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

ZODAC

Real Name: Zodac Zur

Once a member of Eternia’s Council of Elders, Zodac chose to retain his human form and left Eternia after Grayskull’s demise. Finding peace among the stars, Zodac was recruited by the Overlords of Trolla to become a Cosmic Enforcer, beings tasked with maintaining neutrality throughout the universe. Although he no longer calls Eternia home, the constant struggle over the Power Sword has often called him back to his native planet to maintain the eternal balance between good and evil.

Portrait art source: “The Sword of Skeletor” Golden Adventure Book

With Zodac’s bio, we really begin to get a look at the larger world of the Classics incarnation of MOTU and the cosmology it’s building. We’re also getting our first departures from the largely Millennium-heavy depiction of MOTU and its characters.

Let’s start off with the name: Zodac Zur. Why Zur? I don’t know. Following my theory that for the most part, the bio writers create these real names simply as fun asides, I’m not going to speculate further on it.

We’re then told that Zodac was once a member of Eternia’s Council of Elders who chose to retain his human form when they transformed into the Power of the Universe. This story goes all the way back to the original series bible by Michael Halperin (pages 9-12), where he remains human while the Council of Elders turns into Castle Grayskull itself.

There’s also a somewhat puzzling point that I’ll bring up again when we get to Zodak. Zodac’s bio says he retained his human form, which implies that the rest of the Council turned into energy or whatever. But Zodak’s bio says he took Zodac’s place on the Council, so…did they turn into pure energy or not? I’m guessing the bio writers were thinking of the Millennium series, where the Elders were long-lived spiritual entities who only turned themselves into pure energy during the final battle with Keldor. (It does raise the question of exactly when Zodak’s life began and ended, though–if he never became a Cosmic Enforcer nor a spiritual entity, how long did he live? But again, we’ll get to these questions later.)

Then there’s the whole Overlords of Trolla stuff. Orko, for those who don’t know, is a Trollan. He’s short, and his skin appears to be blue. And apparently, his race of short little blue guys in red outfits recruits Cosmic Enforcers from planets throughout the universe. Yes, the charge has already been levied and Mattel has responded. It may be an exaggeration to call it a rip-off, but I don’t think calling it an obvious “wink” to Green Lantern fans is that far off the mark.

The “Overlords of Trolla” concept will be developed more later, when they’re referred to as “The Overlords of the Timeless Dimension,” a reference to the Filmation episode “The Golden Discs of Knowledge.” In that episode, Zodac refers to his masters as “The Overlords of the Eternal Dimension.” Confused yet?

I’m taking a wait-and-see approach to the whole Trollan Overlords of the Timeless Dimension thing. I will say that there seems to be a tendency, in all incarnations of MOTU, to constantly reveal bigger-and-more-powerful entities behind the ones you’re familiar with: Hordak over Skeletor, Horde Prime over Hordak, King Grayskull over He-Man, the Elders over the Sorceress, and now the Overlords of Trolla over the Elders. So evidently, if his powers weren’t being short-circuited by Eternia, the comic relief jester could squash Skeletor like a bug and go toe-to-toe with Horde Prime? I realize that’s an oversimplification (who knows exactly how the Trollans’ powers work–they might have to cast the really powerful spells en masse), but part of me has to wonder why the bio writers made Trollans into Overlords and not just a minor magic-sensitive race among all the other races.

My favorite depiction of Zodac is in the 3-issue DC miniseries, where his role is sort of a cross between Marvel Comics’s Watcher and the New Gods’ Metron. Like the Watcher, Zodac is tasked with observing the events of the cosmos and is unable to intervene except in very specific circumstances, and often in a circumspect manner; and like Metron, his motivations are somewhat obscure and of a “neutral” nature, often leaving He-Man and his allies to their fate despite his power. This bio doesn’t invalidate that take on Zodac, so in the end, I think it’s a pretty good one that raises a lot of interesting questions while leaving some mystery. Future bios aren’t so circumspect, as we shall see.

Next time: Hordak!