe in the early days, only Donald F. Glut, who wrote the first few mini-comics and named Castle Grayskull and Teela among others, and Paul Kupperberg, who worked on the second run of mini-comics and the Superman crossover and came up with Prince Adam as He-Man’s civilian identity, are still with us.

Though thankfully, Roger Sweet gets more acknowledgement in the mainstream press than Mark Taylor did upon his death in 2021, which went almost completely unnoticed beyond the fandom bubble. Here is a detailed obituary for Roger Sweet from the New York Times as well as one from Forbes and one from Variety. I strongly suspect that the increased presence of Masters of the Universe due to the upcoming movie has a lot to do with this as well as the understandable outrage that Roger Sweet’s wife Marlene had to take to crowdfunding to pay for her husband’s care, even though he co-created a billion dollar franchise.

Meanwhile, Mattel and Amazon MGM are using Masters of the Universe Day to further ramp up the promotion of the upcoming Masters of the Universe movie even further and released a new poster as well as two featurettes focussing on the heroes and villains of Eternia.

The poster can be seen here and the two featurettes are embedded below:

There’s quite a bit of new footage here, including our first good look at several characters, so let’s take a closer look at what we’re seeing here, starting with the “Heroes” featurette

The “Heroes” starts off with Nicholas Galitzine, who plays Adam/He-Man sitting in the set of the collectibles shop where Adam finds the Power Sword with the Vikor statue in the background.

“Eternia is this beautiful alien planet,” Galitzine says over footage of Eternia and Castle Grayskull that we have already seen in previous trailer, “that comes under threat from Skeletor. And he is just bad.”

Cue Skeletor saying “The universe shall quake in my shadow.” However, so far it’s not the universe that’s quaking, but a bunch of random Eternian civilians, who have been captured and are on their knees, guarded by several of Skeletor’s goons – the toy version is called Skel-Knight – as well as the Evil Warriors Goat-Man and Karg, who are certainly some of the more obscure Evil Warriors. Goat-Man appeared in the single Golden Book back in the 1980s as a minion of Beast-Man. He did receive an action figure in the Classics line and made his screen debut in Masters of the Universe Revelation, where he was voiced by Kevin Smith and was quickly dispatched by Teela, Andra and Man-at-Arms after Duncan taunted him that this is really “the bottom of the barrel of Evil Warriors”. We’ve known that Goat-Man would be in the movie for a while now and have seen a glimpse of him in previous trailers, but this is our best look at him yet.

Karg is one of the characters created for the 1987 live action movie, where he was played by Robert Towers, replacing the more familiar Evil Warriors from the Filmation cartoon and toyline. Unlike his fellow 1987 villains Blade and Saurod, Karg never had a figure in the vintage toyline and was not released as an action figure until the tail end of the Classics line. Karg hasn’t been mentioned in any promotional material for the movie so far and we don’t know who will be playing him. The fact that Karg would appear in the movie was spoiled by a not-LEGO set of all things, where Karg was included as a mini-figure. This brief shot is our first look at him, though we will get a better look in the “Villains” featurette.

As for the Eternian civilians Skeletor and his goons are terrorising, they’re mostly human women and children, but there are a few non-human Eternians as well. We see three terrified Lizard people, apparently a family, huddling together and there is also a bearded blue-skinned person who might be a Gar. It’s nice to see that the film acknowledges that Eternia is a diverse world with many intelligent non-human races, even if the protagonists on both sides are mostly human or at least humanoid.

Nicholas Galitzine continues to explain that Adam’s parents sent him away to another planet and he landed on Earth, where he was stuck for about fifteen years. There is the shot of little Adam and Marlena running towards Castle Grayskull that we’ve seen in previous trailers as well as a shot of little Adam holding the Power Sword, which is about the same size as he is. We also how Adam was separated from his sword, because we literally see it ripped from his hand – remember that he is about ten here – in the vortex that will send him to Earth. Coincidentally, this is very similar to how our heroes became separated from the Cosmic Key in the 1987 Masters of the Universe movie.

There is a cut and we see some shots of Adam walking through his office on Earth and sitting behind his desk (and yes, the pronouns are still on his name plate), though he’d obviously rather be somewhere, anywhere else. In the voiceover, Adam says, “I lost my sword, but I’m going to find it”, while there is a cut to Adam in the comic shop. Behind him, you can see a statue of Lion-O from Thundercats as well as some X-Men merchandise and what looks like a Conan statue. So Thundercats and X-Men still exist in this universe, though instead of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, they got “Torak – Hero of Prehistory”. So I guess Mark Taylor still existed in that universe, but Roger Sweet, who came up with the He-Man name, did not or at least he didn’t work at Mattel.

The featurette cuts back to Nicholas Galitzine saying, “…until his friend finds a way to bring him home.” And just in case, there’s any doubt who that friend is, there is a scene of Adam, looking absolutely stunned and exclaiming, “Teela?”, which quickly cuts to a shot of Teela on the controls of the Talon Fighter saying, “Not now, Adam.” before pulling the Talon Fighter up in a risky flying manoeuvre. The featurette is cut as if this is a direct conversation, but if you look closely, you can see that these are two different scenes cut together. Adam is leaning against the tire of a truck, suggesting that this scene happens on Earth, very likely after Teela saves Adam from Beast-Man as we saw in the TV spot released a few days ago. Meanwhile, Teela is on the controls of the Talon Fighter flying across Eternia, when she says, “Not now, Adam”, so this scene is obviously later in the movie.

There is a cut to Camila Mendes, the actress who plays Teela, sitting in the Castle Grayskull set. She explains that Adam and Teela were childhood best friends. Cut to the scene of Teela and Adam flying in the Talon Fighter over the ruins of Eternos, while Teela says that everything changed after Adam left.  “Teela is a woman of action, leading the charge,” Camila Mendes says while there is a cut to Teela drawing her sword during a confrontation with Evil-Lyn.

The “woman of action” comment is interesting, because Teela has always been a warrior and a woman of action. In most versions of the story, she is also the captain of the Royal Guard and Prince Adam’s personal bodyguard. She won’t fill either role in the movie, because Adam is on Earth and there is no Royal Guard, since Skeletor conquered Eternia. I suspect Teela will be a leader of the Eternian resistance and of course she will still be Adam’s friend and protector.

Underneath all the science fantasy trappings – many of which are borrowed wholesale from 1930s to 1970s SFF – the characters and their relationships are what lies at the heart of Masters of the Universe and sets it apart from other fantasy franchises. And the relationship between Adam and Teela, childhood best friends who bicker and banter and eventually get together in most versions of the story, is one of the most important that the movie needs to get right.

It’s also one of the most misunderstood relationships, because I’ve heard a lot of (mostly male) fan saying that they didn’t like Teela as kids, because she was a “bitch” and treated Adam like a “governess”. This is wrong because Teela is probably the only person in the universe aside from Cringer (if he counts as a person) who has absolute unwavering faith in Adam. Teela believes in Adam and knows exactly what he’s capable of, which is why she’s frequently frustrated whenever Adam refuses to live up to the potential she knows is there once again. Meanwhile, He-Man is exactly the person Teela knows Adam could be, which makes her even more frustrated, since she doesn’t know they’re the same person in most versions of the story. Though thankfully, it seems as if the movie is doing away with the whole secret identity thing. That said, I do hope for some nice flirty banter between Adam and Teela and hopefully, we’ll get a kiss, too.

The Adam/Teela relationship also rings true, because it’s mirrors a phenomenon that anybody who’s ever worked with children has observed. Occasionally, a girl will take a boy under her wing. Sometimes, the boy is younger, sometimes he is the same age, but phyisically smaller and weaker. Usually, the boy is a target of bullying by peers and even teachers, because he’s neurodivergent, has a difficult homelife or questionable hygiene habits or is just plain weird. This girl will become the boy’s friend and protector and she will be absolutely fierce about protecting and defending him, while also being his harshest critic, because she is the one who sees the potential that few others do. These friendships rarely turn romantic, mostly it’s more of a big sister, little brother relationship, though they can last a lifetime.

From grade 1 until grade 10, I was in the same class as a boy who happened to be born on the exact same day as me. I interpreted the fact that we shared a birthday as a sign from the universe that I was responsible for this boy and had to look out for him. And he needed a lot of looking out for, because he was neglected, messy, weird, possibly neurodivergent and yes, he had questionable hygiene habits. Other kids bullied him and teachers didn’t like him, because he was difficult and disruptive, but I adopted him, defended him, let him copy my homework, invited him to my birthday, listened to his metal music, as we grew older. I have no idea why I did this – beyond believing that the universe wanted me to take care of him, which is nonsense of course – and I never had any romantic interest in him. He turned out all right, by the way, and became a teacher, which is hilarious to me, since he used to be a teacher’s nightmare.

After the Teela segment, there is a cut to Man-at-Arms saying “Somebody wants a brawl” and then the scene of Duncan launching himself at the Collector with his mace. Both are scenes we’ve seen before in previous trailers. Then there is a new shot of a very determined Duncan strutting down a hallway and apparently escorting King Randor and Queen Marlena to safety. There is a cut to Idris Elba sitting in the Castle Grayskull set, saying, “Man-at-Arms is Teela’s father. He’s like an old school tough guy. He trained all the soldiers, including Adam, when he was a kid”, while there is another cut to the scene of adult Adam facing off against Trap-Jaw, while he experiences a memory flashback to Duncan training him as a kid and saying, “When you fall, that’s your chance to stand tall.” Once again, we have seen a version of this scene before in the trailer, but it’s cut a little differently here, since we see Duncan reaching out to pull little Adam back to his feet.

I’ve said above that the relationships between the characters are what makes Masters of the Universe what it is and the relationship between Adam and Duncan is another crucial relationship.

Now Randor – though he loves his son – isn’t the best of fathers in most versions of the story. Randor represents the distant fathers who cannot express their emotions that many kids in the 1980s, i.e. the original target audience, grew up with. Orko says as much in the moral segment of the Filmation episode “Prince Adam No More”.  Randor is the father who can’t see or accept Adam for who he is. In most versions of the story, he eventually learns better, but it’s a painful process.

Duncan, on the other hand, is the supportive parent figure who accepts Adam the way he is. And when little Adam – who is really small at this point, much smaller than the other kids we see in the background – falls down, Duncan is the one who doesn’t criticise him for his failure, but pulls him to his feet again and offers encouragement to try again. In many ways, Duncan is the antithesis to Randor, because he isn’t afraid to show his kids/surrogate kids that he loves them and is unfailingly understanding and encouraging. Duncan is the father figure that a lot of kids – both in the 1980s and today – needed and so I’m glad to see that aspect of the character preserved in the film.

Part of the reason why I like Duncan so much is that he reminds me of my own Dad. Now emotionally, my Dad was more like Randor due to the way he was brought up with that whole “boys don’t cry, boy don’t show emotions” crap that affected so many boys born in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, i.e. the father of the kids who grew up with He-Man. However, just like Duncan my Dad was also an engineer and he was always tinkering with something. And like Adam, Teela and Orko, I would hang out with him while he was working and sometimes help, whereby helping was things like stripping the insulation of cables or printing labels with a labelmaker, while crouching in a narrow crawlspace. Dad was the one who explained to me what the different colours of wires meant, how to cut a thread with a threadcutter, how to check whether a wire or outlet is live or not. Coincidentally, I was still helping him with a lot of stuff until very shortly before he died.

We then get a repeat of Adam saying “I have the Power” and transforming, a scene we’ve seen before in all trailers and the TV spot, but it never gets old. Then we get a repeat of the scene of He-Man, Teela, Duncan and Roboto traversing the wastelands of the dark hemisphere and approaching Snake Mountain, while Nicholas Galitzine explains in the voice-over that “Along this amazing journey, we meet these eccentric characters…”, which leads into a introduction to several of the Heroic Warriors.

“Mekaneck, heroic human periscope,” Adam’s voice says, while we see a scene of Mekaneck extending his neck and whipping it around to knock down several of Skeletor’s soldiers. “Fisto…” – cue a shot of Fisto punching the screen – an homage to the famous stock sequence of He-Man punching the scene in the Filmation cartoon – and knocking out a Skel-Knight.  “Cringer…” – cue a shot of Cringer roaring. “…and Ram-Man…” – cue a close-up of Ram-Man and then a shot of him dive-bombing the enemy.

The scene shifts back to Adam in the dungeon, talking to the other prisoners, including Ram-Man. “You ram…” Adam says, “…and you’re a man.” “Oh yeah, I do,” Ram-Man replies. It’s now that we realise that the voiceover is Adam telling the Heroic Warriors and yes, he remembers them – and note that he said, “You don’t remember me, but I remembers every single one of you” in the second trailer – except that he doesn’t remember their actual names, because he was after all ten years old when he had to leave Eternia, so he came up with descriptive names for them. It’s both cute and also a great way to explain the silly and punny names of the Masters of the Universe characters to a more jaded audience.

Now the real world reason that the Masters of the Universe characters have such silly punny names is because it was a toyline for kids and kids don’t think it’s weird that characters are named Ram-Man or Fisto. The Filmation cartoon and the 200X cartoon mostly just ran with the punny names without any explanation, because again they were aimed at kids. But in a movie aimed at a wider audience not deeply steeped in Masters of the Universe lore, characters with names like Ram-Man or Fisto are harder to swallow.

That said, all of the Masters of the Universe characters with silly, punny names do have real names and those real names mostly originate from the Classics bios which always included the real name of every character. In fact, those real names may be the most lasting contribution of former brand manager Scott Neitlich, who wrote all of the Classics bios and came up with the real names of the characters, because subsequent writers working on Masters of the Universe quickly found those bios, whenever they looked up things like “What is Ram-Man’s real name?” Ram-Man’s real name is Krass, by the way. Mekaneck’s is Orius and Fisto’s is Malcolm, though that name goes back to the 200X cartoon.

In universe, it does make sense that Adam was the one who came up with the silly names, because he doesn’t know or remember the real names of Heroic Warriors and Ram-Man or Fisto is something a ten-year-old boy would come up with. It also makes sense for Ram-Man to be the one who enthusiastically embraces the silly name he was given, because Ram-Man, much as we all love him, has never been the sharpest knife in King Randor’s cutlery drawer.

We get a quick shot of another Heroic Warrior, namely Roboto, standing in front of Man-at-Arms and admiring a new weapon attachment. “Charming,” Roboto says in Kristen Wiig’s voice and while there is some electronic distortion, the voice is definitely female. Of course, Roboto’s gender is irrelevant, since the character is a robot, after all, but I will use female pronouns, when referring to the movie Roboto, unless confirmed otherwise. Roboto’s movie look mostly seems to draw on the bigger and bulkier 200X design. It’s also notable that she looks dinged and battered and has bullet holes in her chest, cause she, too, has been through wars.

Next, we get a shot of director Travis Knight sitting in the Grayskull set and saying “Once we were visualising this world, we wanted to do right by the fans…” Nicholas Galitzine adds, “These characters, they’re so iconic. To see them come to life on the big screen makes you a little giddy.”

These statements are interspersed with footage we’ve mostly seen before, such as He-Man grabbing a Roton with his bare hands and flinging it away, an aerial dogfight between Rotons, Fright Fighters and the Talon Fighter, Cringer pouncing on a Skel-Knight and He-Man fighting Skeletor. We also get Adam saying, “This is my home. I’m gonna fight for it. But I can’t do it alone.”

There is however one brief moment of new footage in this montage, namely a scene where a woman is twirling around, while shooting and knocking down a whole bunch of Skel-Knights. The woman doesn’t look like Teela. However, she does look like a character we’ve seen a few times in previous trailers and still photos, a character who has since been identified as Dian, a very obscure character from the vintage newspaper comic strips, where she was an officer in the Royal Guard serving under Teela. Since there no longer is a Royal Guard in the movie, Dian will probably be a member of the Eternian resistance instead. She is one hell of a fighter, though, and I do hope we see more of her.

That’s it for the “Heroes” featurette, so let’s take a look at the villains:

The “Villains” featurette starts out with a shot of the Collector landing and Skeletor walking down the ramp that we’ve seen before in previous trailers. “Skeletor, the Horde, they’ve become so iconic,” Nicholas Galitzine says in the voiceover, which is interesting, because as far as we know, the Evil Horde will not appear in this movie except maybe as a post-credits scene. Unless the movie wants to avoid the “Horde curse”, i.e. the fact that three different animated Masters of the Universe series have been cancelled/discontinued as soon as they teased the Evil Horde, and does the Snake Men first. Though the Horde is a lot more recognisable than the Snake Men and has some of the coolest character designs, plus introducing the Horde opens the gateway to introducing She-Ra, so if there’s a sequel or spin-off, it makes sense to go with the Horde first. And yes, fans absolutely picked up on the Horde comment and started to speculate.

Next we get a shot of Skeletor’s Bone Throne, which is set on top of a dais and flanked by snakes, with four of Skeletor’s henchman assembling in front of the throne as if to protect their master and daring everybody who wants to get to Skeletor to go through them first. These henchman are Tri-Klops, Spikor, Goat-Man and Karg. Tri-Klops has an action figure, so we knew what he will look like in the movie, but this is our first good look at him. Spikor and Goat-Man both appeared briefly in previous trailers and they do have action figures, but again this is our first good look at them. We haven’t seen Karg in any of the trailers at all so far, though a mini-figure of him appeared in a not-Lego set. They are all very recognisable, though Tri-Klops has a more military look than usual and he is wearing more clothes and carrying a sniper rifle rather than his traditional sword.

Spikor, on the other hand, is wearing only a loincloth and boots. His skin is still purple, though somewhat more muted, and his spikes appear to be organic, whereas originally the spikes were a magical armour fused to his body. Spikor is still missing his right hand, though instead of his traditional trident, he now has a morning star on a chain.

Goat-Man looks a lot like he does in his very limited appearances with red skin, horns and a black leather kilt, harness, bracers and boots. Movie Goat-Man also has white face paint or maybe he’s just a messy eater. Later on in the trailer, we also see that he has only three fingers. Instead of his traditional hammer, Goat-Man is now wielding a giant double-bladed axe.

Karg, finally, looks as if they dusted off his costume from the 1987 movie (and who knows, maybe they did, since many costumes from the 1987 movie are still around and I have seen them on display), though his hair is less pouffy these days. But then everybody had big hair in the 1980s, even Evil Warriors.

“The great villains from my childhood in the 1980s,” Travis Knight says in the voiceover, “They were funny, they were scary, they looked cool. Skeletor was all three of those things.”

This is accompanied by a montage of the various villains. We get a repeat of the scene of Evil-Lyn strutting across the bridge to Castle Grayskull, while Eternos burns behind her, another look at Skeletor flanked by his Skel-Knights, a new close-up shot of Goat-Man baring his fangs (and yes, he has fangs) at He-Man, another new shot of Beast-Man on Earth, jumping from car to car on an overpass, while chasing Adam, Spikor showing off his spikes and fangs, while facing off against He-Man, Tri-Klops lurking in the shadows, eye glowing and his sniper rifle at the ready, and finally Skeletor with the Havoc Staff.

Next, there is a repeat of the scene of Skeletor harassing captured Eternian civilians that we also saw in the “Heroes” featurette. This time, he says, “I shall kill you one by one,” while leaning towards Fisto. Fisto isn’t among the captured Eternians seen before, so this is possibly a different scene. That said, in shots of He-Man, Teela, Duncan and Roboto approaching Snake Mountain, there are heads on spikes visible, so Skeletor likely did make true of his threat and actually killed some of his opponents. Which is a far cry from the Filmation or even the 200X cartoon, where he never killed anybody.

There is a quick shot of Idris Elba saying “He’s just an all around bag guy”, and then we get some footage of Teela and Evil-Lyn fighting. We’ve seen a bit of this scene in the first trailer, but now we get a longer look with a focus on Evil-Lyn who really seems to be enjoying herself. There’s also a quick cut to Alison Brie, the actress who plays Evil-Lyn, sitting in front of what looks like storage crates and saying “Evil-Lyn is just pure evil.” Alison Brie really seems to be relishing the role and I’m looking forward to seeing what she does with it, especially since she’s not the first or even fifth actress who comes to mind to play an iconic villainess.

There’s a quick shot of Trap-Jaw walking down some stairs in a city, while Skel-Knights run around behind him. Then there is a closer look at Karg – and yes, his costume looks almost exactly like that from the 1987 movie – who is licking his hook in anticipation of something. This scene led to an exchange on Twitter whether the writers had found the bio of the Classics Karg action figure, which reveals that Karg isn’t just one of Skeletor’s Evil Warriors, but that he’s also his chief interrogator/torturer and that Karg has a disturbing obsession with Lieutenant Andra. Now Andra isn’t in the movie as far as we know, so she should be safe, but there are other women for Karg to harass such as Teela or Dian. And since Karg is shown licking his hook, there is a pretty good chance that the writers did find the respective Classics bio and chose to depict him as a demented torturer and molester of young women. Of course, the 1987 movie had more than its share of completely inappropriately erotic torture like that whipping scene. But Blade is the one doing the whipping, not Karg. And while Skeletor, Evil-Lyn and Blade are all pretty much orgasming on screen, while watching He-Man being whipped, there is no real focus on Karg in that scene at all. So it’s interesting that the Classics bios turned him into the sadistic torturer and harasser of young women rather than Blade who actually does the torturing in the movie.

Talking of Teela, there is a quick cut to Camila Mendes saying “All these iconic villains bring the world to life.” Then, Camila Mendes calls out the villains, while footage of them appears on screen, starting with Goat-Man, which is funny, because the extremely obscure Goat-Man is about as far from an iconic Masters of the Universe villain as you can get. We also got some nice footage of Goat-Man attacking He-Man with his axe, while He-Man jumps over him – and Goat-Man is big. Spikor is next and we see him swinging his morningstar at He-Man, who dodges, leather skirt flying.

And believe me, the young women who are enthusiastic fans of Nicholas Galitzine absolutely noticed this and were very excited about a scantily clad Nicholas Galitzine fighting, while his leather skirt flies about. It’s so weird to me that you have male fans complaining about Nicholas Galitzine that he doesn’t look like they envision He-Man and that they would prefer some wrestler type, while young women, not normally the target audience for a Masters of the Universe movie, are now excited about the film and perfectly happy about Nicholas Galitzine’s casting. And that’s great, because Masters of the Universe fandom needs new blood and us OG fans would have watched the movie regardless of who plays He-Man. Though I for one am happy that it’s someone who looks the part and who can pull off both Adam and He-Man. Those young women also buy toys BTW, which will make Mattel very happy.

Trap-Jaw is next and we see him attacking, while turning his arm into a sword. Trap-Jaw is not an easy character to translate to live action, but he looks amazing in the film, both very recognisably like Trap-Jaw, but the movie design also fully leans into the body horror aspects of the character.  Because let’s face it, Trap-Jaw is fucking terrifying.

There is another cut to the scene of Skeletor fighting He-Man, which we’ve seen a few times before, then Nicholas Galitzine says, “Sometimes bad people are the absolute most fun.” And as if to prove that, we get another new shot of Goat-Man stepping forward from the ranks of Skeletor’s goons, axe raised and a grin on his face.

Finally, we get Skeletor strutting around and announcing, “I am the villain” – just in case there was any doubt – and continuing with “And does it feel good” while He-Man looks on and rolls his eyes at Skeletor’s speechifying.

Now a lot of people, including me, were not happy when Jared Leto was cast as Skeletor due to his terrible reputation and were also worried about how he would handle the character. It’s also notable that Amazon MGM and Mattel are completely keeping Leto out of the marketing for the film. Normally, the actor playing the main villain would appear in a featurette like this one, but he doesn’t. However, based on what we’ve seen in the trailer and clips, Jared Leto actually seems to do a pretty good job as Skeletor, capturing both Skeletor’s tendency toward grandiosity (“The Universe shall quake in my shadow”) and his inherent ridiculousness (“I am the villain and does it feel good”) as well as the fact that even though Skeletor is ridiculous times, he’s also utterly unhinged and fucking dangerous. Note how Skeletor threatens a bunch of Eternian civilians and tells Fisto “I’ll kill you one by one.” It is a tricky balance to get right, but it seems as if Jared Leto is doing a decent job. Even if I would have preferred another actor in the role.

So that’s it for a lengthy dissection of the latest Masters of the Universe footage. I have also received the first movie figures and will review them, most likely at File 770, since that’s where most of my straightforward toy reviews appeared.

Most of us didn’t expect another Masters of the Universe trailer quite so soon, but we did get one only three weeks after the last one. This one is billed as an international trailer and while it shares a lot with the trailer released on April 1, there is quite a bit of new footage, too, which gives us some more insight into Adam’s life on Earth.

So let’s take a look:

All right, now that everybody has watched the trailer, let’s analyse what we’re seeing here.

After a quick montage of shots we’ve already seen in the previous two trailers, we see a shot of Adam pulling a shoe box labeled “Eternia” from under his bed. Inside the box are drawings of Eternia. We see Castle Grayskull and the Power Sword in its holder. We did see this box in the previous trailer as well, only that in that trailer, Adam was holding a childhood drawing of his family, King Randor, Queen Marlena, little Adam with a sword and little Cringer.

The theme from the Filmation cartoon plays underneath theis scene, then there is a voiceover saying “Not from around here, are you? Those stories you’re telling, Adam, that you’re stuck here until you find this magic sword…”

There is a cut and we see that the person who’s speaking is Adam’s friend/roommate with the man bun, earrings and leopard print jacket. This character also appeared in the previous trailer and I called him “Adam’s gay pal” at the time. However, when the cast was announced, there were two characters no one could place, Hussein, played by Christian Vunipola, and Suzie, played by Sasheer Zamata. So I guess Adam’s pal/roommate is likely Hussein.

As Hussein is talking, we also get a brief shot of a drawing of Skeletor on Adam’s wall as well as of Adam’s collection of wrestling action figures as well as an orc/troll-like character with an axe. People have identified the various wrestlers, but so far no one had identified the orc/troll.

We saw in the first trailer that Adam’s bedroom is plastered with drawings of Eternia and that he has an action figure collection and here we see yet more of this. Adam’s earthly life is quite recognisable, because many of us have probably homes that look similar and many of us have probably gotten stupid comments about our collections. Though the real fun is if you get someone who’s scared of dolls and toys and is obviously terrified by a bunch of action figures looking at them. And yes, I have had people like that in my home. When I was younger, these people immediately became my sworn enemies, because if you hate my doll or toys, I definitely don’t like you. As an adult, I just move things aside, if they are clearly making people nervous. To be fair, it was a Mantenna action figure I had just received and hadn’t gotten around to moving to the shelf yet, so I had him on the dining room table, when someone dropped by, and Mantenna really does look super freaky.

On the other hand, Adam’s room and his drawings also show how desperately homesick he is and that he keeps drawing Eternia and its people over and over again just to keep the memory alive. In many ways, this is even sadder than if he had no memory of his life on Eternia at all.

There is another cut and we see Adam in his office cubible, using his work computer to upload a drawing of the Power Sword, asking if someone has seen it. His boss/co-worker walks by, sees what Adam is doing and frowns. This would be the mysterious Suzie, played by Sasheer Zamata, who is pretty well known and recognisable. Suzie has apparently called Adam into her office for using his work computer for private purposes and says, “This obsession with nerd stuff and sword things… you’re freaking people out. Especially Darryl.” There’s a quick cut to a guy in a sweater vest – most likely Darryl – who appears to be so freaked out by Adam that he hides behind a filing cabinet.  Adam sighs, “God, I hate Darryl.” Coincidentally, several young female fans of Nicholas Galitzine and now Masters of the Universe promptly proclaimed their dislike for poor Darryl on social media. Sorry, Darryl, but we all hate you now.

It’s a funny scene that once again shows how completely out of place Adam feels on Earth. Though Adam saying “God, I hate Darryl” is also very unusual for the character, because Adam/He-Man is not normally a person who hates anybody. Adam always sees the good in everybody and most likely wouldn’t even say he hates Skeletor, unless Skeletor really pissed him off that day. So Adam saying that he hates a loser like Darryl is very unusual and shows how frustrated Adam is by his life on Earth.

However, Adam’s life on Earth is about to come to an end, because there is another cut and we see Adam going into the comic/collectibles shop where he finds the Power Sword in the hand of a life-size fibreglass statue of a barbarian warrior. The statue based on an sketch by Mark Taylor which was long believed to have been an early He-Man concept, though it’s more likely that it was intended for a never produced Conan toyline. This concept character was finally released in the Masters of the Universe Classics line and given the name Vikor. He also appeared in Masters of the Universe Revelation as one of the heroes hanging out in Preternia. The inclusion of Vikor is a lovely Easter egg for hardcore fans. What is more, Colt Crane has managed to decypher the blurred writing on the door of the collectibles shop and it’s called “The Fright Zone”, which was of course the name of Hordak’s stronghold during the vintage era.

We have seen a version of the collectibles shop scene in the first trailer, but we get a bit more here. In the first trailer, we saw Adam trying to pull the sword out of the statue’s hands, while a comic shop employee tells him he can’t do this. Now, we see that Adam has succeeded in getting the sword and that he has knocked over the statue and pulled off a hand in the process. There’s a great shot of Adam standing on the base of the statue, holding the sword aloft, about to say the magic words.

There is a name on the base of the statue, but it’s not Vikor, which was an invention of the Classics era, but Torak. “Torak, Hero of Prehistory” is the title of a 1979 drawing by Mattel concept artist Mark Taylor, which is widely considered to be one of the predecessors of what would become He-Man. This is a very deep-cut Easter egg, but also a fun homage to the man without whom Masters of the Universe as we know it today would not exist. Only that in the universe of the movie, Mattel chose to stick with the Torak name.

There are some more Easter eggs in the background in the form of film posters. There’s one featuring a half-naked barbarian for a film called “Sword Power” and Torak has a movie in this universe as well, called “Torak – the Warrior Awakens”.

I do have a Classics Vikor figure, so here is my take on that scene:

I used the Classics Adam for these photo, because the Masterverse Adam is too tall.

“The sword! At last! Now I can go home.”

“Uff, this is harder than I thought. Come on, Torak, let go. This is my sword.”

“My name is Vikor, not Torak.”

“Shut up! You’re a statue and statues don’t talk.”

No, I did not remove the hand of my Vikor, though you can apparently remove the hands of Classics figures.

“At last, success. By the Power of…”

“Hands up and drop the sword. You are under arrest.”

“Oh, crap!”

***

As for Adam knocking over a statue and ripping its hand off to steal a sword, that’s clearly why he gets arrested, as we saw in some photos of filming last year. It’s totally justified, too – Adam did just vandalise a comic shop, after all.

Just as the reactions of Hussein, Suzie and evem Darryl are justified, because let’s face it, if someone we knew kept claiming he was from another planet and was obsessed with a sword that he claims will take him home, we would think he was crazy, too. Because Hussein, Suzie and Darryl don’t know that they’re in a Masters of the Universe movie. As far as they know, they’re living in our mundane world – except that in this universe, He-Man is called Torak.

Next we get the flight out of Castle Grayskull and Cringer replacing Leo the lion in the MGM logo. The rest of the trailer is a shortened version of the second trailer and the only new footage is a brief scene of Skeletor walking along a burning corridor.

As for why the Earth scenes were added to a shortened version of the trailer, I guess the idea is to make the movie and Adam more relatable to audiences who are not hardcore Masters of the Universe fans. That’s probably also the reason why parts of the movie are set on Earth at all – even though most Masters of the Universe fans don’t want to see Earth – namely because the powers that be in Hollywood believe that mainstream audiences wouldn’t be able to relate to a movie that is fully set in a secondary fantasy world. Never mind that the popularity of the Lord of the Rings movies and the Game of Thrones TV show prove that audiences are perfectly happy to accept a secondary world setting. But then, the powers that be in Hollywood also claimed that audiences wouldn’t accept more than one superhero in a superhero movie and that they wouldn’t accept comic accurate costumes. Because the powers that be are often idiots.

That said, Adam being stuck on Earth for fifteen years with no connection to his home, no one believing him and not even knowing whether his parents and his friends are still alive, is actually devastatingly sad, in spite of the humor in those clips we’ve seen. Just as the thought of Eternia being subjugated by Skeletor for fifteen years, while Marlena and possibly Randor, too (unless he’s killed in the opening scene), languish in a dungeon for fifteen years and Duncan and the remaining Masters are leading the resistance, while always on the run from the Evil Forces of Skeletor, is actually terrible. Ditto for Teela having to grow up on the run, without her best friend and with a father who blames himself for everything that has gone wrong (and the Sorceress is probably as much of a deadbeat mother as she always is), and for Cringer having to grow up without Adam, even though Adam and Cringer are pretty much inseparable, that actually sounds devastating.

Last week, Entertainment Weekly published an extensive article about the Masters of the Universe movie with interviews with director Travis Knight as well as stars Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Mendes and several producers. The whole article is well worth reading, but there are some really interesting bits about how He-Man was always more than just a mountain of muscles.

“At the same time, he was talking about kindness. He was talking about friendship and compassion. He was somebody who cared. And he was essentially like a bronzed empathy coach in furry underpants”

This is an aspect of He-Man that even many self-proclaimed fans missed. He-Man was never a gym bro fantasy. He never told us to go to the gym. Instead, he taught us to be a good person and a good friend, to stand up to bullies and protect those in need, to respect nature and particularly trees, to stay away from drugs and that our parents (biological or adopted) do love us, even if they don’t always show it. In fact, I’m stunned by how many people clearly missed this message, but then there are people who believe that Star Trek was just a show about futuristic sliding doors and never “woke” until the modern era, too.

Travis Knight also has some interesting things to say about Adam:

“Nor is Adam,” the director continues of the diminutive young prince, who’d prefer to dance around, “making a fool out of himself” (his father, King Randor’s words, not ours) rather than participate in arms training.

“We see that he is a little bit different in this world full of aggressively healthy buff people […] He’s a bit of a weed. He doesn’t feel like he belongs in this place, and there’s a very good reason for that.”

This is very consistent, because ever since DC Comics writer Paul Kupperberg created Adam as He-Man’s secret identity, Adam has always been portrayed as someone who’s not stereotypically masculine and this is remarkably consistent across mini-comics, regular comics, the Filmation cartoon, the 200X cartoon, the Revelation/Revolution cartoon, the German audio dramas, etc…  Adam is always portrayed as a sensitive and artistic soul, a big reader, a talented cook and baker, someone who loves being outside and enjoys nature and who’d rather read a book or go fishing than have swordfighting lessons with Teela and Duncan. In his untransformed state, Adam isn’t exactly weak, but he’s never as fast or strong or skilled as his best friend Teela. Adam is also always misunderstood by his father King Randor – and judging by the above quote, the movie will continue the theme of Randor as a the distant parent who just doesn’t understand or see his kid – and doesn’t really fit into Eternia, though he is destined to become the planet’s greatest hero.

Nor does he fit in on Earth either. Let’s have another quote:

“[His life on Earth] is a little soulless, it’s a little mundane, it’s devoid of color and life. It’s frustrating, because Adam feels like he sees the best in people, he wants the best for people, but it doesn’t feel like any of that is reciprocated for him,” Galitzine explains, adding that Adam has become an outcast, given his constant chatter about this planet no one believes is real. “What is it like to be a pariah from such a young age, and always be gaslit into thinking that there’s something wrong with you, but also the feeling that you weren’t really at home on your home planet either? So it’s this feeling of not really belonging anywhere.”

To protect himself, Adam forms a “cocoon to remove [himself] from the possibility of feeling and being disappointed and hoping,” he continues. “Eventually, after 15 years, he’s really a shadow of a person. He’s lost hope. And so we meet him in quite a depressive sort of place.”

So in short, Adam doesn’t fit in anywhere, which is actually quite sad. And since Adam grows up on Earth rather than Eternia in this version of the story, he also doesn’t have the support of Teela, Cringer, Duncan, Orko or his mother, the people who believe in him. This version of Adam truly is alone.

Meanwhile, Teela and Cringer are just as alone (ditto for Orko, if he is in the movie, which we don’t know). Teela has always been portrayed as an overarchiever, who believes that she’s not worthy of love and affection, unless she’s always the best at everything. Adam is probably the only person in the world who can persuade Teela to relax once in a while and to whom she doesn’t have to prove anything. We have seen what losing Adam did to an adult Teela in Masters of the Universe Revelation, so imagine this happening to Teela, when she’s about ten.

As for Cringer, he lost his family, when he was just a baby, which is also why he’s always scared, because the poor guy is traumatised. And again, this is remarkably consistent across various iterations of the story and there even is a comic about what happened to Cringer before Adam found him, namely that his entire family and tribe was wiped out by an attack by a group of dylinxes (Panthor’s species).  Adam literally becomes Cringer’s family and I don’t even want to imagine how traumatising it would be for Cringer to be separated from Adam, while he’s still a young cub himself.

The Entertainment Weekly article also has a few things to say about Teela:

“She is a warrior. She’s trained. She’s much more physically adept than Adam is. Certainly, at the beginning of the movie, she’s a better fighter, she’s more acrobatic, she’s smart, she’s strategic in ways that Adam isn’t.[…] But also, there is a deep empathy underneath her, like Adam. And I think that’s the thing that binds them together, that they just see the world slightly differently. We see that in minor ways, and how she cares for her father, and how she believes in her father even after he spirals, and how she believes in Adam, who is showing no outward signs of being able to be the champion of Graykull. She believes in him.”

Here’s another quote from actress Camila Mendes who plays Teela:

“It’s hard to talk about Teela without talking about her relationship to her father, because I feel like so much of who she is has to do with how she was, I guess, let down as a kid. […] And I feel like that really built this outer wall around her that’s sort of like shielding this inner sensitivity. She’s affected by toxic masculinity just as much as the men in the film. And I think she’s sort of adopted masculinity to protect herself in this very masculine world. It’s how she survives. She’s in survival mode, and has been for a very long time.”

This quote infuriated the usual clowns, because OMG, she said “toxic masculinity” and in the minds of these people, referring to masculinity as “toxic” means the movie hates men. It’s nonsense, of course, because Masters of the Universe has always smashed gender stereotypes left, right and center and gave us plenty of non-toxic example of masculinity. The same clowns also lost their shit when director Travis Knight called Skeletor “the embodiment of toxic masculinity” in an earlier article in Empire magazine, since they apparently failed to understand that Skeletor is the villains and that villains are toxic be definition.

Besides, the above is actually a pretty accurate description of how Teela has always been portrayed. Teela holds traditionally masculine positions as Captain of the Royal Guard or bodyguard of Prince Adam and she grew up without her mother, surrounded by men. She has abandonment issues, because she believes she’s an orphan who was abandoned by her birth parents, and she is the way she is, because she feels that she needs to protect herself.

The interesting part of that quote is that Teela was supposedly let down by her father as a kid. Now Duncan is normally a great father – and a highly deserving winner of the Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award – so how could he have let his daughter down?

Let’s unpack this: For starters, Duncan is great father and dearly loves Teela, but he also keeps the truth from her – that Adam is He-Man, that the Sorceress is her mother and that he is not her adoptive, but actually her biological father (though we don’t know, if the movie will go the route and keep Duncan Teela’s adoptive father). We know why he does this, namely because the Sorceress asked him not to tell Teela the truth to keep her safe, but that’s still a lot of lies.

Also, note that the movie deprives Teela of the safe childhood at the royal palace that she normally has. Instead, she’s forced to live and grow up, while on the run – without Adam and with a father who blames himself for everything that happened.

Blaming and punishing themselves for perceived or actual failures is a family trait. We see this with Teela several times in the Filmation cartoon, when she’s furious at herself for losing a Sky Sled tournament and snaps at everybody, including Adam and Queen Marlena who try to comfort her, in “Rainbow Warrior” or most notably in “Teela’s Trial”, where she resigns her position as Captain of the Guard and exiles herself to the wastelands, after she accidentally teleported her father to an unknown location and into the hands the Skeletor.

As for Duncan, when Adam gets himself killed while fighting Skeletor in Masters of the Universe Revelation (don’t worry, he gets better), and a furious Randor strips Duncan off his rank and banishes him from the palace, Duncan just accepts this fate and spends the next months or even years in a little hut in the middle of nowhere and initially refuses to help Teela and friends, when they show up on his doorstep to ask him to help them reforge the Power Sword and restore magic to Eternia. And yes, Duncan says that Randor has forbidden him from ever doing his job again on the pain of death, but Duncan isn’t scared of Randor, but genuinely feels that because Adam got killed on his watch – even though it’s pretty clear that Duncan had no chance of stopping Adam from doing what he needed to do – he has failed and is of no use to anybody.

And then take Duncan’s brother Malcolm a.k.a. Fisto, though again we don’t know if they are brothers in the movie. Fisto is often portrayed as a grumpy loner – see the Filmation episode “Fisto’s Forest” – and in the 200X cartoon, we learn that Malcolm was a soldier during the Great Unrest, when he was injured, lost his memory for a while and was believed to be a deserter. Malcolm responds to these accusations not by defending himself or explaining what happened, but he runs off to a mining town in the Mystic Mountains, where he hangs out in bars, gets drunk and picks fights with random Eternians for the next seventeen years. In short, this family does not deal with failure well at all.

And now imagine how Duncan would respond to Skeletor conquering Eternia, throwing the queen into the dungeon and killing Randor or also throwing him into the dungeon, all on Duncan’s watch. And then they can’t locate the missing crown prince either. Of course, Duncan would blame himself for everything – and indeed we see him saying in the trailer, “I know what it’s like to fail” – so this version of Teela grew up with a depressed and guilt-ridden father. So yes, she absolutely was let down, which doesn’t mean that Duncan is a bad father all of a sudden or that he doesn’t love Teela, just that he probably wasn’t always there for her as much as he should have been.

Of course, we won’t know for sure until the movie comes out in early June, but based on the trailer and articles, it seems as if this movie will both make you laugh and break your heart, possibly at the same time.

Part 2 of my epic Eastercon report is coming and I’ll have a (now belated) birthday plus roadtrip post in the works as well as an essay about Masters of the Universe and masculinity. However, today we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming, because the 2026 Hugo finalists were announced last night.

I didn’t follow the announcement live, because I was out grocery shopping at the time. So the first thing I saw was my phone buzzing with some congratulatory messages in the Hugo finalist Discord, while I was looking for pickled garlic and Vegeta (the Croation seasoning mix, not the Dragonball Z character) at the Edeka market at Jute Center mall in Delmenhorst.

So let’s delve straight into the categories, starting with…

Best Novel

We have a lot of returning favourites in this category.

Robert Jackson Bennett is back with A Drop of Corruption, the sequel to last year’s winner The Tainted Cup. I didn’t particularly care for the first book and haven’t read the sequel yet, but apparently lots of people feel otherwise.

2021 Astounding and 2024 Best Novel winner Emily Tesh is also back with The Incandescent. Again, I haven’t read this one yet, because it’s dark academia and I don’t care for dark academia, though I did enjoy Emily Tesh’s 2024 Hugo winning novel Some Desperate Glory a lot.

Nnedi Okorafor has several Hugo and Lodestar nominations and wins in multiple categories under her belt by now, though Death of the Author is actually her first nomination in the Best Novel category. It’s also a very good book.

Adrian Tchaikovsky also has previous Hugo nominations in multiple categories as well as one win in 2023 in Best Series. His work is always worth reading, though I have to admit that I didn’t get to Shroud yet.

Alix E. Harrow won her first Hugo Award in 2019 in Best Short Story and has been nominated several times since. I enjoyed this year’s Hugo finalist The Everlasting a lot and it was also on my ballot.

Antonia Hodgson, the sixth finalist in this category is a new name – so new that she’s also an Astounding finalist. That said, Antonia Hodgson actually wasn’t a new writer to me at all, when I picked up her Hugo nominated novel The Raven Scholar, because I had read and enjoyed her historical mysteries before to the point that I even bought the German translations for my Mom, who was a big mystery fan. And yes, Mom liked Antonia Hodgson’s mysteries a lot. Coincidentally, Antonia Hodgson even won the CWA Dagger Award in the Historical Mystery category for The Devil in the Marshalsea. It’s a great novel, so check it out and then read the sequels. I also enjoyed The Raven Scholar a lot and it was on my personal ballot.

One book that I expected to see on the ballot, but that is somewhat conspicuous by its absence is Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. It probably sits directly below the nomination ranks.

With regard to publishers, Tor and Orbit in their US and UK branches dominate, but we also have finalists published by Del Rey, Gollancz, William Morrow and Hodderscape.

Diversity count: 2 men, 4 women, 1 writer of colour, 3 international writers*

Best Novella

Once again, this category has lots of returning favourites:

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz is a delightful science fiction novella and was also on my personal ballot. Annalee Newitz is also previous Hugo finalist and multiple winner in Best Fancast for Our Opinions Are Correct.

Freya Marske has also been nominated in Best Fancast for Be the Serpent several times before and also was a Best Series finalist in 2024. I haven’t read her Hugo nominated novella Cinder House yet, though I have enjoyed several other of her works.

Amal El-Mohtar is a two time Hugo winner for “Seasons of Glass and Iron” and This is How You Lose the Time War, together with Max Gladstone. Her nominated novella The River Has Roots got a lot of positive attention last year, though I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

T. Kingfisher is another multiple Hugo finalist and winner. Her nominated novella What Stalks the Deep is part of her Sworn Soldier series and really good besides. This was also on my personal ballot.

Naomi Novik is another writer we’ve seen on the Hugo ballot several times before. She’s had several Hugo nominations and also won the Astounding Award (then still the John W. Campbell Award) back in 2007 and the Lodestar in 2022. I haven’t read her nominated novella The Summer War yet.

Olivia Waite is the one new name in this category. She is nominated for her delightful cozy science fiction mystery Murder by Memory.

With regard to publisher, we once again have a strong Tordotcom dominance, but then they do have a great novella program and are probably single-handedly responsible for the novella resurgence in the 2010s. Besides, one of the nominated novellas – The Summer War – was published by Del Rey rather than Tordotcom.

Diversity count: 6 women, 1 writer of colour, 2 international writers

Best Novelette

In this category, we have a nice mix of new names and returning favourites.

Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries series has by now won Hugo Awards for Best Novella (twice), Best Novel and Best Series, every single one of them highly deserved, and is now nominated for the Murderbot novelette “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy”, which was also on my personal ballot. Murderbot will also reappear further down the ballot.

Sarah Pinsker also has several Hugo nominations and wins under her belt and is nominated for the novelette “The Millay Illusion”, which I have to admit I haven’t read yet.

Catherynne M. Valente has also appeared on the Hugo ballot several times before. This year, she is nominated for “When He Calls Your Name”, which again I haven’t read yet.

I’m very happy to see Scott Lynch on the Hugo ballot, since we’ve known each other for more than twenty years now, well before anybody in the SFF community knew either of our names. Scott was nominated for the Astounding (then Campbell Award) twice, but this is actually his first Hugo nomination.  “Kaiju Agonistes” is also a really good story.

Cameron Reed is another new name on the Hugo ballot. I enjoyed her nominated story “The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” a lot, though in the end it didn’t make my personal Hugo ballot.

H.H. Pak is another new name on the Hugo ballot – so new that they are also an Astounding finalists this year. Unfortunately, I haven’t read their nominated story “Never Eaten Vegetables” so far.

With regard to publishers, we do have some diversity here with three finalists appearing in Uncanny, two in Reactor and one in Clarkesworld.

Diversity count: 4 women, 1 man, 1 non-binary, 1 author of colour

Best Short Story

Once again, we have a mix of returning favourites and new names in this category.

Samantha Mills won the 2023 Hugo Award in this category under less than ideal conditions with her haunting story “Rabbit Test”. Due to all the problems with the 2023 Hugo Awards, I’m glad to see her nominated again for “10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days” in a hopefully much less problematic and stressful year.

Thomas Ha was a first time Hugo finalist last year and returns this year with “In My Country”, a story I unfortunately haven’t read. This story is also a Nebula finalist this year.

We have more overlap with this year’s Nebula ballot with “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” by Effie Seiberg. Once again, I haven’t yet read the story, though the title is promising.

There is even more overlap with this year’s Nebula ballot with “Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson, a story I once again haven’t yet read.

“Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro is another story I haven’t yet read. I didn’t get around to reading as much short fiction as I’d like to this year. Tia Tashiro was an Astounding finalist last year, but this is her first Hugo nomination.

Isabel J. Kim has been a Hugo finalist before and I have actually read her nominated story “Wire Mother” and liked it, though in the end it didn’t make my personal ballot.

With regard to publishers, we have three stories from Clarkesworld, who are having a great Hugo year, two from Uncanny and one from Diabolical Plots.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 3 authors of colour, 1 international author

Best Series

This category features a mix of returning favourites and new names, but then Best Series is a category that often has repeat finalists.

Seanan McGuire has been a finalist for Best Series, since the inception of the category in 2017, because she’s both prolific and a great writer. She’s also been a Hugo finalist and winner in various other categories. This year, she’s nominated for her October Daye series, which I enjoy a lot.

The Craft Wars by Max Gladstone was a Best Series finalist in the very first year of the category, but hasn’t been nominated since, though Max won the Hugo Award for Best Novella together with Amal El-Mohtar for This is How You Lose the Time War in 2020.

John Scalzi has been a Hugo finalist and winner many times in various categories before, though this is actually the first Best Series nomination for his Old Man’s War series (mostly because the category didn’t exist, when the previous Old Man’s War novels were published), though he was previously nominated in Best Series for The Interdependency in 2021.

Elizabeth Bear won the Astounding (then still Campbell) Award back in 2005 and has been nominated for and won the Hugo Award several times in multiple categories, though we haven’t seen her on the Hugo ballot for quite a few years now, so it’s good to see her back. Her space opera series White Space was also on my personal ballot.

Katherine Addison a.k.a. Sarah Monette was an Astounding finalist, back when it was still known as the Campbell Award, as well as a Hugo finalist in 2015 for The Goblin Emperor. Her nominated series The Chronicles of Osreth is set in the same world as The Goblin Emperor and very good.

Heather Fawcett is a first time Hugo finalist and nominated for her Emily Wilde series, which is a lot of fun.

We also had two disqualifications for insufficient wordcount in this category for the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal and The Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo.

Regarding publishers, we have a lot of Tor and Tordotcom, but then they are the biggest English language SFF publisher. Orbit, Del Rey, Solaris, Saga Press and Gollancz are also represented.

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 1 international author

Best Poem

Best Poem was introduced as a special category last year and is in the process of becoming a permanent category due to the success of that experiment. Personally, I’m glad about this, because speculative poetry deserves more recognition.

Mari Ness was a finalist in this category last year and is nominated again this year. And since she’s a dual citizen, she also brings up the all-time number of German Hugo finalists to five, i.e. Wolfgang Petersen, Roland Emmerich, Simone Heller, myself and now Mari Ness. I don’t count Willy Ley or Klaus Janson, for while they were born in Germany, they both emigrated decades before and were American citizens, when they were nominated for/won Hugos.

Brandon O’Brien is someone I’m really glad to see on the ballot. He’s been a Hugo finalist before for FIYAH and The Skiffy and Fanty Show, but this is his first solo nomination and well deserves it is, because not only is he a great poet, but his championing of speculative poetry at the Seattle Worldcon also did so much to increase the recognition of speculative poetry and make this category a permanent thing. And indeed, his nominated poem “Landing Seattle” was written for and performed at the Seattle Worldcon.

Angela Liu was a finalist in this category last year as well as an Astounding finalist. This year, she is nominated for “The Mourning Robot”.

Jennifer Hudak is a first time Hugo finalist. Her nominated poem “The World to Come” is also a Nebula finalist this year.

Theodora Goss had been writing speculative prose and poetry for years now and has been nominated for and won several awards, but this is actually her first Hugo nomination.

Elis Montgomery is a writer/poet who’s complete new to me, though her nominated poem “Hex Supply Customer Support Log” has a great title. This is her first Hugo nomination.

With regard to publishers, Strange Horizons and Uncanny dominate, but then there aren’t that many magazines that publish speculative poetry. We also have one nomination for The Orange & the Bee, a magazine that’s completely new to me, as well as one for a poem read/performed at the opening ceremony of the Seattle Worldcon.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 2 poets of colour, 2 international poets

Best Graphic Story or Comic 

Best Graphic Story is a category that tends to get stale with the same beloved longrunning series getting nominated over and over again. Therefore, it’s refreshing to see that all finalists this year are new titles, though we have seen several creatives on the ballot before.

DC Comics‘ Absolute line has been huge hit and Wonder Woman is of course a perennial favourite and coincidentally also my Dad’s all-time favourite superhero, so I’m happy to see Absolute Wonder Woman on the ballot. This is coincidentally also one of only two nominations for mainstream US superhero comic this year. BTW, I found a classic looking Wonder Woman action figure at Comic Cave in Hamburg last week (classic looking Wonder Woman figures are ridiculously hard to find) and almost bought her, but then decided against it. If she’s still there next time I visit, I will get her.

The other mainstream superhero comic (though not as mainstream as Wonder Woman) nominated this year is The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers by Kieron Gillen, art by Caspar Wijngaard, lettering by Clayton Cowles. I haven’t read this one yet, but I have enjoyed Kieron Gillen’s work in the past.

A Girl and Her Fed by K.B. Spangler and Ale Presser is a webcomic which looks like a lot of fun and I am looking forward to checking it out.

Nnedi Okorafor appears on the 2026 Hugo ballot for the second time, together with Tana Ford for The Space Cat, a graphic novel which looks fun.

The Invisible Parade by Leigh Bardugo and John Picacio is another graphic novel that I’m not familiar with, though I of course know Leigh Bardugo and John Picacio. This is Leigh Bardugo’s first Hugo nomination, though John Picacio is a multiple finalist and winner.

Finally, we have the return of the obligatory Ursula K. Le Guin related Hugo finalist, cause for a while there was something Le Guin related on the Hugo ballot every year, usually a collection or documentary in Best Related. And in fact, when I first saw the ballot, I thought, “Wait a minute, didn’t a graphic novel version of A Wizard of Earthsea win the Hugo back in 2019?” However, it was actually an illustrated edition of The Chronicles of Earthsea, which won a Hugo back in 2019, not a graphic novel.  Ursula K. Le Guin of course has won a lot of Hugos, though not in Graphic Story so far. For artist Fred Fordham, this is his first Hugo nomination.

Regarding publishers and formats, we have a lot of variety this year with two traditional serialised comics/trade paperback collections from mainstream comic publishers, three graphic novels and one webcomic.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make comics.

Best Related

It’s probably well known by now that I strongly prefer well-researched non-fiction books or at sufficiently booklike objects in this category rather than the leftfield “We think this is cool, but don’t know where to put this” finalists we’ve increasingly seen in recent years. Heather Rose Jones has done a detailed analysis of the shifts that the Best Related Work category has undergone over the years here and has also analysed this year’s Best Related work finalists.

Therefore, I’m happy that the majority of Best Related finalists this year are either books or sufficiently book-like objects and that there is only one leftfield finalist.

Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid was also on my personal ballot and I’m glad to see it nominated.

Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler by Susana M. Morris was not on my personal ballot, but it’s nonetheless exactly the kind of well-researched non-fiction book I want to see on the ballot.

Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer is definitely a well-researched non-fiction book, though it is more of a general history book than a science fiction book. That said, we have had popular science books on the ballot before and Inventing the Renaissance is definitely related to SFF and written by an SFF writer, even if it is not precisely about SFF. I’m also looking forward to reading this one.

“The Cuddled Little Vice (Sandman)” by Elizabeth Sandifer is a very long essay that is part of her Last War in Albion series about the British comics giants Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and the British comics scene of the 1980s/1990s which gave rise to them in general. It’s not a book per se, but definitely a sufficiently book-like object. Elizabeth Sandifer’s analyses are also always worth reading. That said, I was not expecting to see anything Neil Gaiman related on the Hugo ballot this year.

“Ragnarök vs. the Long Night” by Ashaya and Aziz is an episode of the History of Westeros Podcast, which draws comparisons between norse mythology and A Song of Ice and Fire. Now I prefer podcasts to be nominated in the Best Fancast category. However, we have no equivalent Best Procast category, so professionally produced podcasts automatically go into Best Related Work. At any rate, I count this one as a sufficiently book-like object, though I’m not sure why fans of this podcast didn’t nominate the whole thing, but just one episode.

Finally, we have the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom by Renay. This crowdsourced spreadsheet is an amazing resource. However, this one is definitely a leftfield finalists and not even remotely book-like. It’s also somewhat recursive, because it’s a nomination for a resource that is supposed to help people nominate for the Hugos. This is definitely a finalist better suited to a hypothetical Best Fannish Thing category, which we don’t have.

Diversity count: 5 women, 2 men, at least 1 author of colour, at least 2 international authors. Unfortuately, I wasn’t able to find out anything about Ashaya and Aziz, the people behind the History of Westeros podcast beyond assuming gender based on their names.

Best Dramatic Presentation Long

Sinners is not only a great film, it also gained a record number of Oscar nominations and won a few of them, though not nearly as many as it should have. This was also on my personal ballot.

KPop Demon Hunters is a true phenomenon as well as a two-time Oscar winner and a film that’s so much better than I expected it to be. Once again, this was also on my personal ballot.

Superman not only marked the triumphant relaunch of the troubled DC Cinematic Universe, it was also the first good Superman movie that really understands the character since the first two Christopher Reeves movies. Yes, the Snyder bros are complaining, but screw them! Superman is also the only classic superhero movie on the Hugo ballot this year and it’s a DC rather than a Marvel movie, even though Thunderbolts* was actually good and Fantastic Four at least decent. This was also on my personal ballot.

Andor is usually considered the best of the Disney Plus Star Wars series, though personally I prefer The Mandalorian. Andor was also on my personal Hugo ballot, though I nominated a single episode rather than the whole season. That said, Best Dramatic Long has the most overlap with my personal ballot, which is pretty wild, because I usually have very little overlap in the two Dramatic Presentation categories.

Frankenstein is definitely a highly deserving finalist as well as a very good adaptation of a classic novel that has had many adaptations over the years. It was not on my personal ballot, mostly because for some reason I forgot that it came out last year.

Mickey 17 was a good science fiction movie and it was on my longlist, though it didn’t make my ballot in the end. However, I’m a little surprised that it made the Hugo ballot, because it seemed to fly under the radar and was maybe a bit too quirky for mainstream critics and audiences. But then, Hugo voters are not mainstream audiences.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies.

Best Dramatic Short

Doctor Who is a perennial Hugo favourite and is represented by the episode “The Story and the Engine” this year. I actually did nominate a Doctor Who episode this year – I usually don’t nominate Doctor Who, unless it’s an absolutely amazing episode, since the Doctor doesn’t need my help – though I nominated “Lux” rather than this one.

That said, with regard to the Hugos at least, the Ncuti Gatwa era of Doctor Who has done pretty well, at least compared to the Jodi Whitaker era. This is in stark contrast to the mainstream reaction to Ncuti Gatwa and particularly the fact that the usual “We hate everything” culture war channels on YouTube (How I wish YouTube would just demonitise those channels and stop pushing them via their algorithm) really focussed on how much they hated the Ncuti Gatwa era of Doctor Who. Gee, I wonder just why that might be. Is it racism or homophobia or both?

The Murderbot TV show was a true delight and also a very good and faithful adaptation of Martha Wells’ much beloved series. It is represented by two episodes on the ballot “The Perimeter” and “All Systems Red”. A third episode, “Free Commerce”, would have made the ballot as well, but had to withdraw due to the “only two episodes per series” rule. “All Systems Red” was also on my personal ballot.

I have to admit that I still didn’t get around to watching Pluribus, mostly because it came out when I was extremely busy. That said, it got a lot of positive buzz and I’m not surprised to see an episode, in this case “We is Us”, nominated.

Severance is another show that’s popular with Hugo voters and also get a lot of positive buzz in general. I’m afraid I have zero interest in this show.

The final finalist in this category is “The Road to the Spear”, an episode of the The Wheel of Time TV series. I have to admit that this surprised me a little, even though there was an episode of The Wheel of Time has been nominated in this category before. However, The Wheel of Time was cancelled quite unceremoniously and I also had the impression that fans of the books didn’t like it all that much to the point that I saw a self-proclaimed fan of the books being positively gleeful that the series was cancelled.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make TV shows.

Best Game or Interactive Work 

I don’t game, so I can’t say a lot about the finalists in this category.

That said, I know that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has won a ton of awards, I have at least heard of Hollow Knight: Silksong and Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector and the developer of Hades was incredibly nice and super excited at the virtual 2021 Hugo afterparty and just left a very positive impression on me. I have to admit that Dispatch and Blue Prince are completely unknown to me.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.

Best Editor Long

The two editing categories tend to get a little stale with the same people being nominated over and over again, since there are only so many editors working in the industry. That said, we do have two first time finalists in this category

Lee Harris, Carl Engle-Laird, Joe Monti and Diana M. Pho have all been nominated in this category before, while Jenni Hill and Jaymee Goh are first time finalists. They’re all worthy, though.

We also have a withdrawal in this category by Lindsey Hall.

It’s notable that even though publishing is heavily female dominated, we do have gender parity in this category.

Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, 2 editors of colour, 3 international editors.

Best Editor Short

Scott H. Andrews, Jennifer Brozek, Neil Clarke, Lee Harris, Michael Damian Thomas and Sheila Williams have all been nominated in this category before and they’re all highly worthy.

Diversity count: 2 women, 4 men, 1 international editor

Best Professional Artist

This is another category that tends to get stale with the same artists nominated over and over again. Therefore it’s notable that we only have two returning favourites and four first time finalists in this category.

The first of the returning favourites is John Picacio who already has multiple Hugo nominations and wins under his belt. The second is Tran Nguyen who is on her second nomination. Lulu Chen, Kelly Chong, Tom Roberts and Dave Kellett are first time finalists. Dave Kellett is a cartoonist, while the other finalists are primarily cover illustrators.

That said, there are actually two artists named Lulu Chen. I suspect the Hugo finalist is this illustrator rather than the animator by the same name.

There also are two artists named Tom Roberts, but since one of them died in 1931, it’s quite obvious that the Hugo finalist is this Tom Roberts.

Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, 4 artists of colour, 3 international artists.

Best Semiprozine

This category often consists of “the usual suspects”. Part of the problem is the way the category is defined, which means that long-running, popular magazines, which pay their author pro-rates and are defined as semipro solely because no staff member makes their main income via the work on the magazines, are competing with small mags that pay maybe ten or twenty dollars per story.

And so Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine and Escape Pod have all been nominated multiple times in this category before. They also do excellent work.

The Deadlands and khoréo (apologies for WordPress butchering the title) and are the somewhat less usual suspects and on their second and third nomination respectively. Once again, the nominations are highly deserved nomination this year.

Finally, we do have an unusual suspect in this category with On Spec. The magazine has been around since 1989, longer than any of the others in this category. However, this is their first Hugo nomination and it will most likely remain their last, since On Spec shut down in 2025. So I’m glad that they could finish their run with a Hugo nomination.

There also was a withdrawal for Beneath Ceaseless Skies, who permanently recused themselves from consideration in this category.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make semiprozines.

Best Fanzine

This is another category where we tend see the same finalists nominated over and over again, which is why it’s good to see a new name or two.

I’m obviously thrilled that my friends of Galactic Journey are on the ballot again, because I am a contributor to the site.

My friends Olav and Amanda of the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog have been doing great work for years and I’m thrilled to see them on the ballot again.

nerds of a feather is also back on the ballot after a year of absence and their work is as good as ever.

Journey Planet has been a fixture on the Hugo ballot for years, but then every single issue of Journey Planet is drastically different with its own theme. Journey Planet isn’t one magazine, but several different ones, each of them highly deserving.

Ancillary Review of Books was a first-time finalist last year and returned this year. I do like what they’re doing, though for some reason I don’t read them very often.

The newsletter Intergalactic Mixtape is a new finalist in this category, though editor Renay has been nominated and even won with Lady Business before. I am a subscriber to Intergalactic Mixtape and always enjoy it.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make fanzines.

Best Fancast

This category is mostly returning favourites, but since I like all of them and consider many of them friends, I don’t mind at all.

Hugo, Girl!, Octothorpe and Worldbuilding for Masochists are not just great podcasts, they’re also good friends and I’m happy to see them nominated. The always excellent Coode Street Podcast is another returning favourite as is A Meal of Thorns, who are on their second nomination.

The one new finalist in this category is Eating the Fantastic by Scott Edelman. This nomination makes me very happy, because it’s an excellent podcast – hey, it’s got writers and food, so what’s not to love – and besides Scott Edelman is also a great guy. In fact, I was chatting with Scott at Eastercon and told him how much I enjoy his podcast.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to produce podcasts.

Best Fan Writer

We have a lot of returning favourites in this category, though none of them have won before and some of them are only on their second nomination.

James Davis Nicoll and Jason Sanford have both been finalists in this category several times before. They’re also friends, so I’m happy to see them on the ballot again.

Örjan Westin of the delightful MicroSFF BlueSky and Mastodon account has also been a finalist before and I’m glad to see him on the ballot again.

Alex Brown and Roseanna Pendlebury are both on their second nomination and do good work.

The one new name in this category is Jay Brantner a.k.a. Tar Vol. I wasn’t familiar with his work, but I like what I see.

Diversity count: 1 woman, 4 men, 1 non-binary, 1 writer of colour, 3 international writers

Best Fan Artist

This category is a mix of returning favourites and new names and also shows the great spectrum of very different artists in this category.

Sara Felix, Geneva Bowers, España Sheriff and Richard Man have all been finalists in this category before and three of them have won in the past.

Terri Ash and Yuumei are both new names in this category. I know Terri from the Brisbane in 2028 Worldcon bid committee and am very happy to see her on the Hugo ballot. Yuumei is new to me, but their art is beautiful.

Diversity count: 4 women, 1 man, 1 unknown, 3 artists of colour, 2 international artists

And now we come to the two not-a-Hugos:

Lodestar

I freely admit that I’m not the target audience for YA and I usually leave the Lodestar finalists for last, because the books just aren’t for me and I’m not familiar with many of the finalists. That said, YA fiction is an important part of our genre and the Lodestar has established itself as a valid award in recent years.

Tracy Deonn and Rachel Hartman have both been nominated for the Lodestar before. I have enjoyed Tracy Deonn’s previous Lodestar finalists, though Rachel Hartman’s Tess of the Road wasn’t for me. I have read neither of their nominated novels.

Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series is one of the most popular YA SFF series of the past fifteen years and so I’m not at all surprised to see Sunrise of the Reaping on the ballot. Amazingly, this is Suzanne Collins’ first Lodestar (or Hugo) nomination, since the Lodestar didn’t yet exist when the original Hunger Games trilogy came out. I did enjoy the first Hunger Games book, though I felt they started getting repetitive later on. Many readers clearly feel differently.

I’m not familiar with Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee, but the title sounds delightful.

Holy Terrors is the final novel in Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves trilogy, which apparently is very popular, though I’m afraid it passed me by.

I have heard of They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran, though I haven’t read it.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 non-binary, 3 authors of colour

Astounding

By design, there aren’t a lot of returning favourites in this category, because the Astounding eligibility window lasts only two years.

And so the only repeat finalist in this category is Jared Pechacek (apologies for WordPress butchering his surname).

Kamilah Cole was a Lodestar finalist last year, though is her first Astounding nomination.

H.H. Pak is also a finalist in Best Novelette this year. I’m not yet familiar with their work, though I’m looking forward to checking it out.

Sophie Burnham won the Sidewise Award and is a first time Astounding finalist. Their novels Sargassa and Bloodtide sound very interesting.

The Raven Scholar is Antonia Hodges first SFF novel, though she’s not a new writer, since she has published several very good historical mysteries. However, only SFF counts for Astounding eligibility and indeed we have had several previous finalists and even winners in this category who had prior publications in other genres, e,g, David Anthony Durham (who has since returned to historical fiction), Lev Grossman or last year’s winner Moniquill Blackgoose.

Molly O’Neill burst onto the scene last year with her novel Greenteeth, which I enjoyed a lot. She as well as Antonia Hodges were both on my personal ballot.

Diversity count: 3 women, 1 man, 2 non-binary, 2 authors of colour, 4 international authors.

***

And that’s it for the 2025 Hugo finalists. Personally, I think it’s a very good ballot, even though a few finalists which are not to my taste. But then every year, there are finalists who are not to my taste.

Could we have more diversity in some categories with a lot of repeat finalists? Yes. But then, this isn’t a new issue. There have always been repeat finalists and some categories where the same person or institution won over and over and over again. Just take a look at ballots from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and even 2000s to see how far we’ve come.

I don’t see any strong themes this year. We still have several fairy tale inspired stories, cozy fantasy is still popular and we have a mini-trend of SFF mysteries this year. Romantasy, though super popular right now, only tangentially shows up on the Hugo ballot, which is very similar to what we saw during the great urban fantasy boom of approx. fifteen to twenty years ago. Crap, has it really been that long?

As for other commentaries and reaction posts, Camestros Felapton shares his thoughts here. There’s also some discussion in the comments.

Frequent Hugo administrator Nicholas Whyte shares his thoughts on the 2026 Hugo ballot as well as some stats.

So far, I haven’t seen any comments from the usual basket of deplorables, since they’re apparently too busy hating whatever is fashionable to hate right now. Is it still Starfleet Academy or have they moved on?

More commentary will be linked here as it emerges.

*I define “international” as a writer/creator living outside the US and/or with a nationality other than US-American. If we include dual citizens or writers who are first or second generation immigrants, there would be several more. I’ve also stopped counting LGBTQ+ finalists for the diversity count, because it’s very difficult to determine, since not everybody is out. Apologies if I’ve accidentally misgendered anybody.

A new trailer for the upcoming live action Masters of the Universe movie dropped today. This is not actually a great time for me, because I’m flying to Iridescence, the 2026 Eastercon in Birmingham, UK, very early on Thursday morning and still have tons of stuff to do.

BTW, if you are at Iridescence, drop by and say hello. You can find me at the fan table for the Brisbane in 2028 Worldcon bid.  There will also be chocolate and candy and swag to give away, including incredibly cute tiny koalas.

But for now I’m still at home, so here are my thoughts about and analysis of the new Masters of the Universe trailer:

As is customary these days, there was a trailer for the trailer a day before, featuring actors Nicholas Galitzine (Adam/He-Man) and Camila Mendes (Teela) messing about with the Power Sword prop. It’s cute and Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Mendes clearly have a lot of chemistry, which is important for one of the central relationships in Masters of the Universe. Though Camila Mendes’ brown suit reminds of Frau Niesert, my old sewing and crafting teacher in seventh grade.

The actual trailer dropped a day later. You can watch it below:

Now that everybody has watched the trailer, let’s break down what we’re seeing here:

The trailer starts off a heavy door opening. Adam, looking pretty roughed up, is dragged by two of Skeletor’s goons – I think they’re called Skele-Knights – and thrown into a cell. The cell door then slams shut. It’s not clear whether this is the dungeon of Snake Mountain or the dungeon of Castle Grayskull or the dungeon Eternos Palace. Not that it matters much.

What does matter is that Adam isn’t alone in the dungeon. Duncan and Teela are there as well and immediately tend to the injured Adam. There’s also a bunch of other people in the dungeon. Some of them are familiar characters – we can clearly see Fisto, Ram-Man and Mekaneck as well as a young woman we’ve also spotted in the first trailer and who has since been identified as Dian, a fairly obscure character from the newspaper comic strips of the 1980s, where she’s an officer in the Royal Guard and friend of Teela’s. It’s good to see other female Eternian soldiers and it’s alway good to see Teela having some female friends, though it’s interesting that they went with the very obscure Dian rather than the better known characters Andra or Ileena who coud play a similar role. Perhaps there were rights issues with using Andra or Ileena.

The other people in the dungeon seem to be random Eternian civilians, quite possibly the Eternian resistance. He-Mania.com wonders whether an older black man in the background might be Dekker, Duncan’s old mentor and predecessor as Man-at-Arms. A screenshot of Mekaneck at He-Mania.com also shows a boy of maybe twelve standing next to Mekaneck. So did the movie remember that Mekaneck had a son in the Filmation cartoon?

At any rate, the trailer starts with all the heroes captured and locked up in a dungeon. This isn’t the first time something like this happened. For example, Skeletor splits up the Masters, ambushes and captures all of them in the season 1 finale of the 200X cartoon. But it is nonetheless an interesting choice to start the trailer with what is possibly the lowest point for our heroes, the moment when all hope seems lost.

We then get a panning shot of the various imprisoned Eternians, including a good look at Fisto and Ram-Man. There’s a voice over of Adam saying, “I know most of you don’t remember me…”, while Fisto looks as if he’s about to tell Adam that of course he remembers him. “But I remember every one of you,” Adam continues, while we see brief shots of Duncan, Teela – with her hair up and apparently wearing her iconic tiara – and Cringer who’s obviously CGI, green tigers being rather hard to come by, and nonetheless looks very cuddly.

It’s most notable in the 200X cartoon, but in many versions of the story, the other Heroic Warriors are considerably older than Adam and Teela. In fact, in the 200X cartoon, the Heroic Warriors are originally Randor’s team before they become He-Man’s. At any rate, Adam clearly knew all of these people as a kid. He also, as will become clear later, remembers his life on Eternia.

Next we get the zoom out of Castle Grayskull that we already saw in the first trailer and in Masters of the Universe Revelation and Revolution for that matter. Then, we get the MGM logo and it appears that MGM listened to the fans, because the MGM lion Leo has been replaced by Cringer. Coincidentally, they did something similar in the recent trailer for Sheep Detectives, based on Leonie Swann’s delightful mystery Glennkill, where they replaced the lion with a sheep. Nicholas Galitzine is also in Sheep Detectives BTW, where he attempts to solve the murder of Hugh Jackman’s Farmer Glenn, aided or hindered (depending on your POV) by the sheep.

The scene then shifts back to Earth, to the shot of glass and steel office buildings that we already saw in the first trailer. Next, we get the shot of a bored Adam at his desk that we already saw in the first trailer as well, though it’s framed slightly differently this time around, so we don’t see the pronouns on the name plate that had the usual suspects up in arms the last time around. Meanwhile, Adam says in the voiceover that even though he was stuck lightyears away on Earth, he never stopped trying to find the way home.

There’s also a shot of Adam in his apartment on Earth. He has a shoebox labeled “Eternia” on his lap and inside are childhood drawings of the Power Sword and of his family – King Randor and Queen Marlena, little Adam with a sword and Cringer.  We’ve seen in the first trailer that Adam keep drawing the Power Sword and other pictures of Eternia, but now we see that he started doing this as a kid – probably as a way of keeping the memory of Eternia alive. It’s a sweet moment and you just want to give Adam a hug. I also wonder what happened to Adam after he was sent to Earth. Since Marlena is a former NASA astronaut, she probably still has family on Earth. So did Adam grow up with his grandparents or maybe an aunt or uncle? At any rate, I hope he didn’t end up in foster care. Especially since it’s clear that Adam must be deeply traumatised by what happened.

There is a cut to the Talon Fighter flying towards Eternos. Teela is in the pilot’s seat and tells Adam, “Everything changed since you left.” We then see Eternos and royal palace in ruins, while a horrified Adam exclaims, “It’s all gone.” So Skeletor not only conquered the planet, he also thoroughly trashed the place. He also apparently can’t be bothered to rebuilt anything, not even to put up a giant golden statue of himself. This is actually quite consistent, since whenever Skeletor actually manages to conquer Eternia, he usually has no idea what to do with it and mainly indulges himself abusing and torturing enemies and even his own henchpeople.

We then get a flashback to the final assault of the Evil Forces of Skeletor on Eternos Palace. We see some scenes we already saw in the first trailer. The palace gates exploding and fighting around the palace. We also get another shot of Queen Marlena and little Adam running towards the relative safety of Castle Grayskull. But this time we see little Adam turning around and anxiously crying out, “Dad!” Now we also finally get our first look of James Purefoy as Randor and he looks very much like you’d expect Randor to look. Two of Skeletor’s goons bar his way and Randor apparently draws his sword. sacrificing himself, so that Marlena and Adam can escape. Note that we also don’t see Randor in any of the present day scenes, so it’s quite possible that he was killed.

“Skeletor took my family,” Adam says in the voiceover, “And he destroyed our world”, while we see the Collector landing and Skeletor walking down the ramp. We’ve seen these shots before in the first trailer, but this time we also hear Skeletor laughing. Next, we get some footage of Rotons attacking the bridge that leads from Eternos to Castle Grayskull, which we also saw in the first trailer. We also get a great shot of Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn sauntering across the bridge to Castle Grayskull while the city burns behind her. I have to admit I was a tad skeptical about Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn, since I mainly associate her with Pete’s annoying and long suffering wife Trudy in Mad Men. Most of her other work seems to have been comedy, though she also did a few indie horror film. That said, based on this brief shot, she will make a great Evil-Lyn. Not that we’ve ever had a bad one.

The scene then switches to Adam hugging his mother in what we now know is the dungeon where they’re all being held. Once again, it’s notable that Randor is nowhere in sight.

We then see Adam and Duncan sitting next to each other, quite possibly still in the dungeon or in some underground rebel headquarters. “It’s all my fault”, Adam says and while that’s of course nonsense, because how on Eternia could a roughly ten-year-old Adam have stopped Skeletor from conquering the planet, it’s also a very Adam thing to blame himself for everything. Not to mention that Eternos was still undamaged the last time Adam saw it. Teela telling him that everything changed after he left probably didn’t help either.

“I know what it’s like to fail,” Duncan replies and once again, that’s very typical for Duncan, because we know that he tends to blame himself, when things go wrong, as seen in Masters of the Universe Revelation. And things can hardly go more wrong than Eternia being conquered, Eternos and the royal palace being trashed, the Queen getting captured and King Randor getting captured or killed on his watch. Teela is the same BTW and we often see her blaming and even punishing herself for any real or perceived failures in the Filmation cartoon, most notably in “Teela’s Trial”, where she quits her job and exiles herself to the wastelands after she accidentally teleports her father away to an unknown destination.

We then see a shot of the Power Sword in Castle Grayskull. “Take the sword”, Duncan says in the voiceover, while we get a fantastic scene of Trap-Jaw attacking Adam. We have seen Trap-Jaw as an action figure, but this is our first good look of Sam C. Wilson as Trap-Jaw in the actual movie and he looks great, though the face looks a tad off. This version of Trap-Jaw clearly leans into the body horror aspects of the character, complete with a cobbled together look. We see Trap-Jaw’s mechanical arm changing from blaster cannon to hook, as he attacks Adam and knocks him down.

The scene then shifts to a flashback of Adam as a kid getting knocked down during swordfighting training. In the background, you can see other young Eternians being trained, including a young Teela. “Cause if you fall,” Duncan says in the voiceover, “That’s your chance to stand tall.” Duncan saying this makes sense, because training the cadets of the royal guard as well as young Adam and Teela is traditionally part of his job description. I also love that movie Duncan is still the incredibly supportive mentor and father figure he’s always been. And not that this version of Adam is as much as an orphan as Teela, since he grew up without his parents on a different planet, and that Randor isn’t there and quite possibly no longer alive. So Adam absolutely needs a father figure.

Coincidentally, this flashback also explains why Adam knows how to use his sword and fight – because he had training as a child. Cause the Power of Grayskull bestows super-strength and physical transformation upon the chosen champion. It does not give fighting skills to someone who can’t tell one end of a sword from another. The reason He-Man knows how to fight and use a sword is because Adam knows how to fight and use a sword. And yes, it’s possible, even likely, that Adam took swordfighting and martial lessons on Earth. But formal fencing and martial arts lessons aren’t actually all that useful, if you’re thrown into an actual fight.

In the flashback, we see little Adam get up again, while in the present day, adult Adam get up and draws the sword, which is strapped to his back and still wrapped in cloth. He holds it aloft and the music cuts out for a moment, while the trailer focusses on Adam’s pupils dilating. Then he says the magic words, the music returns and there is an explosion that knocks back Trap-Jaw and the other Evil Warriors. Adam is hit by lighting and literally lifted up into the air, as he transforms. It’s a fantastic transformation scene and we even get a variation of the Castle Grayskull background from the Filmation cartoon completely with the smoky “Spirit of Grayskull” from the very early mini-comics.

I’ve seen some people online compare the transformation scene to Sailor Moon, because any scene where a character transforms into their super-powered self with flashy light effects is inevitably compared to Sailor Moon. However, in this case it’s inaccurate, because the Sailor Moon manga debuted in 1991, the anime in 1992, while Adam first transformed in the Filmation cartoon in 1983 and She-Ra in 1985. The original Highlander movie, which came out in 1986, also featured massive explosions of lightning after one immortal beheaded another. So Sailor Moon took a trope which already existed and popularised it for a new audience which may not have been familiar with the earlier versions.

And yes, apparently the movie does away with the secret identity, since He-Man transforms in front of Trap-Jaw and several Evil Warriors. Of course, Adam only had the choice between transforming in front of Trap-Jaw or getting impaled on his hook. Nonetheless, I’m fine with with ditching the whole secret identity, because the whole secret identity aspect never really made a lot of sense anyway. Also note that all modern incarnations of He-Man and She-Ra as well as many other superhero movies dumped the secret identity aspects.

We next get a shot of He-Man, Duncan, Teela and Roboto walked across a wasteland towards Snake Mountain, which looks fantastic and very much like the 200X incarnation. There is a shot of He-Man thoroughly trashing several of Skeletor’s goons inside Snake Mountain, while Tri-Klops stands in the background, if you look closely. We then get a brief shot of Skeletor walking, while holding both the Havoc Staff and the Power Sword, so he does take it from Adam at some point, possibly before throwing Adam into the dungeons. We also get another shot of Skeletor, flanked by Goat-Man and his Skele-Knights, which we already saw in the first trailer. What’s new is that we hear Skeletor’s voice proclaiming “The Universe shall quake in the shadow.”

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I wasn’t overly happy with the casting of Jared Leto as Skeletor as was pretty much everybody else. That said, from what little we hear Skeletor say in the trailer, Leto is apparently channeling Frank Langella’s Skeletor in the 1987 live action movie rather than Alan Oppenheimer’s more comedic performance in the Filmation cartoon or the evil and unhinged Skeletor performances by Brian Dobbs in the 200X cartoon and Mark Hamill in Revelation/Revolution or Peter Pasetti’s pure malevolence in the German audio dramas (yeah, not much of a chance of any American emulating that performance). I can’t argue with Leto basing his Skeletor on Langella’s version, since it’s generally considered one of the best all-time Skeletor performances – not that we ever had a bad one. And having seen Jared Leto’s take on the Joker, I’m glad his Skeletor is somewhat more restrained. One potential issue is that he doesn’t speak very clearly. I had to watch the trailer a few times to get the “The Universe shall quake in my shadow” line.”

We get a brief shot of Rotons destroying the giant statues of the Eternian kings – Jukka Issakainen identified them all based on some leaked set photos and the Eternian script seen in trailer – surrounding the platform in the middle of the bridge between Eternos and Castle Grayskull. I couldn’t make out which statue was being destroyed, though I suspect Skeletor had an excellent to want to blow up the statue of King Miro.

We get a quick shot of Zoar flying towards Eternos – still no official look at Morena Baccarin as the Sorceress, though he movie look was revealed on an Uno card of all thing. The scene shifts back to Adam/He-Man who says, “This is my home. I’m gonna fight for it”, while we get a quick succession of shots of Duncan and Roboto looking up at something, He-Man on a Sky Sled being chased by Rotos through a forest with reddish foliage and Duncan saying “Somebody wants a brawl” and activating his mace.

“But I can’t do it without you”, Adam says and we see that’s back in the dungeon, flanked by Duncan and Teela, “I need every man…” – Cue shot of Duncan walking heroically – “..woman…” – cue shot of Teela walking heroically. Adam pauses, “…and whatever that is”, while the camera shifts to a reptilian Eternian.

It’s a good question, for while Eternia has plenty of non-human races, including several reptilian ones, we actually have no idea who the reptilian character is. Theories I’ve seen range from Mer-Man and Clawful (unlikely, since they’re both Evil Warriors and neither is reptilian) to one of the Snake People, possibly Tung Lashor or Rattlor. The Eternian Snake People are traditionally villains, though we have also seen them fight on the side of good, e.g. in the 2012 DC Comics run. However, the most likely suspect is Lizard Man a.k.a. Lizzy, a fairly obscure Heroic Warrior who was based on an unproduced toy concept and appeared in a handful of Filmation episodes. Considering the movie dug up the even more obscure Goat-Man and Dian, Lizard Man would make sense. And it is nice to see non-humans fighting on the heroic side as well.

Everybody cheers at Adam’s pep talk – and Adam once again proves that he is a good leader and will make a great king one day. During the dungeon scenes, an elderly woman is seen a few times who does not join in the cheering. It could be a random elderly Eternian woman, but I’ve also seen the theory that this is Evil-Lyn in her old woman disguise, spying on the heroes.

We get a repeat of the shot of the heroes walking heroically that we also saw in the first trailer and then we get a fantastic scene of Cringer/Battle Cat chasing and pouncing on a Skele-Knight, while both Adam and Teela ride on his back. The fact that Cringer is mauling one of Skeletor’s soldiers would suggest that he is Battle Cat here, though he doesn’t have the helmet or saddle – Adam and Teela are riding bareback. Of course, it’s possinle that Cringer doesn’t actually transform in the movie – he is pretty big, after all, and he is a tiger. And while Cringer doesn’t like to fight, we have seen him fighting before. But whether he’s Cringer or Battle Cat, it’s great to see him cut loose and it’s also great to see Adam and Teela both riding on his back, since He-Man and Teela riding on Battle Cat has a long tradition going back to the very early and ridiculously Freudian mini-comic “King of Castle Grayskull”.  And yes, Cringer letting both Adam and Teela ride him makes sense, because Teela has always been almost as close to Cringer as Adam, since they all grew up together. And with Adam away on Earth, Teela is likely the one who adopted Cringer or vice versa. At any rate, they’re family.

We get a repeat of the scene of Duncan launching himself at the collector that we already saw in the first trailer and it’s still fantastic, because Duncan is a badarse. And just to prove it, in the next shot we see a grinning Teela exeuting some fancy flying manoeuvers with the Talon Fighter, while Duncan in civilian garb fires a very blaster and yells. Once again, we’ve seen a variation of this in the first trailer and it doesn’t get old.

I’ve seen some naysayers wondering why Idris Elba would lower his standards so much to be in a movie based on – sniff – a toyline and that he’s only doing it for a paycheck. I mean, he obviously wants to get paid, because acting is his job. But it’s quite possible that he is a fan of the toys and the Filmation cartoon, since he is the right age. Plus, he’s clearly having so much fun and he’ll make a wonderful Duncan. And for those who complain that he has a different skin colour than how Duncan has traditionally been presented, honestly, what does it matter, if he gets the character? And from what little we’ve seen, he clearly does.

We then get a scene of He-Man standing in the mouth of Snake Mountain, about to face off against Skeletor. “You may have the power,” Skeletor says, while he grabs Adam by the hair, presses him to the ground and burns him, “But you’re too scared to use it.” “Trust me, I know exactly how to use it,” a clearly pissed off He-Man replies and then we get some shots of the He-Man versus Skeletor fight that we already saw in the first trailer.

It’s a great moment, though it seems to be spliced together from different parts of the movie, since He-Man is still Adam, when Skeletor tortures him. That said, Skeletor getting off on torturing He-Man is very on par for the character – also see the incredibly inappropriately erotic whipping scene from the 1987 movie.

We then get the logo and an abrupt shift to Adam’s apartment on Earth, where he’s sitting on the sofa with his gay best friend/roommate (you can tell he’s gay, because he has a man bun, wears earrings and a leopard print jacket). “You tell everyone you’re from another planet,” gay pal says, “It just makes you sound a little very crazy.” Adam just gives him a dirty look.

This humorous Earth interlude with Adam and his stereotypically gay pal is probably the weakest part of the trailer. Thankfully, it is interspersed with one of the strongest, namely He-Man on a Sky Sled, being chased by Rotons through an Eternian forest. At one point, He-Man grabs a Roton by its spinning blades and just hurls it away, until it explodes between some trees. This moment is amazing and also pure He-Man, because He-Man grabbing random objects and throwing them happened all the time in the Filmation cartoon.

All in all, this is a great trailer and makes me even more excited to watch the film. The reactions and response were also overwhelmingly positive, at least those by longtime fans. See these videos by Dad-at-Arms, Pixel Dan, Jay Glatfelter of Geek Dad Live, former Filmation writer Robert Lamb, Mega Jay Retro and Das He-Manische Quartett. For a not-so-positive reaction, see the German channel Das Filmkästchen. I do feel a bit bad about singling him out, since he does like some parts of the trailer, but overall he seems to prefer a darker and less humorous take on Masters of the Universe.

The host of Das Filmkästchen also feels that Nicholas Galitzine looks too young and that he isn’t muscular enough. This is a complaint I’ve heard a few times, inevitably from men, since muscles seem to be a lot more important to men than to women. Not that I mind looking at a muscular body at all, but I’d rather have someone who can act than some bodybuilder or wrestler who can barely remember his lines. Which is basically what we had back in 1987, cause Dolph Lundgren looked physically as much as it’s possible for a human being to look like He-Man, but unfortunately his acting skills and even his English were severely lacking at the time. Of course, there are folks who are extremely muscular and can act, but they’re not that common and most of the ones I can think of are either too old or wouldn’t fit physically.

As for Nicholas Galitzine looking too young, Adam/He-Man is young. In most continuities, he first becomes He-Man when he’s between sixteen and eighteen and he’s usually around 25 – 27 or 28 at most – when he succeeds his father and becomes king. Nicholas Galitzine is thirty, though he looks younger, so he is pretty much perfect for the role. If you want an older, more seasoned warrior, there are Randor and Duncan (both played by very handsome actors) or maybe Fisto, who is definitely muscular in the movie, as he should be.

Quite a few male fans would have loved to see Alan Ritchson cast as He-Man, but while I like him as Jack Reacher, Jack Reacher is a very different character than He-Man, let alone Prince Adam. And while Alan Ritchson might have impressive muscles, I really can’t imagine as him He-Man and certainly not as Adam. Besides, let’s be serious, folks, it’s not as if Nicholas Galitzine doesn’t have muscles. If you look at older photos of him, he’s filled out impressively since he started training for the role. He just generally seems to have a slighter frame than e.g. Alan Ritchson and that’s okay.

Personally I think Nicholas Galitzine was a brilliant casting decision. I wasn’t familiar with him before he was cast, but he looks the part and based on the trailer, he’ll make a great Adam and he’ll also be a fine He-Man, even if he’s not quite as muscular as Dolph Lundgren back in the day or Alan Ritchson. Nicholas Galitzine also manages to capture Adam’s insecurity, vulnerability and his goofiness as well as his incredibly bravery, his determination and his anger at seeing what happened to his home and his family. What is more, Nicholas Galitzine has a big fanbase of mostly young women based on the romantic comedies he’s been in. These young women are now excited for a Masters of the Universe film. Honestly, I’ve seen lots of social media posts by young women who weren’t even born when the 200X cartoon was on the air geeking out about Nicholas Galitzine in a leather kilt and trust me, they think his muscles are just fine. And to be honest, every single person who complained about Nicholas Galitzine’s muscles supposedly being too small was a dude. Women honestly don’t care that much about muscles. Nicholas Galitzine will be a fine Adam/He-Man, even if he doesn’t fulfil your personal gym bro fantasies. And if you think He-Man is just enormous muscles and a gym bro fantasy become flesh, then you don’t really understand He-Man.

I’ve also seen some negative responses from people who hate the very idea of a He-Man movie, let alone one that takes the source material seriously, because they didn’t like the toys or the cartoon back in the day or think Masters of the Universe is for old people or only know He-Man and Skeletor via those stupid memes. It’s fine if the movie isn’t for them – though note that I was thrilled when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Mutant Mayhem and Transformers with Transformers One got stellar movies that got the characters, even though I never cared about Transformers all that much as a kid and had grown out of cartoons by the time Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles came along and never understood their enduring popularity, since they’re a very late 1980s/early 1990s phenomenon for me. Honestly, I don’t get the desire to shit on something just because it’s not for you.

So far, we haven’t heard anything from the usual basket of deplorables, since they still seem to be too busy gloating about the cancellation of Starfleet Academy and defending the honour of Andy Weir to bother about Masters of the Universe. Which is a good thing.

In other news, a new trailer for the Supergirl movie dropped as well and it looks good, too. But then I loved the Supergirl – Woman of Tomorrow comic it’s based on. Kara and Adam also have a lot in common, because both lost their home and family, when they were very young – Kara more permanently – both are somewhat lost and adrift and their best friend is their beloved pet, Krypto for Kara and Cringer for Adam. What is more, Melissa Benoist who played Kara in the Supergirl TV show voiced Teela in Masters of the Universe Revolution, while her real life husband Chris Wood played Mon El in Supergirl and voiced Adam/He-Man in Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution.

A few days before the trailer dropped, there was also a ton of movie toys and merchandise revealed, including such highlights as a He-Man Ken and Teela Barbie, which predictably sent a certain type of male fan into spasms of fury, a Fisto and Ram-Man two-pack from the Chronicles line (So does that mean that Fisto and Ram-Man are a canon couple now? At any rate, I will absolutely get that set), some movie figures in the Origins line, an Origins Fright Fighter vehicle, a four-pack in the kids line, Funko Pops, an Uno set and Castle Gryskull and Snake Mountain faux LEGO sets.  The non-toys merchandise includes stuff like t-shirts, mugs, key chains, prop replicas, life-size He-Man and Skeletor statues as well as a life-size Bone Throne (these are tempting, though likely expensive) and also oddities like protain bars and even kitty treats.

Mattel is clearly going all out with the merchandise, though it’s a bit weird that there are several toylines running in parallel. Having a collector focussed 6/7 inch toyline and a more child friendly 5.5 inch toyline does make sense, though I wonder why they launched a separate kids’ toyline, when they could have just put the movie figures as a subline into Origins? What is more, not every character is in every line. So far, you can only get movie Spikor in Origins,  Ram-Man, Fisto and Evil-Lyn in Chronicles and Goat-Man, Mekaneck and Beast-Man only in the kids line. This sucks, if you want all the characters in the same style and scale.

As for the Chronicles collector toyline, it will also included non-movie figures – much like Masterverse, the line it’s replacing, did – and they just kicked off the line with an amazing Scare Glow action figure, complete with gorgeous Simon Eckert artwork on the packaging. Pixel Dan reviews the figure here.

There will also be a Chronicles version of King Grayskull, heroic ancestor of Adam and Adora (and Keldor/Skeletor), available on Mattel Creations next week. You can see more photos of the figure here. This version of King Grayskull is based on his appearance in the 200X cartoon, where he was white and blonde and rides Battle Lion, and not on his appearance in the Revelation/Revolution cartoon and associated media, where he was black, had dreadlocks, ride Bionotops and was voiced by Dennis Haysbert. The Revelation/Revolution King Grayskull already appeared in Masterverse and Origins, whereas the 200X King Grayskull hasn’t had a figure since the Classics line more than ten years ago, so he’s due another. And for all the people who were really, really upset about King Grayskull being white in the single episode of the 200X cartoon where he appeared and black in Revelation/Revolution, the best explanation is that these are clearly two different people, King Grayskull I and King Grayskull II. That would also explain away all the other inconsistencies regarding King Grayskull such as his death (either fallen in battle with the Evil Horde or murdered by Saryn during a Gar uprising), whether He-Ro is his son or his best friend, whether he is married to Veena or Osirah and whether his mount is Battle Lion or Bionotops.

So in short, it’s a great time to be a Masters of the Universe fan.

I will be offline for a few days, since I’m off to Birmingham for Eastercon very early tomorrow morning, but you can find me on social media and in person at the con.

Before I’m off to Eastercon on Thursday, I wanted to show off my Easter decorations.

But before we get to that, I also have a couple of links to share about where else I have been of late:

For starters, I was at Galactic Journey three times, reviewing the 1971 science fiction thriller Tomorrow is Too Far by James White (with a bit about the latest adventures of the terrorist group that will be known as the Red Army Fraction), the 1970 East German science fiction film Signals – A Space Adventure (with a bit about a new crime drama called Tatort, which just debuted in Journey time and will go on to be a juggernaut) and the 1970 Czech children’s fantasy series Pan Tau, who may or may not be a Time Lord. Pan Tau also features the screen debut of the then 21-year-old skier and model Ivana Zelní?ková, better known under her married name Ivana Trump. She is pursued by an obnoxious guy in the show, who still manages to be not nearly as obnoxious as the man she eventually married. What is more, I was also at the Postcards from a Dying World podcast, discussing the 1950 science fiction story “The Little Black Bag” by Cyril Kornbluth with David Agranoff and John Battisberger.

Meanwhile, my basement is still a mess due to the ongoing work to get a heat pump installed, which took much longer than expected, because the crucial person fell ill and was out of commission for three weeks. Of course, people do fall ill, but the whole thing was nonetheless very frustrating.

Easter is Coming

But even though the basement is a mess and there is an open duct running across my terrace, I did decorate the parts of the house that are not a mess for spring and Easter. In particular, I decorated the big front window with some springtime, flower and nature-themed action figures.

As you can see, the Easter branches are back. For more about the tradition of putting decorated branches in a vase for Easter, see this post from last year.

My parents’ old Easter branch decorations still haven’t resurfaced and I’m beginning to wonder whether they were thrown out at some point. My Mom occasionally got the “throwing out stuff” bug and she didn’t always ask whether I still wanted it. Not that it matters, because I now have my own decorations.

I bought corkscrew hazel branches at a local florist shop and put them into a vase – I had to use the big vase this time around – and decorated the branches in the kitchen, where there is more space to move around.

The big vase is suitably egg-shaped, though sadly of the boring egg-shell white with a thin golden edge edge variety of china, that was inexplicably popular in Germany for decades of the twentieth century. My parents thankfully had more interesting china, but my grandmother had the boring egg-shell white with a thin golden edge stuff and actually divided it between me and my cousin Ulrike in her very detailed will. I gracefully left the china to Ulrike, because I didn’t like it even back then. Ulrike, of course, didn’t like the china either and actually offered it back to me a few years ago. Though my grandmother actually bought a set of Fürstenberg china for Ulrike, when she moved out (she’s fourteen years older than me), which is something I never got due to being too young (Grandma died when I was twelve). And I like Fürstenberg china, though my grandma bought the most boring set she could find for Ulrike. But then my grandma apparently had the “easily visually overstimulated” type of autism, whereas I got the “visually understimulated all the time – overstimulation, what’s that?” variety.

The vase with the Easter branches on the kitchen table. And yes, my kitchen is old.

Another view of the decorated Easter branches on the kitchen table.

Once I’d decorated the branches, I took the vase with the branches to its final location on the bar cart or rather, I asked a big and strong neighbour to do it for me.

The Easter branches in their final location on the bar cart.

Two decorations I didn’t put onto the branches, though they are theoretically designed for Easter branches, are the two collectible Hutschenreuther porcelain eggs that either my Mom or I got as a gift years ago. Hutschenreuther make a lot of collectible holiday ornaments, which are a popular gift, though I’ve never met anyone who bought these things for themselves. I have a lot of Hutschenreuther Christmas ornaments, but only two Easter eggs. As for why I didn’t put them on the branches – well, they’re too heavy (as are the Christmas ornaments). So instead, they go on a lamp.

Two Hutschenreuther porcelain Easter eggs

Of course, my guardian bunnies are back as well:

The guardian bunnies. If you want to get the Easter branches, you have to go past them first.

The gun-toting pink bunny is Plundor the Spoiler from the Masters of the Universe Classics toyline. Plundor is an obscure villain who only appeared in a single episode of the Filmation He-Man cartoon. In the cartoon, Plundor has taken over the planet Trannis, where he steals natural resources, extracts the planet’s lifeforce and pollutes the environment until he is stopped by an amnesiac He-Man and a local woman named Gleedil, who looks like a humanoid chicken. In short, it’s a not very subtle tale about the evils of capitalism and pollution, except that the villain is a pink bunny. Sometimes, I really wonder just what they put into the water cooler at Filmation.

The two small bunnies were my Mom’s and are probably between fifty and sixty years old. At any rate, we’ve had them for as long as I can remember.

The white laughing bunny was designed by artist Max Hermann Fritz in 1929 for the Rosenthal porcelain company. Rosenthal produced this bunny for decades (though apparently he has been discontinued by now) and for a while it seemed as if every German home had one. He has an eerie facial resemblance to Plundor, which I only noticed when I put them next to each other. Now I wonder if someone at Filmation had this Rosenthal bunny at home, which is not that unlikely, considering how ubiquitous it was for decades.

The big tan faceless bunny with the golden egg is a new addition I picked up at a store last year. Though he’s modern, he fits in nicely with the mid century modern bunnies.

Meet Else

People have asked for a closer look at Else, my department store mannequin, so here you are:

Else contemplates the Easter eggs.

Else, looking very cool and sophisticated.

I got Else during a going out of business at the H.W. Meyer store at the Berliner Freiheit mall here in Bremen (yes, we have a mall called Freedom of Berlin, since it was built in 1960 when solidarity with West Berlin was very much in fashion) in 2002.  I know the exact year, because the former strip mall was set to close and was eventually rebuilt as an indoor mall and the store was selling off its entire inventory. H.W. Meyer was a local chain of clothing stores here in Bremen, specialising in high quality brand-name clothing for more conservative tastes (or as I used to call it “boring old lady clothes”). Though Else with her bright red hair and fashionable style was never boring or old. H.W. Meyer opened in 1965 and had eight stores in various parts of the city by the early 2000s. H.W. Meyer shut down for good in 2012, fallen prey to changing retail patterns and tastes and supposedly also to the Ochtum Park outlet mall offering many of the brands they used to offer for cheaper.  The branch at the Berliner Freiheit mall was among the last to close.

In 2002, the Berliner Freiheit branch had two mannequins for sale – Else and a mannequin with a blonde bob. Else came home with me, travelling in the backseat of my Volkswagen Jetta, completely naked. Part of me wishes I could have rescued her sister, too, but at the time I could afford only Else. She has been guarding my window ever since, gazing out at the traffic and pedestrians on the street outside. People have quite frequently mistaken her for real. Little kids sometimes wave at her and new neighbours have complained on occasion about “that old woman who’s always looking out of the window, spying on everyone” before they realised that she’s not real.

I have never found a manufacturer’s mark on Else, but her make-up and hairstyle suggest that she dates from the mid to late 1980s. Her dress is vintage summer dress from the early 1980s that used to belong to my Mom. The necklace is a typically chunky 1980s plastic necklace that used to be mine. I bought it at the HEMA store in Rotterdam as a teenager.

Fun with Action Figures

Finally, here is a closer look at the action figures that are populating the window:

Here we have Buzz-Off from Masters of the Universe in his New Eternia version as well as two incarnations of Moss-Man, namely the Masters of the Universe Revelation and New Eternia version. Moss-Man is traditionally flocked, but these two Masterverse Moss-Men are not. And indeed, I wouldn’t have put a flocked Moss-Man this close to plants that need watering.

You can also see my Ruhrpott mug as well as two pottery chickens, which were my Mom’s and date from the late 1970s/early 1980s. They normally live in a cupboard with other random stuff, but I rescued them and turned them into Easter decorations. This brown/red pottery with white glaze was all the range in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

Here we have the New Eternia incarnation of Moss-Man again, well camouflaged against the plant.

The Princess of Power line has a lot of characters that are pastel-coloured and flowery, but since I didn’t want to tear the whole Princess of Power shelf apart, I only took Flutterina, the butterfly girl, who’s always been a personal favourite, from the shelf and put her in the window.

The bare-chested punk dwarf with a mohawk is Torgun Redfin from the Mythic Legions line, whom I recently aquired. More on him later.

There’s also a small Easter basket, which was a gift from my cousin Ulrike 36 years ago. And yes, I remember exactly when I got it, namely when my parents celebrated their silver wedding anniversary in 1990. I was a teenager and would rather have been somewhere, anywhere else. My terrible Uncle Uwe as well as his two sons and son-in-law got horribly drunk – they drank 66 whiskey cola between the four of them – and got into a fight later on. Two of them are long dead – both fallen victim to diseases caused/exercarbated by alcoholism – and I haven’t spoken to the other two, since I broke off contact with that side of the family in 2013. For all I know, the remaining two may be dead as well.

My parents celebrated their silver wedding anniversarty on Good Friday – and due to German laws, we actually had to get a special permission to have a private party with music and dancing, because music and dancing on Good Friday apparently makes Jesus cry or something like that (though to be honest, that party was a damn good reason to cry). Easter was two days away, my birthday about a week. And yet only two of the more than fifty guests gave me something. Our neighbours Uncle Schorse (he died last year aged 91) and Aunt Mariechen (still alive) gave me a box of Cat Tongue chocolates and my cousin Ulrike gave me the little Easter nest.  The chocolates are long gone, but I kept the Easter nest for 36 years as a reminder of a moment of kindness on a deeply unpleasant evening.

The wooden Easter bunny finally is something I picked up at a grocery store last week.

Artemyss Silverchord and the Wild Hunt – which could actually be the name of a filk band.

Finally, there is also a small party of elves and other nature beings from the Mythic Legions line. Mythic Legions is a fantasy toyline from Four Horsemen Studios that I’ve recently discovered. Those figures are amazing and so my collection is growing.

In Mythic Legions lore, there are four villainous factions roughly corresponding to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as well as four heroic factions that oppose them. One of the heroic factions is called Xylona’s Flock and is made up of elves, satyrs, elementals and other woodland creatures.  Here we have four of them: Artemyss Silverchord, Queen of the Elves and leader of Xylona’s Flock as well as one of her guards. There’s also the centaur Aphareus, who turned out to be a lot bigger than expected, which is why he moved into the window, and Bryophytus, a lichen orc who also serves as a protector of the forest. Bryophytus is pretty much the Mythic Legions version of the Masters of the Universe character Moss-Man. The toy designers known as the Four Horsemen have designed both the Masters of the Universe 200X and Classics toylines and still work for Mattel on occasion. Mythic Legions is partly inspired by Masters of the Universe and there are some Mythic Legions figures that are basically versions of Masters of the Universe characters done in Mythic Legions style. Bryophytus is one of these and note that he is flocked like the vintage Moss-Man, though his flocking is much nicer than Moss-Man’s ever was. Though he is far enough away from plants that need watering that his flocking is safe.

A few days after I decorated the big window for spring/Easter, my growing Mythic Legions collection got some additions. First, I found a great figure for a very good prices on eBay and snapped him up. And then I took the opportunity to go to Hamburg and paid a visit to Comic Cave, an amazing collectibles store that carries pretty much every action figure line you can think of and some you’ve never heard of. Normally, you have to order Mythic Legions figures online, since it’s not a line you can find at retail. But Comic Cave not only carries Mythic Legions, they also have a lot of older figures that have become hard to find, because with Mythic Legions, it’s best to buy the figures in the first few weeks/months after they come out (or preorder them), because prices can go up drastically for older figures. So finding a physical shop which carries Mythic Legions is rare, finding one which carries older figures at a reasonable price is even rarer. And so I snapped up three figures, two of which went into the window to join Artemyss Silverchord’s band. The third is a really cool demon, who will get his time in the spotlight this fall.

Artemyss Silverchord and the Wild Hunt Reloaded.

In addition to the figures already mentioned above, we have on the far left the satyr healer Krotos. Next to Artemyss, we have her consort Lord Bardric. Okay, so Lord Bardric is not actually the consort of Artemyss Silverchord according to the official Mythic Legions lore, but just an elf nobleman who supports her. But I find that I simply take what I like from the official Mythic Legions lore (which consists mainly of the bios on the boxes and some articles and stories on the website, though apparently there is an illustrated book coming out, which includes details of the lore) and ignore what I don’t like. And so in my version of the story, Lord Bardric is the consort of Artemyss Silverchord, because he’s hot and handsome (and will make puppies cry, because he’s a black elf with cornrows) and he and Artemyss make a lovely couple. Besides, if the Queen of the Elves decides to take a husband, who am I to disagree?

Finally, on the far right, we have the grizzled orc general Vorthogg. Now according to official Mythic Legions lore, Vorthogg is actually a bad guy and a member of the evil Legion of Arethyr, i.e. the forces that follow the Apocalyptic Horseman and God of War Arethyr. However, when I got Vorthogg out of the box and looked at him, I thought, “This guy doesn’t look evil. Maybe he used to work for the Legion of Arethyr once, but then he defected and joined Artemyss Silverchord.” And indeed, according to his official bio, Vorthogg may be a general in the Legion of Arethyr, but he’s not happy with the leadership of Gorgo Aetherblade (more on him here) and he’s definitely not happy that his protegé Urzokk (who will join my collection eventually, once his new figure comes out) surpassed him and became Gorgo’s righthand man. So in short, he has every reason to defect.

Come to think of it, in my personal version of the story, quite a few members of the Legion of Arethyr have switched sides. Next to Vorthogg, there’s also the goblin alchemist Swigg, who’s just too cute ugly to be evil (and since his potions never quite work as intended, he’s basically the Orko of Mythic Legions), so he went to hang out with the good wizards, and of course Lady Avarona, the villainous lady knight, who started an entirely inappropriate and non-canon relationship with Sir Gideon Heavensbrand, purest and noblest of paladins. For more on how that happened, see here. And yes, you’ll see a dramatisation of that story eventually, especially since I got Sir Gideon some more of his noble knights as well as his sister and his horse to keep him on the straight and narrow.

My dining table got a new springtime tablecloth as well as a pot of daffodils. I put the Masters of the Universe Classics Evil-Lyn as well as her Mythic Legions counterpart Malynna the Malevolent on the table, because their yellow skin perfectly matches the flower pot and the daffodils, once they bloom. Though for some reason, my daffodils haven’t bloomed yet.

“Love the look, sister. And I love that you’ve turned the Sorceress of Grayskull into… well, whatever that is. But word of warning, stay away from men with skull faces and delusions of world conquest.”

But even though the potted daffodils are a bust, my Easter branches are sprouting tiny green leaves:

My Easter branches have sprouted tiny green leaves.

A closer look at the little green leaves sprouted by my Easter branches.

Adventures in the Garden

Once the snow was gone, the spring flowers in the garden started to bloom, beginning with the crocuses (or croci?). I bought some flower bulbs, including crocuses, in the Netherlands last fall, so I have more of them now and they look beautiful.

A flower bed with crocuses (croci?)

A closer look at some of the crocuses (croci?) in my garden.

The grape hyacinths are blooming again as well.

Grape hyacinths in bloom

Since the weather has gone from snow and frost and winter to early spring in the span of a week or so, I did take some of my action figures outdoors into the garden to take some photos. Though only figures that have neither flocking nor fabric parts got to go outside, so characters like Bryophytus and Artemyss Silverchord were out. Thankfully, that still leaves plenty of options, so enjoy some of my garden toy photos:

Ambush in the Evergreen Forest

Man-at-Arms and Beast-Man battle it out.

“If I capture you, Man-at-Arms, then maybe Skeletor will take me back in…”

“You don’t need Skeletor, Beast-Man. Why be his servant, when you could be the leader of your own people?”

“Cause… Skeletor is real smart, not like me. He always knows what to do.”

“He’s just using you.”

“Shut up! You’re my prisoner now and prisoners don’t talk.”

The Battle of the Steinhude Sea

The following picture was not taken in my garden, but at the Steinhude Sea, North West Germany’s biggest lake. I took the picture in January, when the Steinhude Sea was frozen, something that doesn’t happen all that often.

“The Sea is mine, He-Man, mwahaha.”

“Isn’t your pal Mer-Man the Lord of the Sea?”

“Pah, Mer-Man may think he is the Lord of the Sea, but I shall rule all or I shall rule nothing.”

Torgun Redfin’s Mission

Finally, I also had some fun with some of the Mythic Legions figures you already saw in my window display above.

Originally, I just took some cool photos with these figures, but then I realised that they do make a little story, focussed on the adventures of the punk dwarf Torgun Redfin.

According to his official bio, Torgun Redfin is the brother of Bromdenn Ironjaw, King of the Dwarves. When King Bromdenn joined the villainous Legion of Arethyr, Torgun and several other dwarves disagreed with this decision and left the Dwarven Kingdom of Ironhold to seek their fortunes in the frozen North. Here, the exiled dwarves met a human called Attlus the Conqueror, who had left his homeland over a fallout with his own brother (there’s a lot of sibling rivalry in Mythic Legions) and formed an army of outcasts and misfits called The House of the Noble Bear.  Attlus eventually returned from exile to join the great battle against the forces of evil. However, he probably would have sent out emissaries first to make contact with the forces of good – you can see one of them in this toy review over at File 770. And this is where Torgun comes in when he is sent to contact Artemyss Silverchord.

On the northern border of Xylernia:

“‘Travel to Xylernia and talk to Queen Artemyss Silverchord and warn her of what’s coming’, Attlus said. ‘You’ll like Xylernia, it’s pleasant and green and best of all, warm.’ Yeah, right. So why I am climbing these bloody mountains then? And why am I still freezing my nuts off?”

Growl.

“Get lost, whatever you are! I’m on a vital mission for the Noble Bear himself and I am not your dinner.”

The Silverhorn Sentries patrol the borders of Xylernia, to protect their homeland and their Queen from all dangers.

“Halt, dwarf! State your business.”

“The name’s Torgun Redfin. I’m on an urgent mission from the Noble Bear and I need to speak to your Queen.”

“You want to speak to the Queen? Do you think I can let any wandering vagabond talk to our most noble Queen? You could be an assassin of the Sons of the Red Star for all I know.”

“A Son of the Red Star? Me? I’m Torgun Redfin, brother of Bromdenn Ironjaw, and I assure I’m not one of Scapular’s lowlives. And now take me to your Queen, cause all our lives are in danger.”

“King Bromdenn is a traitor who threw in his lot with Gorgo Aetherblade and the Legion of Arethyr.”

“I know my brother is a bloody traitor. Why do you think I left my home, went to the frozen North and joined the House of the Noble Bear? Do you think I moved to Björngarr, because I like being cold all the time? And now take me to your Queen.”

“I don’t have the authority to decide who gets to see the Queen.”

“Then find my someone who does, damn you! All of Mythos could be at stake.”

***

Nearby:

“Castle Silverhorn may be the heart of the kingdom, but it feels good to gallop through the forest. Us centaurs are not made for court, we’re meant to race across the open plains…”

“From up here, I can see across much of Xylernia and keep watch to defend our kingdom and our beloved Queen from all enemies.”

“That was a refreshing ride, but I had rather get back. Must not keep Queen Artemyss and her consort waiting. Her consort… – that’s such a weird thought. Seems it was only yesterday that Princess Artemyss was but a young child and now she’s a grown woman, a Queen in her own right, and has taken a consort. Though she chose well. Everyone admires Lord Bardric, almost as much as we admire the Queen herself.”

“Wow, you really are very big.”

“And you are very small, dwarf. Who are you and what brings you to Xylernia?”

“Name’s Torgun Redfin and I have an urgent message to deliver. So who are you, my big friend?”

“I am Aphareus, stable lord to Her Majesty Queen Artemyss Silverchord.”

“Then you’re just the man – ahem centaur – I was looking for. Cause I need to urgently speak to your Queen. I have a message for her from the Noble Bear himself.”

“Hmm, I have heard of this Noble Bear. A ruler who has united the barbarians up north. Is it true that he is a changeling who can take the form of a bear?”

“No, he’s human. He just rides a bear. It’s a long story, which I’ll be happy to tell, once you take me to your Queen.”

“Follow me then, little friend. But know that if the urgent message from your ruler is a marriage proposal, our Queen has already chosen a consort and she’s not interested.”

“A marriage proposal? No, of course not. And anyway, who’d send a messenger to deliver a marriage proposal and not come himself?”

“The Lion King of Leandorr, that’s who. He sent a messenger to propose an alliance and marriage to our Queen. She turned him down, of course.”

“Oh yeah, the Lion King of Leandorr. I’ve heard of him. He’s a royal prick all right.”

***

As for Attlus, the Noble Bear, and his actual bear, I have pre-ordered both and you will hopefully see them soon. However, while the bear has already arrived, Attlus is still delayed because Trump’s and Netanjahu’s war on Iran is messing up shipping.

You’ll also see more of these Mythic Legions figures, because they’re so much fun to photograph.

But for now, I hope you enjoyed these photos of Easter decorations, spring flowers and toys.

This is an updated version of this post from 2021, this post from 2022, this post from 2023, this post from 2024 and this post from last year, which a lot of people found helpful. There also a Chinese translation of the 2023 post to be found in issue 14 the Hugo winning fanzine Zero Gravity Newspaper.

Nominations for the 2026 Hugo Awards closed four hours ago and the finalists are expected to be announced in a few weeks.

Right now, no one except for possibly the Hugo administrators knows who those finalists will be. And yes, I deliberately posted this so shortly after the Hugo nominations closed that the e-mails won’t have gone out yet and no one knows who the finalists are.

However, sometime in the next two weeks or so, some of you will receive an e-mail from the Los Angeles Worldcon, informing you that you are a finalist for the 2026 Hugo Award and asking you whether you want to accept the nomination. Some of you will have received such e-mails before, for others it will be the first time.

But whether it’s your first or your twentieth nomination, congratulations! That’s awesome.

As a first time recipient of such an e-mail in 2020 as well as a Hugo finalist in 2021 and 2025 and a Hugo winner in 2022, here are a few things I’ve learned:

The e-mail may not look like you think it will. When I got the e-mail from CoNZealand in 2020, the subject line was “CoNZealand Hugo Awards Confidential”. I was exhausted that day and waiting for two important e-mails, so I scanned right past that subject line, because I assumed it was the convention newsletter. I only opened the mail, because none of the two important e-mails had come yet, so I thought I might as well check out the CoNZealand e-mail while I was waiting. Good thing that I did.If you receive an e-mail from the Los Angeles Worldcon, please reply as soon as you can whether you accept the nomination or not. If there are questions regarding your eligibility, answer them as soon as possible. The Hugo administrator and their team work very hard, so don’t make their job any harder than it has to be.The Los Angeles team will also ask you to keep quiet about your nomination until the official announcement. Please don’t violate this, because you don’t want to steal LA’s thunder!The period between the time when the finalists are notified and when the Hugo finalists are officially announced can be weird, because while you know that you’re a finalist, almost nobody else does. I blogged a bit about my experiences in 2020 here. Basically, I kept having the niggling fear that there had been some terrible mistake and that I wasn’t a finalist after all or that I only was a finalist because all twenty people who would have been ahead of me had withdrawn. From talking to other first time finalists, I learned that I wasn’t alone in this. And while I can’t guarantee that terrible mistakes won’t happen, the chance that the wrong person is notified about being a Hugo finalist is extremely small. So relax. You really are a Hugo finalist, even if nobody else knows it yet.In 2023, it turned out that the Hugo nominations had been massively tampered with by Hugo administration team. However, this was the first time something like that happened and no member of the 2023 team is involved in any way with the 2026 Hugos, so chances of it happening again are minuscle.Do something nice for yourself to celebrate. Have an ice cream, a nice box of chocolates, a glass of champagne, a good beer, a bubble bath, whatever it is that makes you happy. You’re a Hugo finalist, so you damn well deserve to celebrate in private.You can tell a few people you trust about your nomination as long as you know they won’t blab it all over the internet. Before the official announcement, a handful of people knew I was a Hugo finalist. These include my parents (whose reaction was, “That’s nice,” before turning back to watch a rerun of Midsomer Murders), some folks from Galactic Journey and others in the SFF community, who knew not to say anything before the official announcement, as well as my accountant (because I asked her if buying an evening gown for the Hugo ceremony was tax-deductible – it’s not BTW) and the guy who repaired my patio, because he just happened to be there, when I got the e-mail. Neither the accountant nor the patio guy are SFF fans, so chances of a leak were zero. They both also probably thought I was quite mad.If you are nominated in a fiction category – i.e. short story, novelette, novella, novel, Series, Lodestar or Astounding – or nominated for a non-fiction book or essay in Best Related Work or in the Best Poem category, you should let your editor and/or publisher know that you’re a finalist. They work in the industry and therefore know not to say anything and they may want to prepare some kind of congratulatory tweet, post or other promotion effort. Finally, editors are also thrilled when one of their authors is nominated.One thing I did not do is tell people about my nomination who might be up in the same category. Because I didn’t know who else was nominated (you don’t before the official announcement) and didn’t want anybody to feel disappointed, because I was a finalist and they were not.Even if you can’t publicly talk about your Hugo nomination just yet, there are still a few things you can do in the meantime. For example, you can update your bio to mention that you’re a Hugo finalist or write a bio, if you don’t have one yet. Important: Don’t upload your updated bio anywhere until the official announcement has been made! In fact, I spent a chunk of the evening after the Hugo finalists had been announced updating my bio everywhere it appears.In fact – and this is important – don’t upload anything that mentions your Hugo nomination anywhere on the internet, until the official announcement has been made. Even if you set a social media or blogpost to go live after the announcement has been made, don’t upload it yet. Because mistakes happen, you accidentally hit “publish” rather than “schedule” or a post goes live too early. I had my celebratory blogpost ready to go in Word, but I only uploaded it with links and a few comments added once the announcement had been made.Another thing you can do in the meantime is prepare a media kit, if you haven’t got one already. You can see mine here (which is in need of an update) and there are also plenty of pages around the web that tell you what a media kit is supposed to contain. Important: Get permission to use any photos that you did not take yourself or that were taken at a studio.Another thing you can do is write a press release about your Hugo nomination. It doesn’t matter which category you’re nominated in, whether it’s Best Novel or a fan category. Write a press release anyway. There are plenty of places around the web which tell you how to write a press release. It varies from country to country, so make sure you get the correct format for your country. My press releases from 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2025 (in German) are here. Then make a list of the contact info for the relevant newspapers, radio stations, TV stations and other media outlets in your region or country. Once the nominations have been announced, send your press release as well as the link to your media kit to those media outlets. The press releases linked above netted me two in-depth profiles and a bonus article in two different newspapers in 2020 and two more in-depth profiles in 2021, an newspaper article and an interview in 2022 and a newspaper interview and a TV interview in 2025, which is much more than I’d hoped for.Because this came up in the Hugo finalist Discord, if media attention for yourself or your work could cause a problem with your day job, talk to a union representative, workers council member or – if none of those are available – a trustworthy co-worker first to make sure you’re not accidentally jeopardizing your job.In general, the Hugo finalist Discord is a great resource and also a way to get to know the other finalists, to exchange tips and information and also post pet photos, so do join. The Hugo finalist Discord and its predecessors were originally organised by the finalists themselves (including me), but nowadays, the respective Worldcon tends to send out the invitation link, once the finalists are announced.Consider whether you want to attend Worldcon and the ceremony. First of all, get a Worldcon membership, if you haven’t got one already. Like most recent Worldcons, Los Angeles offers a reduced rate for people attending their first ever Worldcon and others groups whose finances aren’t great. You can also start looking for flights, hotels, etc…. If you need to apply for a visa, do so now. If money is an issue, as it’s for many of us, think about crowdfunding your Worldcon trip, as several finalists have done in recent years. However, don’t start your crowdfunding campaign, until after the finalists have been announced.If you cannot attend Worldcon for health, family, work or other reasons or feel uncomfortable travelling to the US in the current political climate, there are also virtual memberships available, which allow to participate virtually. You can also accept a Hugo Award virtually and indeed that’s what I did in 2022.If you want to participate in programming, sign up at the Los Angeles Worldcon website. Do this as early as possible, so the programming team doesn’t have to find suitable programming for you at the last minute. You can also participate in programming as a virtual participant.Finally, start thinking about your Hugo voter packet. If you need to get permission to include certain texts or images, contact the relevant people.

Finally, here are a few observations regarding what happens after the Hugo finalists are announced:

A lot of people will congratulate you. These will be people you expect – friends, peers, etc… – but also people you don’t expect. After the newspaper articles mentioned above came out, I suddenly got congratulations from translation customers, various relatives, neighbours, former classmates, my plumber, my Dad’s diabetes doctor and a random lady at the Easter fire among others. Enjoy the experience, thank everybody and don’t forget to congratulate your fellow finalists.Some people will also not congratulate you and again, some of these will be people you don’t expect. There are several reasons why someone might not congratulate you and most of them are not malicious. For example, some people might simply not have seen the news yet. Or they may not understand the significance, since not everybody is plugged into the SFF community and knows how important the Hugos are. Of course, there will also be a few people who think that you don’t deserve your nomination. Ignore them!Your fellow Hugo finalists are not your rivals, they are your peers. You’ll probably know some of them already and if not, you’ll quickly get to know them. And yes, only one of you will get to take home the rocket in the end, but all six of you are amazing and in a way, you’re all winners. This also applies across categories. I met a lot of great people in the SFF community and even made new friends, just because we were on the Hugo ballot in the same year.In general, there is a sense of community to siblinghood among Hugo finalists. Whether you’re a bestselling author or a first-time finalist in a fan category, you’re all in this together. There is usually a private group for Hugo finalists – in recent years on Discord – to chat, ask questions, share gripes, post photos of Hugo gowns, tiaras and pets, etc…If you’re not part of the Worldcon SFF community and don’t know anybody else on the ballot, don’t worry! You’ll get to know the others soon enough and pretty much everybody in this community is lovely and very welcoming. If you’re a repeat finalist, reach out to the first-timers to make them welcome.As a Hugo finalist, you will get plenty of e-mails from Los Angeles about anything from the Hugo voter packet via the program book to the ceremony itself. Pay attention to those e-mails, send any information requested in time and check your spam folder. You don’t accidentally want to miss something important.Once the Hugo finalists have been announced, there will be people who have opinions about the ballot. Most will be positive or at least fair – I always try to be fair in my own Hugo and Nebula finalist commentaries, even if I don’t care for some of the finalists – but some will be not. There are always people who think that your category or the entire ballot is too male, not male enough, too white, not white enough, too queer, not queer enough, too American, not American enough, too bestselling, not bestselling enough – you get the idea. There will be people who complain that only people no one knows got nominated or that only the usual suspects got nominated – and multiple bestsellers and Hugo winners can be “people no one knows”, while first or second time finalists can be “the usual suspects”. Some of these people won’t even wait 24 hours after the Hugo finalists have been announced to air their opinions – at least they didn’t in 2021. Some will even tag you, just to make sure you don’t miss their very important opinions. The best thing to do is ignore those people.A handful of people seem to have made it their life’s mission to mock and harass Hugo finalists. Ignore them and block them on social media and don’t let them get you down. Most of them are just jealous.There will be drama. So far, I’ve never seen a Worldcon that did not have at least some degree of drama and I have been a Worldcon member since 2014. It rarely gets as bad as it did in 2023, but there’s always drama of some kind. Often, this drama affects the Hugo finalists in some way. Sometimes, the Hugo finalists even band together and try to resolve this drama. How you engages with whatever this year’s drama will be is up to you. However, don’t let it get you down. Drama is normal. At this point, I would be more surprised at a Worldcon without drama than at one which has some degree of drama. And usually, everybody winds up having a great time anyway.

So what happens, if you win?

Basically more of the same. Lots of people will congratulate you, most of them with genuine enthusiasm, a few very grudgingly (one in my case, not a fellow finalist) and some not at all.Make sure to have your acceptance speech ready before the ceremony with the names of all the people you want to thank. Check with people how their names are pronounced, if you aren’t sure. Always have a printed paper copy of your speech, because phones can and do break down, run out of juice, fail to have reception or get overloaded with messages at the crucial moment.After you win a Hugo, you should prepare another press release and send it to all the local, regional and national media you can think of. I actually wrote mine at six AM in the morning after the winners had been announced.Don’t forget to update your bio wherever it appears. That includes anthologies or magazines where you’ve been accepted, but which aren’t out yet.Your “market value” (for lack of a better word) does go up with your first nomination, goes up even further with your second and even more, if you win. For example, I got a story acceptance in the mail literally the day after I won. Of course, the story might have been accepted anyway, but the timing was still interesting. I also gained a bunch of new social media followers with every nomination and winning a Hugo pushed me over the 3000 follower mark for the first time. You’ll get invited to cons and you’ll notice that your name will start to show up on covers of anthologies or magazines, sometimes with “Hugo winner” attached. However, you’ll still get rejections as well, because even Hugo winners get rejected and that’s perfectly normal.You’ll also find that you have acquired more clout in the SFF community, something which also happens once you get nominated. Use what influence you have in the SFF community for good, to uplift and support others.One thing I noticed is that I would sometimes find myself thinking, “Wait a minute, I have a Hugo and [insert name of vastly more important genre person here] doesn’t? How on Earth did that happen?”That said, certain people will still call you a nobody who barely sells any books or a fake fan or whatever. This literally happened to me approx. a month after I won the Hugo, when I got into an argument about a TV show with the adherents of one of those “We hate everything” outrage clickbait YouTube channels. I pointed out that I really enjoyed the object of their rage du jour and so did many others and was called “not a real fan” in response. When I said, “Dude, I’m the 2022 Hugo winner for Best Fan Writer”, I was told that awards didn’t matter, that I was clearly not a real fan, because I didn’t hate the thing. Best just ignore those people and privately think, “Guess who has a shiny rocket? Hint, it’s not you.”Sometimes, it gets worse than online arguments with idiots. Because as I said above, there are a handful of people who seem to have made it their life’s mission to harass Hugo finalists and winners and will use any excuse, no matter how small, to send their flying monkeys after you. That happened to me, almost to the day a year after I won the Hugo, and I’ve seen it happen to others. Often, not a lot of people will help you and sometimes people you know and actually were friendly with before will join in. The best thing to do is to liberally mute and block harassers and if necessary, break off contact with some folks. On the plus side, you’ll know who your friends are afterwards. Also, never let yourself be silenced, because that’s what these folks want.

Finally – and this is the most important point – enjoy your experience! You’re a Hugo finalist, i.e. your peers consider you and your work one of the six best in your respective category. That’s amazing, so celebrate!

As mentioned in the last post, both the 2025 Nebula Award finalists and the 2026 Academy Award winners were announced on Sunday night. I covered the Oscars in my last post, so now let’s get to the Nebulas.

The full list of finalists may be found here. Apologies if I get anybody’s gender, race or nationality wrong with regard to the diversity count.

Best Novel

Once again, this category is a mix of novels that got a lot of buzz and a few more surprising choices.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang and Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor both got a lot of attention last year both inside and also outside of the genre, so I’m not surprised to see them nominated. I suspect we’ll also see both books on the Hugo ballot and Katabasis will probably win as a belated payback for R.F. Kuang’s unjustified disqualification in 2023.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh also got a lot of buzz last year and will likely make the Hugo ballot, though I haven’t yet read it, simply because I’m just tired of magical schools and dark academia.

John Wiswell has been a regular presence on awards ballots since he burst onto the scene six years ago, so I’m not surprised to see Wearing the Lion nominated. It’s also a good book.

Stephen Graham Jones is one of the most popular genre authors currently writing and a regular presence on awards ballots, though he’s more commonly found on the Stoker ballot than one the Hugo or Nebula ballot due to being a horror author. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is also a really good book.

Natalia Theodoridou is mainly known for his short fiction. Sour Cherry is his debut novel, which kind of passed me by.

Daryl Gregory is also better known for his short fiction, though he also has several novels under his belt. He also is a long-time Nebula favourite. I have to admit that When We Were Real also passed me by, though it sounds like something I would enjoy.

Diversity count: 3 women, 4 men, 3 authors of colour, 2 international authors*

Best Novella

Again, we have a nice mix of stories that got a lot of buzz and somewhat lesser known fialists.

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz and The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar both got a lot of buzz last year. Both are also on my personal Hugo longlist.

I’m really happy to see Renan Bernardo nominated, though I haven’t yet read Disgraced Return of the Kap’s Needle. 

Hache Pueyo is best known for her horror fiction, though both the Hugos and Nebulas have been more willing to nominate horror in recent years. I haven’t read But Not Too Bold yet, so I can’t comment. That said, together with the nomination for Renan Bernardo, this is a good year for Brazilian SFF at the Nebulas.

Wole Talabi is also a frequent presence on SFF awards ballots in recent years and I liked his nominated novella “Descent”.

I haven’t read The Death of Mountains by Jordan Kurella, so I can’t comment on that one either, though I have enjoyed other stories by Jordan Kurella.

It’s notable that unlike the Hugos, which are strongly dominated by Tordotcom‘s novella line, there’s more publisher variety on the Nebula ballot. Three of the six finalists for published by Tordotcom, the other three were published by Dark Matter Ink, Lethe Press and Clarkesworld respectively.

Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, 4 authors of colour, 4 international authors

Best Novelette

“The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends” by Eugenia Triantafyllou is a story I enjoyed a lot and is also on my personal Hugo longlist.

“Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh” by Marie Croke, “We Begin Where Infinity Ends” by Somto Ihezue, “The Name Ziya” by Wen-Yi Lee and  “Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak all passed me by, even though I do follow the magazines in which they appeared.

“Uncertain Sons” by Thomas Ha, finally, appeared in a collection I haven’t read, though I have enjoyed other stories by him.

We do have a nice mix of publishers here with two stories from Clarkesworld and one each from Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Reactor as one story from a collection.

Diversity count: 3 women, 2 men, 1 non-binary,  4 authors of colour, 3 international authors

Best Short Story

I’m afraid that “Through the Machine” by P.A. Cornell, “Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson, “In My Country”, by Thomas Ha, “The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead”, by E.M. Linden, “Because I Held His Name Like a Key” by Aimee Ogden and “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” by Effie Seiberg all passed me by, though I have enjoyed other stories by Thomas Ha, P.A. Cornell, Aimee Ogden and Effie Seiberg.

Once again, we have a nice mix of publishers with Lightspeed, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, PodCastle and Diabolical Plots all represented.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 2 authors of colour, 3 international authors

Best Poem

This is a new category and I’m happy to see both the Hugos and Nebulas recognising poetry now.

I have enjoyed works by Linda D. Addison, Mari Ness, Jennifer Hudak and Angela Liu before, while Jamal Hodge, Casey Aimer and Nico Martinez-Nocito are new to me.

The publishers are less varied here with two finalists each from Strange Horizons and Uncanny, one from Penumbric and one from an anthology, but then there are fewer markets for SFF poetry than for prose short fiction.

Diversity Count: 4 women, 2 men, 1 non-binary, 4 authors of colour, 2 international authors

BTW, I just realised that with Mari Ness being nominated for the Hugo for Best Poem last year, we actually have five German Hugo finalists – Wolfgang Petersen, Roland Emmerich, Simone Heller, Mari Ness and myself – since she’s a dual national. I don’t include Willy Ley or Klaus Janson who were born in Germany, but emigrated decades before they were nominated for a Hugo and were American citizens at the time.

Best Comic  

This is another new-ish Nebula category and again, it’s great to see comics honoured.

Helen of Wyndhorn by Tom King and Bilquis Evely is an amazing comic and also on my personal Hugo ballot. Though it probably won’t win, because lots of people have issues with Tom King.

Jeff Lemire’s work is always worth reading, though I haven’t yet read Fishflies.

Mary Shelley’s School for Monsters: The Killing Stone by Jessica Maison and Anna Wieszczyk is new to me, though the title is pretty self-explanatory.

Carmilla Volume 3: The Eternal by Amy Chu is another comic that does what it says on the tin, namely adapt/reimagine Sheridan LeFanu’s famous novel about a female lesbian vampire.

I wasn’t at all familiar with Second Shift by Kit Anderson, though it looks like a lovely science fiction comic about a maintenance worker on a space station.

Strange Bedfellows by Ariel Slamet Ries is another graphic novel I’m not familiar with. It appears to be the story of a man who can conjure up his dreams in real life, including his lost love.

The Flip Side by Jason Walz is another one I’m not familiar with. It appears to be a story of grief and survival in a world literally turned upside down.

I’m also not familiar with The Stoneshore Register by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker, though it sounds like an interesting story about a journalist investigating all the weird things happening in a strange seaside town.

All in all, this is a pretty interesting ballot. Only two comics are published by mainstream comic publishers, namely Image and Dark Horse. There’s no Marvel or DC at all. Many appear to be standalone graphic novels rather than serialised comics. Several were apparently financed via Kickstarter campaigns.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make comics.

Andre Norton Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction

This category is quite unusual this year, because I’m not familiar at all with most of the finalists at all and had to look them up. Of course, I’m not the target audience for YA at all, but I have usually at least heard of many books and authors. However, I have only heard of two of this year’s Andre Norton finalists and one of them is not an author I normally associate with YA.

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins is the best known finalist in this category by far. It’s a prequel to The Hunger Games and also has a film adpatation coming up.

Jonathan Brazee is an indie author who has been nominated for the Nebula Award before, though for his adult military SF. Gemini Rising is military SF as well, but the YA version.

The Tower by David Anaxagoras is a dystopian YA novel I wasn’t familiar with at all. It’s also an audio book original. We’ve seen audio book originals on the Hugo ballot before, but I don’t recall any on the Nebula ballot until this year, when we suddenly have two – The Tower and a story from PodCastle.

Wishing Well, Wishing Well by Jubilee Cho is a fairy tale style middle grade novel that I’m also not familiar with. Some googling also revealed that Jubilee Cho died much too young at the age of only 25.

Into the Wild Magic by Michelle Knudsen is another middle grade fantasy novel that I’m not familiar with, but then I am even less the target audience for middle grade fiction than for YA.

Goblin Girl by K.A. Mielke is yet another middle grade fantasy novel about a young goblin girl who goes off with some companions to rescue a princess. It looks like a lot of fun. It’s also self-published, so we have two indie novels on this year’s ballot. Of course, we’ve seen indie and self-published books on the Nebula ballot before – the first being The Red First Light by Linda Nagata all the way back in 2013 before self-published authors were even admitted to SFWA. That said, middle grade and YA fiction is still very dominated by traditional publishing, because a lot of it relies on school and library sales and those buyers rely on recommendations and reviews from outlets that rarely review indies.

Middle grade and YA fiction are also very female dominated, so it’s interesting that we have three male and three female finalists this year.

Diversity count:  3 women, 3 men, 1 author of colour, 1 international author, 1 deceased author, 2 indie authors

Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

This is probably the least surprising category on this ballot, because we have a lot of very popular and well regarded movies and TV shows here, many/most of which I also expect to see on the Hugo ballot.

Sinners is an amazing movie and had the most Oscar nominations of all time, though in the end it only won a respectable four Oscars. Honestly, just read my Oscar post for my thoughts on Sinners.

KPop Demon Hunters was hugely successful, a phenomenon and also a genuinely good movie. It just won two Oscars – and a again, see my Oscar post for more thoughts – and I’m not at all surprised to see it on the Ray Bradbury ballot.

Superman was another hugely successful film. What is more, it was the first Superman movie in decades that actually got the character. We had several good Superman portrayals on TV, but we haven’t had a big screen Superman that actually got the character since Christopher Reeve hung up the cape. And to be honest, the last Reeve movies were bad. And yes, the Snyder bros are complaining about James Gunn’s take on Superman, but screw them.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells are hugely beloved and have won every award out there. And the TV adaptation was not only actually good, but also managed to capture the essence of the books. So I’m not at all surprised to see season 1 of the TV show nominated.

Season 1 of Severance gained a lot of accolades and acclaim, though it wasn’t for me. Season 2 seemed to maintain the standards set by season 1, so I’m not surprised to see an episode of season 2 nominated. It will very likely make the Hugo ballot as well, which means I will have to give it another try.

Pluribus also gained a lot of acclaim and buzz last year, so I’m not surprised to see it nominated, though I haven’t watched it, because I was busy with other things, when it came out and the premise didn’t appeal to me that much. Though Pluribus will probably make the Hugo ballot as well, so I will give it a try then.

I’m a bit surprised that Andor didn’t make the ballot, since that’s the one Disney era Star Wars show that everybody seems to love. But then, there are only so many slots.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies and TV shows.

Best Game Writing

I can’t really say anything about the finalists in this category, since I’m not a gamer. That said, I chatted a bit with one of the writers/developers of Hades at the virtual 2021 Hugo afterparty and he was super-nice, so I’m glad to see Hades II get a nomination.

All six Ray Bradbury Award finalists and one game finalist – Hollow Knight – come with an asterisk that denotes “provisional nomination; awaiting acceptance and response on LLM-use”, which means that these finalists have not yet officially accepted and confirmed that they did not use generative AI, which the Nebulas don’t allow.

The lack of response in the film and TV category isn’t that surprising, since Hollywood tends to ignore genre awards like the Hugo or the Nebula. As for Hollow Knight, I don’t think it’s a game by a big studio, so they probably just didn’t get around to replying yet.

Meanwhile, File 770 points out that one game finalist without an asterisk – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – had a gaming award win rescinded over generative AI use last December, so it doesn’t meet the Nebula qualifications either. It will be interesting to see how SFWA will handle this.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.

As for trends, horror continues to have a moment, since there are horror finalists in several categories. We also have a couple of “magic school” stories, the return of robot/AI POV stories and retellings continue to be a thing. We also have self-published works on the ballot for the first time since 2018. Finally, we also have two audio original finalists.

All in all, this is a good and diverse Nebula ballot and also one that’s bigger than before due to the addition of the poetry and comics categories.

*International authors means authors who have a nationality other than US-American and/or who are living and working outside the US. In cases of American authors living outside the US or dual nationals, I counted them as international authors.

Parts 2 and 3 of my con report about the 2026 Marché Noir convention are coming and I’m also working on a post with seasonal photos. But today, I’m taking a break for current events, because both the finalists for the 2025 Nebula Awards and the winners of the 2026 Academy Awards were announced last night.

I wasn’t awake for either announcement, since I had been out and about all Sunday, so I was tired. What is more, I had to get up early on Monday morning – or so I thought. Since it turned out that the appointment I had on Monday morning was cancelled at the last minute.

Besides, I’ve been feeling somewhat “meh” about the Oscars in recent years. It used to be that I was super excited about the Oscars and would watch live, but nowadays it’s enough for me to just wait for the winner announcement in the morning. And with the Internet you can easily look up all the winners, including the ones in the technical categories, and are not beholden on whatever nonsense German radio chooses to report the next morning.

However, I was a little surprised about how “meh” I felt about the Oscars this year, considering that I’ve actually seen and enjoyed several of the nominated movies, which often isn’t the case. Plus, the 2026 Academy Award nominations showed a lot of love for SFF movies – something which again often isn’t the case. On the other hand, we’ve been here before and have seen great SFF get lots of nominations, only to lose out to far conventional fare.

And that’s exactly what happened this year. Sinners may have been the most nominated film of all time with sixteen nominations – and it would have been a most worthy winner – but in the end, it only took home four Oscars – for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Original Score. All of these wins are highly deserved – particularly Michael B. Jordan’s win, considering that Jordan has been criminally overlooked by the Oscars in the past. Nonetheless, I expected Sinners to take home more Oscars in the artistic and technical categories like production design, costume design, make-up, special effects, editing, etc… However, Frankenstein took many of those categories – and to be fair, it is a highly deserving winner.

However, it’s also notable that many of the major categories went to Sinners‘ hottest rival, One Battle After Another, which had thirteen nominations and took home six Oscars – for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, Best Casting (new category that’s probably more of interest to industry insiders than viewers) and Best Editing. The difference is striking – Sinners won a fourth of its nominations, while One Battle After Another won almost half – especially in the categories where Sinners and One Battle After Another were directly up against each other such as Best Picture or Best Director.

What’s also striking is that at least as far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t even a contest. Sinners is simply a much better film than One Battle After Another.  Sinners is an amazing, genre-transcending film that surprised pretty much everybody with how great it was. One Battle After Another is a lesser adaptation of a lesser Thomas Pynchon novel. In a year, where the main competition was ye olde Oscar bait, I would probably have rooted for One Battle After Another, simply because it could have been much worse. However, Sinners blows One Battle After Another out of the water in every respect.

Now I am a huge Thomas Pynchon fan, ever since I read V. in a class postmodern literature at uni, and have read all of his books.  Now at the time, there only were V., Gravity’s Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland – Mason & Dixon came out about a year later. And of these four, Vineland was by far the weakest to the point that it wasn’t even a contest. When One Battle After Another came out, my first response “Of all the Pynchon novels to adapt, you chose that one? Honestly?” What is more, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson stripped out much of the weirdness and Pynchon-ness of the novel, so we have a lesser adaptation of a lesser Pynchon.

As for why One Battle After Another won Best Picture and Best Director over Sinners, I guess a film about political disillusionment and betrayal set on the US West Coast appealed to more Academy members than a film about blues, racism and vampires with a majority black cast set in the Mississippi Delta during the Prohibition. Perhaps the Academy, in spite of all the advances of recent years, isn’t yet so far to give its top honour to genre film, a horror film at that, with a majority black cast. We have seen films with majority black casts winning Best Picture in recent years, most notably Moonlight in 2017, but Moonlight is a movie about drugs and social issues and in many ways a very typical Oscar bait movie, except that it had a majority black cast. It also didn’t have vampires. As for why Paul Thomas Anderson won Best Director over Ryan Coogler, Paul Thomas Anderson has been nominated for an Oscar several times, yet he never won. So I suspect that many Academy members felt that it was his turn. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone won an Oscar for a lesser film that they should have won for a different films years before. That said, Paul Thomas Anderson’s films never really interested me to the point that I just realised that I attributed two films to him that were actually directed by Alexander Payne. So no, I can’t blame Anderson for The Holdovers. I also only just realised that One Battle After Another wasn’t the first time Paul Thomas Anderson adapted a Thomas Pynchon novel – he also adapted Inherent Vice. So I guess he is a fellow Pynchon fan.

That said, the fact that Sinners got as many nominations as it did, even if it only won a fourth of them, is a win in itself, because only a few years ago, a film like Sinners – a horror film with a majority black cast – wouldn’t even have gotten a look in. 2026 was a good year for horror at the Oscars in general, because in addition to Sinners, Frankenstein also took home three Oscars – for production design, costume design and make-up – and Weapons took home one for Amy Madigan for Best Supporting Actress. All wins are highly deserved and particularly Amy Madigan’s win makes me super-happy (though I would also have been happy for Wummi Mosaku), because I’ve been a fan of hers since I saw her in Streets of Fire a whopping forty-two years ago. Amy Madigan is one of these actors who are always great, but never really get the recognition they deserve, so I’m glad that she finally got the Oscar she should have gotten long ago. Now can we also agree that Streets of Fire is a fucking masterpiece that was unjustly ignored?

2026 was also a good year for SFF films in general, because KPop Demon Hunters also got to take home two Oscars, for Best Animated Film and Best Original Song. Both are well deserved and KPop Demon Hunters is a great film, though personally it made me sad that Jem, which was my generation’s animated girl-aimed pop star fantasy, never got even an inch of the acclaim KPop Demon Hunters got. Personally, I also preferred “I Lied to You” from Sinners to “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters (and “Rocky Road to Dublin” from Sinners was also really, really good), though both are great songs in their own way. It’s also telling that two of the best film songs of 2025 are both songs with supernatural effects. “I Lied to You” pierces the veil between past, present and future and attracts vampires, while “Golden” repels demons and strengthens the mystic barrier that keeps them out of our world. Come to think of it, Sinners and KPop Demon Hunters are actually a lot more similar than you’d assume, since both are films about the power of music and how it can attract or banish monsters.

We even had two more SFF films winning Oscars, because Avatar: Fire and Ash won Best Special Effects (probably deserved, though I really, really don’t like Avatar and haven’t watched any of the sequels) and the very sweet The Girl Who Cried Pearls won Best Animated Short.

As for the other two acting awards, Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for her performance as Ann Hathaway (not the actress, but William Shakespeare’s wife – and yes, I saw someone who apparently Buckley was playing Hathaway, the actress) in Hamnet. I’m not happy about this, because I just don’t like Jessie Buckley very much. She’s one of these actors who seemingly pop up out of nowhere to be in everything, even though there’s very little about them that’s interesting. The fact that she said in an interview that she hates cats and forced her partner to give up his cats didn’t endear her to me either. However, the Oscars love movies about the life of William Shakespeare. That said, I’m not sure whom I would have preferred to win in that category, since I really hate Yorgos Lanthimos (if you wonder why I never link to reviews of and articles about his films at the Speculative Fiction Showcase, that’s why), so Emma Stone was out. And have no idea what the films the other nominated actresses were in even are about. I guess 2025 was just a dud year for leading roles for women or at least what Hollywood considers leading roles.

Best Supporting Actor went to Sean Penn for his role in One Battle After Another. In this category, I would have vastly preferred Delroy Lindo for his role in Sinners or Jacob Elordi for his role in Frankenstein.

Coincidentally, one of the silliest reactions to the 2026 Oscar winners I saw on social media was someone complaining that Michael B. Jordan won an Oscar for killing white people. First of all, those white people were murderous KKK members and/or vampires and secondly, they’re not really dead. It’s just a movie and the blood was Kryolan. As for people on social media having problems telling movies from reality, I also saw several people complaining that One Battle After Another is a film about Antifa and a celebration of far left radicalism, which again made me wonder if they actually watched the movie. Especially since you know that those same people would have complained bitterly, if Sinners had won Best Picture instead.

Predictably, the “In Memoriam” segment left out several people who should have been included such as James Van Der Beek, Brigitte Bardot, Eric Dane, Bud Cort, Dharmendra. Malcolm Jamal Warner, Prunella Scales, etc…. James Van Der Beek, Eric Dane, Malcolm Jamal Warner and Prunella Scales probably fell victim to the fact that they are best known for their TV roles, though all of them also had movie credits. And while Hollywood may still strictly divide between films and TV, the average viewer really doesn’t and particularly James Van Der Beek and Malcolm Jamal Warner meant a lot to an entire generation, as did Shannon Doherty and Michelle Trachtenberg, who were also excluded in the respective years. There also really is no excuse for omitting Brigitte Bardot, Bud Cort and Dharmendra, since they were all primarily film actors. Brigitte Bardot was probably excluded because of her later in life far right turn (and when the Césars included her in their “In Memoriam”, as they absolutely should have, there were boos), but excluding people for their political views is a slippery slope and plenty of US rightwingers would have been included and have been in previous years. That said, the Academy also excluded Alain Delon, who was not far right, from last year’s “In Memoriam”, though maybe they just have issues with French actors. Dharmendra was probably excluded for being a Bollywood star, though I really have no explanation for Bud Cort. Though at least they remembered Drew Struzan, the artist who painted all of your favourite movie posters back when movie posters were still painted.

That said, I always have massive issues with who is and isn’t excluded in the “In Memoriam” segment for years. I remember how furious I was when George Nader, who was a huge star in Germany due to his performance in the Jerry Cotton movies and who actually won a Golden Globe, was excluded in 2002, whereas people I found a lot less memorable were included. Last year, the Academy excluded Tony Todd, even though he absolutely was a movie actor, though he likely appeared in the wrong kind of movies for the Academy. And let’s not forget that they omitted Bill Paxton twice – first, because he died very shortly before the Oscars, when the “In Memoriam” segment was likely already finished and then again the next year.

This has gotten longer than expected, so I’ll discuss the Nebula finalists in another post.

This year’s Marché Noir Retro Fair took place on Sunday, March 1, in Dorsten on the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet. I attended for first time last year (see my three part con report here) and enjoyed the experience, so I wanted to go again. Besides, Marché Noir has one of the coolest venues imaginable, the washing hall of a former coal mine.

What is more, I’ve also been experiencing a sort of cabin fever, because nigh constant snow and frost kept mostly kept me inside (with a few exceptions, two of which are chronicled here and here) until mid February. When the temperatures finally rose above freezing, we got a lot of rain, which was even more unpleasant than the snow.

In the last week of February, the temperatures rose rapidly by twenty degrees or so from frozen winter to early spring, which was rather annoying, because the rise was way too fast. Plus, I’m having a heat pump installed – the heat pump my Dad wanted to have installed before he died – and while it is supposed to save me money, it’s also a massive hassle, because the contractors have torn my basement apart, my washing machine and half the pantry are inaccessible and I have to use my parents’ old shower which is so narrow it’s hard to turn around. What is more, there’s an open chasm in the middle of my terrace where the pipes for the heat pump will go. The construction work is also taking longer than expected, because one guy fell ill and apparently there is no replacement for him. And while the contractors are working, I’m also tied to the house, since I have to let the contractors in and don’t want to leave them alone for too long. So I was glad for a distraction from all that nonsense. And a con and a roadtrip can be an excellent distraction.

Autobahn A1

I set out at roughly twenty past six in the morning. The trip to Dorsten takes about two and a half hours and the con was set to open at ten AM. However, I wanted to have breakfast on route, so I needed some additional time. And should I arrive too early, there was plenty to explore on the premises of the decommisioned Fürst Leopold Mine.

It was still dark, when I set out – the sun currently rises at approx. thirteen past seven AM. However, the sky was already turning light in the East. I made my way to Groß Mackenstedt and drove onto Autobahn A1 in southbound direction. Because it was so early in the morning and a Sunday besides, the Autobahn was mostly empty. I made good time, though there was a speed limit of first 100 kilometers per hour and later 120 kilometers per hour because of the bad condition of the tarmac. But once I passed junction Alhorner Heide, the speed limit was lifted and I could drive as fast as I wanted.  And since there was so little traffic, I drove up to 150 or even 160 kilometers per hour, which is faster than I normally go. But then the conditions were perfect for going very fast.

Outside, it was gradually getting lighter. By the time the sun rose at thirteen past seven, I had just passed service station Dammer Berge with its iconic bridge restaurant. I made a brief pitstop to drink some water and eat a piece of chocolate and drove onwards. By the time I had been driving for an hour, I had already passed Osnabrück and was crossing the Teutoburg Forest, one of the more scenic parts of the route.

Autobahn A43 and the Problem with the Münsterland

I continued to make good time. At shortly before eight, I passed Münster and changed onto Autobahn A43 at the intersection Münster South. By now, it was just about time for breakfast.

Now the problem with the Münsterland is that it’s thinly populated and that there’s a lot of it. From Bremen until you hit the Ruhrgebiet, you’re basically driving through a whole lot of nothing. Of course, there are several exits on the A1 and A43, but many of the towns listed on the exit signs are actually quite a bit away from the Autobahn. And sometimes, they’re not towns at all, but small villages. There are Autohöfe, of course, but Autohöfe are usually not great for breakfast.

Along the A43 or at least the part of it that I drove, there are only two towns of reasonable size close by the Autobahn, Dülmen and Haltern by the Lake. Last year, when heading to Marché Noir, I stopped for breakfast in Dülmen and since I already knew there was a good bakery café in Dülmen, which was open on a Sunday (bakeries are allowed to open on Sundays in Germany, but not all of them do), I decided that I might as well stop there for breakfast again.

Breakfast in Dülmen 

So I left the A43 at the exit Dülmen and headed to a local branch of Bakery Geiping, a bakery chain that is active all over the Münsterland and the northern Ruhrgebiet.

Germany is a country of bakeries and it used to be that every village and every town had their own bakery, often more than one. Eventually, some bakeries started opening branches in grocery stores and neighbouring villages, while other remained small. Then one by one, the small independent bakeries started dying off, while the chain bakeries steadily expanded. Nowadays, the situation with bakeries is as it was with grocery chains into the 1990s. There are lots of regional chains that are ubiquitous in one region and completely unknown elsewhere. In my region, the local champions are Hansemann and Brüne-Meyer, but we also have Haferkamp from Bremen, Tönjes from Ganderkese, Weymann from Twistringen, Behrens-Meyer from Garrel and Müller & Egerer from Oldenburg. Further north, we have Sam’s Urban Bakery from decidedly non-urban Fischerhude (the owner is not called Sam either, but Samann), while further south, there’s Bertermann from Minden.

In the Ruhrgebiet, you have Kamp, originally from Hagen, but by now you can find their shops all over Germany, particularly in train stations, Grobe from Dortmund and in the northern part Geiping, originally from Lüdinghausen in the Münsterland. Dülmen is a neighbouring town of Lüdinghausen, so they have Geiping as well as a local chain called Bakery Grote. However, the Dülmen branch of Geiping was closer to the Autobahn than any branch of Grote, so Geiping it was. And judging by the line of customers that stretched out onto the parking lot, even though it was barely past eight AM on a Sunday morning, it was the right decision, because the locals clearly like Geiping.

Since I was eating in, I could bypass the line of people buying fresh rolls for their Sunday breakfast and go straight inside. I had scrambled eggs with vegetables, a slice of bread and a roll, orange juice and latte macchiato. And looking at my post from last year, I had the exact same breakfast – after all, it was tasty.

Breakfast of Champions of Grayskull: He-Man and Skeletor are about to battle it out over my scrambled eggs with vegetables.

And yes, I brought some action figures along for impromptu toy photography. But more on that later.

Service Station Hohe Mark

After breakfast, I set off again and drove back onto Autobahn A43. I had used the toilet at the bakery café, but I was feeling a bit of pressure on my bladder, so I stopped once more at service station Hohe Mark to use their toilets.

Hohe Mark is fairly small, as service stations go, but I came across this statue on the playground next to the restaurant.

The so-called Töddenläufer statue by Münster based sculptor Werner-Jakob Korsmeier at service station Hohe Mark on the A43. The poor fellow looks a bit pained by his heavy load.

The statue depicts a so-called Töddenläufer, a wandering cloth merchant. These wandering merchants were active in the 17th, 18th and early 19th century, taking linen woven in Westfalia to the neighbouring Netherlands to sell it there. There were entire dynasties of wandering merchants and they had their own secret language.  The Napoleonic wars and later the rise of railroads put an end to the Tödden trade, though some of the merchant dynasties went on to found clothing store chains that can still be found on high streets in Germany and the Netherlands and beyond to this day. C&A, Peek & Cloppenburg, Vroom & Dreesmann or the now defunct Boecker clothing chain all had their roots in the Tödden trade.

Fun fact: As a teen, I dismissed Peek & Cloppenburg and Boecker as “boring clothes for old people”, though I liked C&A and Vroom & Dreesmann. These days, I rare go to C&A, because the quality is terrible. Peek & Cloppenburg actually has decent quality, though it’s still not my preferred store, because the clothes are still a little too boring for me. Boecker and Vroom & Dreesmann are both gone, fallen victim to changing buying habits.

Most Autobahn service stations are quite plain and utilitarian. Interesting architecture or public art at service stations is rare, which is why I was surprised to come across this statue at the relatively small service station Hohe Mark. I couldn’t find out when this particular statue was erected, though I suspect it was around 1981, when this leg of the A43 was completed.

Until now, Autobahn A43 was still firmly in the rural Münsterland. However, at the next exit Haltern on the Lake, I passed the “Metropolitan Region Ruhr” sign, which marks the beginning of the Ruhrgebiet. Now personally, I always assumed that the rather rural town Haltern on the Lake was still part of the Münsterland. However, Haltern on the Lake is part of Recklinghausen county and Recklinghausen is Ruhrgebiet, so Haltern is considered part of the Ruhrgebiet as well.

That said, even Dorsten, where I was headed still feels more like Münsterland than Ruhrgebiet, except that Dorsten has or rather used to have a mine. Coincidentally, Haltern on the Lake has a mine as well – Mine Auguste Victoria, which was one of the last coalmines in Germany to shut down in 2015.  Most of Mine August Victoria is in the city of Marl, but some of the mineshafts also extended into neighbouring Haltern.

Autobahn A52 and Marl

Talking of Marl, at the intersection Marl North, I changed onto Autobahn A52 for the last leg of the trip.  Now Marl is very clearly Ruhrgebiet and a center of the chemical industry. In fact, the A52 directly passes Marl Chemical Park.

Interestingly, there is another town called Marl in Germany, though this one is located further north on the shores of the Dümmer Lake. When my Mom was at a physical therapy clinic in the spa town of Bad Iburg in the Teutoburg Forest and Dad and I drove to visit her, we drove past the other Marl. There even was a sign pointing to some kind of chemical plant. At the time, I had no idea that there were two towns called Marl and said, “Wait a minute, Marl? But that’s in the Ruhrgebiet. Surely, we’re not that far south.”

As for how I knew that Marl was in the Ruhrgebiet, well, it turns out that even though I assumed last year that I had never been in Dorsten and on the Autobahn A43 before, it turns out that I have been there after all.

Because when my Dad worked in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in the 1980s, he also often had to go to Antwerp in Belgium, because that’s where the two ships for which he was the technical supervisors were actually moored, whenever they were in port. My Mom and I visited Dad during the school holidays. And when he had to go to Antwerp, he always took us along, especially since I loved Antwerp dearly. Sometimes, we’d drive straight home from Antwerp – or straight to Antwerp. The route to Antwerp led through the Ruhrgebiet. I don’t remember all the Ruhrgebiet cities we passed – and as I said before, in Ruhrgebiet all the cities blend into each other – though I remember that we crossed the Rhine at Duisburg, because Duisburg was the homebase of Horst Schimanski, the two-fisted working class cop who shook up the sale world of the Tatort crime series. Even today, Schimanski is still the first thing I associate with Duisburg.

Last October, I traveled to Belgium to attend the “Vintage Toys of the Universe” toy con in Geel, though I booked a hotel in Antwerp, because it’s still my favourite city in the whole wide world (I initially wrote universe, but I suspect Trantor, Coruscant and Lankhmar might be even cooler). And yes, I crossed the Rhine at Duisburg and while I was driving along Autobahn A40 headed for the Rhine bridge, “Faust auf Faust” (Fist on Fist) by Klaus Lage, which was the title song of the Schimanski Tatort “Zahn um Zahn” (A Tooth for a Tooth), came on on the radio, just as I passed the exit Duisburg-Ruhrort, title of the first ever Schimanski Tatort, and it was just fucking magical.

I didn’t write a report about that trip, because I came down with the flu immediately after the con and sick for two weeks. On the way to Belgium, I also did not take what my GPS Else thinks is the fastest route, but instead opted to travel straight through the heart of the Ruhrgebiet. But on the way back, I got delayed by two massive traffic jams, one in the Netherlands and one just after Duisburg, so it was late and I just wanted to go home, so I followed Else’s instructions and took the fastest route. And Else directed me onto the A52 and A43 past Dorsten and Marl. Dorsten still doesn’t ring a bell from back then, but then it’s just a town name on an exit sign. Nor does the rest of the A43, probably because teen Cora dismissed it as rural and boring. But I definitely remembered Marl and its Chemical Park with the various plants lit up by night, which is when I realised that yes, I have been here before.

Autobahn A52 doesn’t just pass Marl Chemical Park, but it also passes directly by the Fatih Mosque, which was built in 1992 as one of the first pupose-built mosques in all of Germany, catering to Turkish immigrants, of which there are many in the Ruhrgebiet. As for why the mosque is located directly next to the Autobahn – in 1992 that was the only plot of land that the Turkish community was able to buy, because no one else would sell to them. Even today, it’s often difficult for Muslim or other non-Judeo-Christian religions to get permission to build a mosque or a temple, which is why mosques, Hindu temples, Buddhist temples, Sikh temples, etc.. are often located on industrial estates and often look unremarkable. I don’t get this mindset at all, since I feel a architecturally interesting house of worship is a boon to any city, regardless of faith. I also inherited my Mom’s fascination for places of worship. She’d never pass a church she didn’t want to visit, but she also never passed a synagogue, mosque, Buddhist or Hindu temple she didn’t want to visit either, and I’m the same.  But “Church pretty, Mosque or Hindu Temple ugly” is sadly a common sentiment in Germany.

I drove past the Faith Mosque on my way to Dorsten, but on the way back I left the A52 in Marl, looking for something, and chanced to drive directly past the mosque, so I took this picture:

The Fatih Mosque in Marl, built in 1992. Note the Turkish and German flags outside the mosque and the Christmas lights repurposed as Ramadan lights strung along the fence.

Come on, how can you dislike this building? It’s pretty and it serves a genuine need for Turkish immigrant population of Marl. I’m not religious at all, but beautiful buildings are one of the best things religion has done for humanity.

Dorsten is the next exit after Marl, though the A52 doesn’t go directly past/through Dorsten, but swings south towards Gelsenkirchen and fucking Gladbeck. So you have to drive along Bundestraße B225 past fields and industrial estates along the Datteln Hamm canal and the river Lippe.  It always surprises me that the river Lippe flows along the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet, since I mainly associate the river Lippe with the former principality of Schaumburg-Lippe, which is further east.

Last year, I ran into the problem that my GPS Else, which can’t be updated anymore, didn’t recognise the actual street adress of the Fürst Leopold Mine in Dorsten, because the mine hadn’t yet been fully decommissioned and converted when Else was programmed, so the street didn’t exist. And the street I used instead was very long, so Else led me to the wrong place.

This year, I was prepared and entered a street much closer to the former mine – literally called “Zechenstraße” (mine street) – that already existed when Else was programmed. So Else led me to the mine and I found a parking space on one of the parking lots next to the premises of the mine rather than in the adjacent business park, which meant less walking. By now, it was ten to ten and the con was about to open. But that’s a story for part 2.

We’ve barely had time to recover from Tuesday’s presentation of the first two Masters of the Universe movie toys at Nuremberg Toy Fair that Mattel dropped the next bombshell. Because the full first wave of Masters of the Universe Chronicles movie figures was revealed today.

This time around, the reveal wasn’t at Nuremberg Toy Fair, though I’m pretty sure the toys are all on display there in the walled off area that normal people cannot penetrate, but comes via Gerrard Hall at the US magazine Entertainment Weekly.

The article, complete with photos of actors Nicholas Galitzine, Camila Mendes and Alison Brie posing with their respective plastic counterparts, is here.

For a better look at the actual figures, Toy Habits has you covered.

Planet Eternia also reports on the newly revealed movie action figures. 

Mega Jay Retro also shares his thoughts on the new figures and I suspect the other ToyTubers and fan sites will weigh in as well.

So what do I think about this first wave of Masters of the Universe movie figures? Well, I’m glad you asked (or not), cause here are my thoughts.

The first wave of Masters of the Universe Chronicles figures consists of a solid seven figures plus one mount – note that a normal Masterverse or Origins or Cartoon Collection wave consists of three figures, four at most. Of course, it’s also possible that we’re looking at more than one wave here.

The Heroic Warriors are represented by He-Man, Teela, Man-at-Arms and Battle Cat. The Evil Warriors are represented by Skeletor, Evil-Lyn, Trap-Jaw and Tri-Klops. We already saw Man-at-Arms and Evil-Lyn in person plus He-Man and Tri-Klops on the cross sell yesterday. Trap-Jaw, Skeletor, Teela and Battle Cat are new.

It’s a solid assortment of characters and you can play out some mighty battles with those. Though it is notable that all seven characters (excluding Battle Cat for obvious reasons) are human or at least humanoid, which means that at least some parts (hands, feet, arms, etc…) can be reused, though these toys seem to have a lot of new tooling, which means a big investment. Non-human characters like Roboto, Beast-Man or Spikor, all of whom require a lot of new parts, are not included in this first wave. Whether we will also get deluxe figures (often two-packs or oversized characters such as Beast-Man or Roboto), vehicles and a Castle Grayskull playset remains to be seen.

So let’s take a look at the individual figures:

He-Man

A miracle has happened and Mattel has finally given us a good He-Man headsculpt. Considering that every single He-Man headsculpt in the Masterverse line so far has had issues, culiminating in the infamous Thunder Punch Uschi (so named, because the head looks more like German actress Uschi Glas than He-Man). And instead of quickly retiring that headsculpt, Mattel even doubled down and gave us Flying Fists Uschi.

This He-Man figure, however, looks good. He has a determined expression on his face without looking constipated, and he looks like Nicholas Galitzine did in the trailer.

We also get a better look at the costume, which hearkens back to previous He-Man costumes, most notably the 200X He-Man costume, but also remains its own thing. Instead of the traditional furry loincloth, He-Man is wearing a leather kilt now, probably because it’s easier to move around in without accidentally flashing your opponent or a theatre full of people. The harness has thicker straps – again, because they have stay on the actor while moving around and fighting – and the straps are leather rather than the more common metal – again likely for practical reasons.

I’m also very glad that they stuck with the classic revealing costume for He-Man rather than armouring and covering up the body, which the second season of the 200X cartoon as well as Masters of the Universe Revolution and the CGI He-Man cartoon did. Because apparently, surveys done during the 200X era revealed that kids, who were the target audience after all, didn’t understand why He-Man was running around in his underwear, since they hadn’t grown up with the Frank Frazetta sword and sorcery aesthetic like the generation that made Masters of the Universe a billion dollar brand. Not that I don’t like more covered up He-Man looks like Snake Armour He-Man, the CGI He-Man or the final He-Man look from Masters of the Universe Revolution (and hey, Mattel, we still haven’t gotten that He-Man as a figure), but I’m still glad they went with the classic look first. And inspire of what some dudes – and it’s inevitably dudes – say, Nicholas Galitzine does fill out that harness and leather kilt nicely.

The figure comes with the Power Sword and if you look at the box, you can see that he also comes with interchangeable hands. He can also hold up his sword in the famous “By the Power of Grayskull” pose, which – shockingly – quite a few He-Man figures can’t do. He apparently doesn’t have a shield or battle axe. Of course, it’s possible that he doesn’t use them in the movie, but pretty much every He-Man figure ever made came with shield and battle axe in addition to the Power Sword. Cost savings measures?

ETA: He-Man.org has more photos of the figures, including a shot where you can see that He-Man can holster his sword on his back, which is always a plus.

Battle Cat 

I can’t tell if this is a reuse of the Masterverse Battle Cat/Panthor body, but he is fully articulated and looks great. Note that the original 1982 Battle Cat had no articulation at all. He-Man can also sit on him well, which is something else that’s not always the case with Battle Cat figures.

The Masterverse Battle Cat and Panthor are notoriously difficult for the figures to sit on (which suggests that this might be a new sculpt) and the Masters of the Universe Classics She-Ra figure infamously couldn’t sit on Swift Wind.

We also get our first look at Battle Cat’s mask – we only saw him without his mask in the trailer – and it looks very much like you’d expect Battle Cat’s mask to look. Under the mask, we don’t get a fluffy Cringer, but a ferocious tiger head. It looks great, though, the jaw seems to be articulated and he seems to have these glassy eyes that we saw on figures like the Masterverse New Eternia Mer-Man or the Masterverse Mosquitor.

All in all, a really great looking Battle Cat

Man-at-Arms 

We already saw this figure yesterday at Nuremberg Toy Fair and this higher resolution look pretty much confirms what we saw yesterday.

He looks good, his armour has a lot of detail and is symmetrical, which Duncan’s armour traditionally isn’t. The armoured parts appear to be tarnished gold, whereas they looked more silver in the trailer. It’s notable that the green bodysuit underneath has padding at the abdomen, which makes sense, cause that’s a body part you’d want to protect. He has a utility belt, but no loincloth or kilt – which is a change from most other versions of the character. He also doesn’t wear gloves and there is no fur edging on the armour.

With regard to weapons, he has his iconic mace and a blaster. I still can’t make out what that yellow tool hanging on the left side of his belt is.

Teela 

Teela is wearing the white and gold bodysuit we’ve seen her wear in the trailer and in the location footage of Adam and Teela on Earth that we saw last year. It’s a mix between her mercenary outfit from Masters of the Universe Revelation and her traditional costume.

And yes, it was pretty clear that Teela wasn’t going to wear the white and gold bathing suit of the original figure and Filmation cartoon or the brass bikini she wore in some of the early comics or the mini-skirted outfit from the 200X cartoon. Nothing to do with “Woke Hollywood hates beautiful women” and everything to do with actors need to be able to move and Teela has lots of running and fighting scenes. Extremely skimpy costumes are impractical for action scenes, because you need places for padding to protect actors and stunt performers from injury and you also don’t want bouncing breasts and flashing nipples. Besides, this costume looks great and it’s very recognisably Teela.

What’s interesting is that the photo shows the Teela figure with her hair in a bun and sporting her traditional tiara, whereas we saw her with open hair in the trailer. If you look closely at the photo of a thrilled Camila Mendes holding her plastic counterpart, you can see that Teela actually comes with two heads – hair down and hair up. I can’t say much about the face sculpt, since we only see it at an angle.

The close-up of the figure shows her wielding a long rifle, which is uncommon for Teela, though we’re sure she knows how to use one. She also has a blaster holstered on her hip and if you look at the boxed figure, you can see that she also has a sword. The sword is a traditional weapon for Teela. It’s interesting that she doesn’t have a shield, even though pretty much every version of the figure ever made had one. Nor does she have her snake staff. She doesn’t have the snake armour either, but then Teela almost never wears it in any cartoons or comics anyway and the snake armour is actually an artefact from the very early days of the vintage toyline, when the Teela action figure was supposed to represent two different characters – Teela and the Goddess.

Definitely a good looking Teela. And yes, Teela is still billed as “Heroic Warrior Goddess” on her packaging.

ETA: Here’s an Instagram reel of actress Camila Mendes unboxing her plastic counterpart. 

Skeletor

Whatever you think of Jared Leto – and personally I would vastly prefer someone else in the role, perhaps Lee Pace, since he can play demented villains very well, is a genuine geek and would make a great Keldor as well – this is a great looking Skeletor figure.

It’s notable that he does not wear his traditional chest harness, but instead opts for a kind of collar piece to which his cape is attached, showing off his muscular blue chest. And yes, I wonder how they got that thing to stay put during fight scenes. The cape probably also was an issue during fight scenes, because capes tend to cause problems in real life.

The collar piece, belt and loincloth, cloak and hood, boots and braces are all purple and have a lot of detailing. The hood, cape and loincloth have some kind of weave pattern and the cape appears to be plastic rather than fabric like Evil-Lyn’s.

The blue body has a lot of shading. The skull face looks great with a very menacing grin and red eyes, though it’s (human) bone coloured rather than the more traditional yellowish green. Which is interesting, because Trap-Jaw, whom we see later, does have a green face. Since both Skeletor/Keldor and Trap-Jaw/Kronis are Gar, I always assumed that their faces are green, because Gar have green bones.

That said, Skeletor’s skullface was (human) bone coloured in the 200X cartoon, which seems to have been a big influence on the movie costume, and also in Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution.

With regard to weapons, Skeletor of course has his Havoc Staff and a great looking Havoc Staff this is. It looks more organic than other versions of this iconic weapon – like something some ancient Eternian shaman cobbled together from the skull of a dead ram and a piece of wood. The eyes appear to glow – probably some kind of rhinestone.

What’s interesting is that this Skeletor only appears to have his Havoc Staff and no other accessories. There is no sword – and I for one would have loved to see a movie version of the dual 200X sword – nor is there an axe or a shield, all of which Skeletor has used on occasion. Again, it’s quite possible that he doesn’t use a sword or an axe in the movie, but I can’t help but wonder whether not giving him any additional weapons were more cost-saving measures. A magic blast effect would have been nice as well – especially since we do see him using magic blasts in the trailer. Ah well, I guess Mythic Legions magic effects will work for him as well.

ETA: Here is another Instagram reel of the Mattel toy designer and the movie costume designer discussing the Skeletor figure. You can see the back of Skeletor’s cape, which has even more detailing. It doesn’t seem to be fabric, so how did they make it poseable? I hope it’s not thin, rubbery plastic, since that tends to tear. The costume designer also explains that he moved away from Skeletor’s traditional bone motif to more of a snake motif.

Coincidentally, I can’t help but noticing that they did not film Jared Leto presented with his figure, quite possibly because they try to downplay his involvement as much as possible, plus no one wants to see what Leto would do to an action figure.

Evil-Lyn

We already saw her revealed yesterday at Nuremberg Toy Fair, but this is actually a much better look at the figure and her colouring.

We can now see that her armour and head dress are black and dark blue and have an almost Giger-esque organic look with lots of detailing. She also has thigh high boots and appears to be wearing black and blue camouflage leggings or tights. She also wears a bracelet and several rings. Nowadays, purple is the colour most associated with Lyn, though the original toy wore Teela’s outfit in blue, and Lyn wore dark blue in Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution as well.

Under her headpiece, Lyn has short white hair as is traditional for the character. The facial expression still looks a little bland, though she does look like Alison Brie. The photo of a smiling Alison Brie holding the figure is hilarious BTW, because she looks so deceptively harmless – more like Pete’s annoying wife from Mad Men than the most intelligent and potentially dangerous of all Evil Warriors.

For accessories, Evil-Lyn has her staff and it looks great. There is a lot of detailing on the shaft and the orb appears to be translucent and possibly glittery. No indication if it glows in the dark like Lyn’s staff often does. She doesn’t seem to have any other accessories, but then Lyn usually doesn’t. The 200X and Classics figures has a dagger, but that’s not traditional for her. That said, a magic blast effect would be nice, but a Mythic Legions magic effect should work nicely and indeed my Masterverse Lyn has already borrowed one.

ETA: Here’s an Instagram reel of Alison Brie unboxing her plastic counterpart. The cape appears to be in two parts and we also get a glimpse of the packaging and the Evil Warrior packaging is mirrored and in purple, whereas the Heroic Warriors get black and red.

Michael Breitmeir of Planet Eternia has a better look at the packaging on Instagram.  

Tri-Klops

We got a glimpse of Tri-Klops on the cross sell of Man-at-Arms’ box at Nuremberg yesterday, but we now get a much better look at the figure.

He has a determined or grumpy expression, which is actually pretty common for Tri-Klops and he wears his iconic visor. We can see the red eye and it appears to be translucent. We seen any of his other eyes yet, though traditionally the other two are blue and green. Though everybody prefers the red eye anyway.

Tri-Klops wears his traditional green shoulder armour with the piping and his belt and Roman Legionaire style loincloth. His legs are traditionally bare, but now he is wearing camouflage pants with lots of detailing, black boots and what looks like a chainmail shirt under his chest and shoulder armour. I initially thought his arms were bare, because they are the same colour as his skin and thought, “Visible metal pins on a modern action figure – honestly? And why are the joints so prominent?” However, if you look closely, you can see that his arms are armoured well and that he possibly has cybernetic parts there – like the Revelation Tri-Klops did.

His gloves have more chainmail detail and he wears an ammunition belt, which makes sense because this Tri-Klops comes with a very big sniper rifle. Now it absolutely makes sense for Tri-Klops to be a sniper because of his cybernetically enhanced vision – and note that he is blind without the visor. However, traditionally Tri-Klops was a swordsman and came with a sword.

The lack of swords with characters who traditionally wield swords is certainly interesting, but I wonder if the reason for this simply is that a lot of the actors don’t actually know how to use a sword. James Purefoy, who plays King Randor, knows how to use a sword and I’m pretty sure Idris Elba does as well, though I don’t recall ever seeing him wield one in a film. Also note that both are British actors, where swordfighting is a common part of actor training. I’m pretty sure the two Scandinavian actors who play Fisto and Goat-Man also know how to use a sword, since we’ve seen them wield swords elsewhere. However, swordfighting is a not a standard part of actor training in the US, so does Jared Leto know how to use a sword? Does Kojo Attah know? And yes, of course they could have trained the actors in swordfighting and Nicholas Galitzine did get swordfighting training, since we’ve seen clips of it. For Skeletor, you could also have used a stunt double. But training several actors in swordfighting costs money and time.

Besides, Tri-Klops characterisation has been all over the place in different incarnations of Masters of the Universe. He’s often depicted as a mercenary who ends up with Skeletor for purely monetary reasons and as a master swordsman. The 200X cartoon also made him Skeletor’s tech guy – a position normally held by Trap-Jaw and/or Spikor. He remained a tech guy in Revelation/Revolution and also became the High Priest of the Motherboard cult. In the CGI cartoon, meanwhile, Tri-Klops was not a person at all, but a floating visor which attached itself to various, usually unwitting victims. And now he’s a sniper. Why not?

All in all, this is a great-looking, more military Tri-Klops.

Trap-Jaw

We got a small glimpse of Trap-Jaw in the trailer, but this is our first proper look at Trap-Jaw in the movie and he looks great and utterly terrifying, as he should.

This incarnation of Trap-Jaw has his traditional blue skin, green face and magenta helmet and jaw attachment. The helmet has spikes, but not the zipline loop. The facial expression is suitably fierce.

Trap-Jaw’s legs and feet are fully armoured. His loincloth is textured and his belt buckle does have some kind of crest, though it’s not his traditional skull and crossbones. His cybernetic arm is strapped to his chest with rough leather-looking straps and he also has armour on his “good” shoulder. The metal parts are sprinkled over and over with black dots, as if they are corroding. Altogether, this Trap-Jaw has a very cobbled together Frankenstein look, which leans into the body horror aspects of his character.

We see two arm attachments, the hook, which is traditional for the character, as well as a nasty looking blade. Since we don’t see a box, there’s no word if he has other arm attachments such as a blaster or the claw that the vintage figure had or maybe the crossbow or even the fly swatter that he had in the Filmation cartoon. But based on these photos, I will probably display him with the blade anyway.

As with many Masters of the Universe characters, Trap-Jaw’s origin is all over the place. What’s constant is that he suffered devastating injuries at some point in the past – usually at the hands of his boss Skeletor, though the Trap-Jaw from the CGI show had his jaw shattered by a point blank hit from Duncan’s mace – and note that Duncan is a skinny sixteen-year-old kid in the CGI show.  The most devastating Trap-Jaw origin happens in the German audio dramas where Trap-Jaw is originally a good guy and a brilliant engineer named Jaw (audio drama writer H.G. Francis didn’t always get the punny names of the characters) who is run over by Skeletor with a tank, while he’s trying to protect a kid. Skeletor then takes the half-dead Trap-Jaw and turns him into the lumbering and completely loyal monster we all know and love. Coincidentally, audio drama Beast-Man was once a brilliant scientist before Skeletor kidnapped, transformed and brainwashed him and reduced his intelligence to the rather dimwitted Beast-Man we all know and love. Audio drama Skeletor clearly learned a thing or two from his mentor Hordak.

Overall Thoughts

These first eight movie figures look good and they also look recognisably like the characters they’re supposed to represent. Compare this to the 1987 movie, where a lot of characters were pretty much unrecognisable until someone said their names, or also the CGI cartoon, where the changes were very a deliberate design choice.

One drawback is that they seem to have gone light on the accessories. Most characters only have one weapon, only Teela has an interchangeable head (and we know that Duncan doesn’t always wear his helmet from the trailer) and no one has any magic effects at all. I do suspect that these are cost savings measures, especially since according to the Entertainment Weekly article, the regular figures will sell for 24.99 USD and Battle Cat for 39.99 USD, which is more than full-price Origins, but less than full-price Masterverse or at least what I pay for a full-price Masterverse figure.

The size still isn’t clear either, though both Planet Eternia and Ramen Toys who were at the presentation in Nuremberg have confirmed that they are smaller than regular Masterverse figures. Though I still hope they fit in with Masterverse and Classics figures. And based on the various photos of the actors and designer holding the figures, the size does seem closer to Masterverse than Marvel Legends, unless all of these folks have tiny hands for some reason. I guess it’s wait and see.

The first movie figures will supposedly be released in April, just in time for my birthday.

What Else Would I Like To See  

So what other characters can we expect in future waves – if there are any – and which ones would I like to see.

I suspect Fisto, Beast-Man and Roboto will show up in future waves, though Beast-Man and Roboto might be deluxe figures due to their size. We may also see Ram-Man, Spikor, Goat-Man and Mekaneck somewhere down the line, though these characters require new parts and more tooling. Moss-Man has been cast and again we may see him as a figure. I also really hope we get a movie Sorceress. If Orko is in the movie, I hope we get him as well. Ditto for Panthor, especially since they already have the cat body.

We know Randor and Marlena have been cast and I would love to get them as figures, but Mattel seems reluctant to make these characters, since it always takes very long for Randor to come out in any line and Marlena only ever had two action figures in 44 years. Another thing I’d love to see are Skeletor’s soldiers we see in the trailer. And while you’re at it, give us some Royal Guards – also seen in the trailer – as well.

If the line does well, we might also get alternate versions of characters. We’ve already seen Duncan in three different outfits in the trailer – Royal Guard armour, Man-at-Arms armour and civilian look with a trenchcoat. If this Skeletor is Keldor, that would be another possibility for a figure. More Teela versions are always welcome, if she changes her clothes. I also hope we get a Prince Adam in the pink shirt, especially since it would be so easy to do, since they already have the face.

With regard to vehicles, I’m not sure if the Chronicles line will have any, simply because vehicles would have to be big and expensive and they never sell all that well. There are persistent rumours about a more kid-focussed toyline – which frankly would make sense – and that’s probably where they will do vehicles.

One thing I would love to see is a movie Castle Grayskull, though again that’s more likely for a potential kids’ line, simply because of the size and the costs. Though a Chronicles Castle Grayskull would be a great Mattel Creations crowdfunding project. Snake Mountain would be great as well, but I don’t really see it happening, especially since we’ve had far fewer Snake Mountains than Castle Grayskulls over the years.

We will see more reveals eventually, though I do hope Mattel gives us a little breather first.