MOTUC Bio Discussion #57 > Demo-Man

Inspired by He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast, welcome to PGPoA’s latest MOTUC Bio Discussion!

Demo-Man™ Bio
Real Name: Uqquz’ Zekul-Mshqx

Realizing his pupil Keldor™ had no intention of releasing him from Despondos™, Hordak® merged him with an extra-dimensional being called Demo-Man™. While this saved Keldor’s life, it also drove him temporarily insane and convinced him to open a portal to Despondos™ and lead what he thought were “his people” to Eternia®. Hordak® intended to use this ruse as a means to escape once the portal was opened, but the new merged being “Skeletor®” was quickly defeated by Oo-larr™, the jungle He-Man®, and Hordak® remained trapped. Soon after, with the help of Evil-Lyn®, Skeletor® gained control of the powerful spirit inside of him, increasing his abilities ten-fold. He was now the true Overlord of Evil™ and one of the most dangerous men on Eternia®!

I’ve previously discussed the Demo-Man/Skeletor angle here and here. This bio adds some new information to the story: we learn it was Oo-larr “the Jungle He-Man” who first defeated the emergent Skeletor. This is an attempt to bring the “Preternia He-Man” of the early, pre-cartoon minicomic “He-Man and the Power Sword” into the MOTUC Bio Universe.

It’s also further confirmation that Prince Adam and Oo-larr were contemporaries; so a version of “He-Man” definitely existed prior to Prince Adam’s first transformation.

The bio also gives a sop to the anti-Demo Man contingent by making it very clear that Demo-Man has no measure of mental or emotional control over Skeletor, meaning Keldor/Skeletor is evil all on his own. It still seems like way too much complicated and pointless to me – why can’t Demo-Man just be an evil monster? Just because he was an early sketch of the primary antagonist for what eventually became the toy line known as Masters of the Universe does not mean he has to have an origin that’s somehow tied in to the character who did become the antagonist – especially since there doesn’t seem to be any sign of an aesthetic connection (or rather, evolution) between the two designs.

Or perhaps the bio could have been written in a way that connected Demo-Man to Skeletor without literally “connecting” them…something like, I don’t know, this.

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5 Comments

  1. dayraven

    i wrote two different bios for this badass, one portraying him as hordak's bumbling but really buffed out brother (hordak merged him w/ keldor to give his brother a second chance) and the other as a martial artist from anwat gar who invented a style of martial arts swordsmanship that tapped into the sorrow of the soul (he was banished to a nameless dimension for fear of eternians becoming despondant due to the corruptive nature of his style). that was before i got the fig. then i got him, and tossed all of that out, and he's just a power mad undead swordsman.

    as far as the bio goes… i will say this mr poe ghostal… because skeletor gains control, doesn't mean demo isn't in there muddling things up. does the glass control the water or merely contain it? and certainly, the bios aren't final… if you want a dualistic skellie, it's totally possible. the alcala head, which we all knew and loved from way back, taken in the context of the demo bio, looks like what would happen if you split the difference between skeletor and demo… you could use the heads as a "skeletor in conflict" play device.

    that said, i'm amazed at how not demo this "bio" is… it's skeletor bio 2, not the bio for uqquz or urkill, or uhnkhill, or whatever the hell his "cool glottal noise, double redundant extra consonant" name i. it tells us virtually nothing about the toy we bought, which is kind of weak sauce. vikor got a nice bio all to his own, he didn't get shoehorned into "adam in a new wardrobe!" demo deserved being a standalone character, not a bio that paints him as a placeholder for the villain du jour until his girlfriend helped him get back off the wagon.

    and really, in a line that gives us kind of… non traditional?… weapons, demo has this bent, beaten mace like weapon, and one of the coolest sword designs we've received in the line to date, and not one mention of those? we didn't try at all to create a rival power weapon to the sword of grayskull? why not? why couldn't, for example, the "Sword of It" or "the Them Sword" be some kind of inverse power sword that allows demo to transform into skeletor, or let's him undo the transformation of a man of He or something? they worked the battle armor into a story element, why can't demo's sword give him some cool power too? if they had that invalidate the sword of He somehow, that gives them some really cool additional options, like story intro for the mechanical sword (which becomes necessary when the sword of He gets depowered for a while? or helps someone else transform into he-man after he-man gets KO
    'd by the evil sword?) AND it gives us a reason to introduce the 200x skeleswords as NEW power swords!! why is there only power sword in the he-verse? it's a big ass universe, why can't there by more than one blade to fight over? it opens up so many tales to tell, if there are rival powers, rival champions out there. they can't all be men of He, but maybe something cool happens if one guy can collect all the swords? like, tying into the old story point of the power sword opening the jaw bridge, maybe you have to combine the two or three different power swords to effect that event? again, this opens new possibilities for storytelling and a justifiable reason to get us to BUY MORE PRODUCT!

    like maybe, just maybe, they eventually release a Jaw bridge dio w/ a brand new power sword that represents what would happen if he-man combined the various power swords to ascend to "king he-man" status? then you engineer the castle so that the jaw bridge dio can plug into the front of it… breaking up the castle a little, testing the water for larger dio pieces in the future, and advancing the story in a direction they clearly intend to anyway.

  2. The Rook

    I'm not sure why there is a need to have a bio for a concept character, especially with an adult collector line. Fans loved the Ralph McQuarrie concept figures in the Star Wars line a few years ago. I'd have just called him "Concept Skeletor" and been done with it.

    When it was first mentioned that Skeletor was created when Keldor was merged with Demo-Man, I always pictured Demo-Man as just one of Hordak's lackies. And perhaps he had failed Hordak one too many times and Hordak felt that it was worth sacrificing Demo-Man's life to save Keldor's so that Keldor could eventually free Hordak from Despondos. This way we get another Horde member, and you can keep your merging story and then explain the slight physical changes from Keldor to Skeletor.

  3. Ridureyu

    The “real name” business is getting kind of silly.

    • So silly I apparently completely forgot to comment on it…

    • It's like they stopped even pretending to be creative with the names, and just mash their knuckles on the keyboard to see what comes out.

      Real Name: "Ndffyh-qevbi"

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