Wanted: A Masters of the Universe Anthology
After the recent G.I. Joe short story collection, Tales from the Cobra Wars (reading post here) I started thinking about other short story collections I would love to read. Transformers came to mind first — especially after how much fun I had reading Transformers: Exodus* — but then my mind soon moved to Masters of the Universe
Of course we have seen Masters of the Universe books before (Search for Masters of the Universe books at Amazon.com*), but what I’m looking for is a collection of seriously, well-written short stories set in Eternia. And unlike the G.I. Joe collection, I want each story in the book to feature a different character.
Is it likely that we’ll ever see a Masters of the Universe anthology? Maybe, but it’s going to take Mattel to create one — I strongly suspect that they could have good luck selling such a book through Matty Collector — or someone will need to snag a license. Obviously, there could be a website devoted to fan fiction, but what I want is a professionally-written and produced book.
So who could potentially step up and craft this book for me? Here are a few possible publishers:
- IDW Publishing (website, Twitter) comes to mind first, but I suspect that if they did this it would only be after a year or two of publishing a new Masters of the Universe comic.
- Moonstone Books (website) may be a contender. The publisher obviously has experience in licensing, and in licensing older properties, so I could see them working a deal with Mattel.
- Boom Studios (website, Twitter) makes sense, but again they would probably focus on a comic before any short story collections.
- Dark Horse (website, Twitter) comes to mind as possibly my top choice for such a collection. Their Hellboy short story collections are lots of fun (Search for Hellboy books at Amazon.com*) and they seem to be pretty good about keeping books in print.
But regardless of who steps in and makes this happen, my cash is here and ready for a Masters of the Universe short story collection. So please, someone, make this happen. I suspect that I’m not alone in wanting this book.
When there were still MOTU comics out from the 2002 era, there was a trade paperback collection of short stories featuring one character at a time. It was called Icons of Evil. It was basically an origin story for Beastman, Tri-Klops and TrapJaw.
@powettoys – Short prose stories, or short comic stories? It looks like it’s a series of comic stories, but I may be wrong. What I’m looking for are prose stories; illustrations are cool, but not I’m not after comics.
By anthologies you get mostly no artist paid good. It would be a product of dedication of each artist and writer cause the licensing will eat up a good chunk of the production cost. Just my opinion as i worked on a good range of anthologies and nnever seen a dime but was proud to be in there… i would draw a story for a box full of all lady motus -this for sure!
@Ralph – I’m after short stories and not comics. And, for the record, I would love to see you draw a short MOTU comic.
Unfortunately, if Mattel deems this a good idea they would probably just get somebody in-house to write the stories, and you could end up with what is essentially a bunch of MOTU bios strung together across several pages.
@clark – I am assuming that Mattel has the funds to hire a professional anthology editor. If they need help I can suggest a few pros I know who have edited many books, including NYT bestsellers.
@philip-I know, I was just being cynical. I think it’s because I’ve been reading a bunch of criticisms over the MOTU bios, which I personally don’t think are very well-written but at the same time I don’t pay much attention to them either, and was in a bad mood.
I do think it would be cool if an anthology book like this came out, because I would like to have Eternia fleshed out more. In the old cartoons the bizarre landscapes were my favorite thing about the mythos, and I bet telling individual stories could lead to a lot of little details about the environment too.
Also, I really want your Panthor to get in because I want to know what you think about it.