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

Before we begin, one item of note: I’ve added links to all the bios in my list of MOTUC reviews, so you can check any bio whenever you want.

BEAST MAN

Real Name: Raqquill Rqazz

After being banished from his home in the Vine Jungle, the beast man named Raqquill Rqazz joined up with a young alchemist named Keldorâ„¢ during a skirmish in the Berserker Islands. Like others of his race, Rqazz has the ability to control beasts and monsters. He currently uses this particular talent as chief henchmen to Skeletor, the Overlord of Evilâ„¢.

Portrait art source: “The Vengeance of Skeletor” minicomic

Beast Man was the second bio, and the first “real name.” What is there to say about “Raqquill Rqazz”–except I’m glad I don’t have to say it out loud like Pixel Dan did in the RG podcast? Obviously there’s an attempt at an onomatopoeic thing going on–try to the say the name aloud and you’re basically grunting like, well, a beast. (Side note: MechaShiva and I did a little satire on ol’ Raqquill a while back.)

But I suppose you want an actual opinion on the name? All right. In the RG podcast, Emiliano Santalucia (artist for the Millennium MOTU comic) suggested Mattel wanted the real names so they could have something better than “Clawful” and “Two-Bad” for a potential movie script to use, and I’d thought of that myself. But the simplest answer is often the right one, and I think The Powers That Be may have just thought it would be an amusing treat for fans, in the spirit of the G.I. Joe “codenames” from the 1980s.

The first sentence of the bio summarizes the story of Beast Man’s Icons of Evil one-shot comic from the Millennium era. In the RG podcast, much was made of Keldor being referred to as an “alchemist,” with some getting stuck on the medieval definition of an alchemist–i.e., a scholar who seeks a method of turning cheap metals into gold. I appreciate the effort to honor historical and philological accuracy, but I think at this point, in the post-D&D world of commercial fantasy, “alchemy” is often used as a general term to describe “the study of the dark arts,” and that’s how it’s used here. Yes, it’s a bit inaccurate, and “sorcerer” would have worked just fine, but I think the writer just wanted to emphasize that Keldor was something of an amateur at this point in his career.

The rest of the bio just details Beast Man’s abilities and his allegiance to Skeletor. It’s a shame it doesn’t reference the fact that Beast Man can’t control dragons, since that’s one of the few unique details about the character we’ve learned in any incarnation of MOTU.

So yeah–not a whole lot to discuss here. Next up: Stratos!