This little comic - one of the many that came free with He-Man toys in the mid-1980s - is, in the considered opinion of at least two people in the world, the best and most influential of them. It's the thrilling story of the Obelisk!
The comic uses its 14 pages to tell a classic story of good versus evil. What distinguishes it from most stories using that theme is that 'good' and 'evil' are the names of two groups who try to achieve exactly the same thing, by exactly the same means. The He-Man cartoon always made a point of hammering home an important moral about the right way to behave towards others, but there's none of that in this comic. I've always said that it's a problem with this kind of toy range - in most of the fiction, the evil villains threaten innocents in some way, and our heroes thwart their dastardly plans. But they don't sell toys of innocent civilians, so when children are creating their own adventures, all they can really do is line the two sides up and have them batter each other senseless!
Writer Karen Sargentich isn't exactly a household name, but there is some information available about her on the internet. She was a senior copywriter for Mattel Toys, but writing the accompanying fiction doesn't seem to have been a major part of her job description. A website about her brother Lewis Sargentich, a noted Harvard professor, describes Karen as the 'author of The Obelisk and "Dad Turned 90 on the 4th of July: Daniel Milo Sargentich"'. The latter was an article published in "Serb World USA" magazine in 1999, so The Obelisk would seem to have been her only published work of fiction.
I'd always assumed from the bizarre and sometimes borderline incomprehensible dialogue in The Obelisk that its writer spoke English as a second language, and it seems the Sargentich kids were born in the USA to a Serbian immigrant father, so that might explain wonderful phrases like "Teela, warn us if Skeletor comes."
Artist Alfredo P. Alcala, meanwhile, originated in the Philippines, but had a lengthy career drawing comics in America in the seventies and eighties. He did a fair few Conan the Barbarian comics for Marvel, and DC's bare-chested hero Arak, Son of Thunder, so he was an obvious choice to draw He-Man comics. He does a fantastic job here, making the toy-based characters recognisable and cool-looking, and as we'll see on page 13, inventing some wonderful monsters!
Does Buzz-Off not know how to read, or does it just not occur to him to fly a little closer?
"Now Tri-Klops will keep you from reading the words on the Obelisk!" is a line that has always stuck with me over the years. It's a slightly strange thing for He-Man to say while hitting Tri-Klops in the face, but I guess it gets the point across.
The classic lines keep coming. "Then we'll use the power of the Obelisk to do him in!" "Gadzooks. It says OOOGLE GALUMP GALEE. What's that?"
Skeletor and his gang are sitting outside an accurate representation of the Snake Mountain toy - it must be a nice sunny day, so they don't want to go indoors.
Perhaps the greatest moment in this comic is the Sorceress telling He-Man "Do not let him learn about the words," which is followed immediately by the caption "Skeletor has heard everything..."
And really, is it any wonder Skeletor has heard everything? The Sorceress is flying up in the sky, about half a mile away from He-Man, and shouting this confidential secret message down to him!
He-Man and Mekaneck grab photon rays thrown from the Obelisk. These seem to make He-Man's hands glow for one further panel, but otherwise do nothing. Drat, he says, to make clear his horror at the idea of an evil power being released.
And then we get these wonderful creations! "I can escape horrid situations" is a wonderful way to introduce yourself, isn't it? And "I search and destroy" from the 'good' one makes it pretty clear that there's no moral distinction between 'good' and 'evil' in this world.
But no sooner are these new monsters released than the Obelisk falls apart, and that's the end. The Obelisk never does come again.
And the back page shows the toys you can buy - although strangely this one still shows the previous year's line-up, instead of giving us pictures of Mekaneck, Buzz-Off and the other most recently released figures. I wonder if Karen Sargentich was also responsible for such snappy phrases as "Evil & sees everything"? If only she'd written more adventures like this for the toy-buying kids of the 1980s to enjoy!
