The final issue of the He-Man/Thundercats crossover miniseries has the heroes crossing the multiverse and battling the forces of evil – in many different forms.
He-Man/Thundercats 6
Written by Rob David and Lloyd Goldfine
Art by Freddie E. Williams II and Jeremy Colwell
The cartoon crossover the world didn’t know it wanted has finally come to an end and, as is usually the case with books like this, the whole thing ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. But at least there are some fun moments thrown in to the mix. The problem is there’s not a whole lot of oomph behind the story.
The scenes that have been the most fun throughout this six-issue miniseries have been the interactions between villains Skeletor and Mumm-Ra, the Everliving. The bad puns, corny jokes and in-fighting really carried a lot of an otherwise heatless story combining two iconic 1980s properties. I think there was a lot of potential here that just got left on the table when the book tried to keep with decompressed storytelling tropes to stretch a story out to six issues. Maybe they’re just saving the more fun moments for the miniseries sequel.
Like I said, though, the book wasn’t completely devoid of fun moments, like when He-Man and Lion-O started tripping across the Infinite Earths of the multiverse chasing the combined form of their mortal enemies, Mumm-ator and/or Skel-Ra, depending on the page and who’s calling them out.
He-Man as Superman was kind of fun. As was the moment when He-Man and Lion-O combined their backstories. But those fun panels were the exception, not the rule, unfortunately.
While the He-Man property has had a lot of its stories told in comics form over the years, by a lot of different publishers, I really enjoyed what DC Comics did with them the last few years and would like to see them go back to it. Thundercats has the same potential for a comic book reboot. With IDW focused on the successful Hasbro properties, it’s not a stretch to imagine DC branching out into other morning cartoon fare, especially considering the Hanna Barbera books.
If this leads to more books from either of these properties, I’d say this miniseries was worth it.