Inspired by He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast, welcome to PGPoA’s latest MOTUC Bio Discussion!
King Hssss Bio
Real Name: Hssss of the Viper House
A servant of the Unnamed One, Hssss was chosen to lead an army of Snake Men to the planet of Eternia to plunder its magical secrets. He ruled Eternia for three centuries until a rebellion formed under D’vann Grayskull. Soon afterwards, the Horde invaded and Hssss was drawn into a three-way war. All three sides agreed to a temporary truce in order to construct the Three Towers, but Hssss was betrayed by Hordak and in time was banished to the Void by the Elders and Zodak. For five thousand years he and his army waited until Evil-Lyn and a Snake Men descendant named Kobra Kahn opened the Snake Pit to free them. King Hssss often tricks foes by appearing heroic but then transforms into a seething mass of serpents and leads the Snake Men into battle!
Portrait art source: Original card art
[Note: Mattel has stated that “five centuries” should read “five thousand years.”]
Mattel packs a ton of information into this bio. Right away we get a reference to the Unnamed One, an obscure reference to a single line from the minicomic “The Powers of Grayskull – The Legend Begins!”. The identity of the “Unnamed One” is unknown; a few sources, including Emiliano Santalucia, quote MOTU minicomic writer Steven Grant as suggesting that the Unnamed One was intended to be a sort of greater evil behind Skeletor who turned Keldor into Skeletor, just as Anakin Skywalker was transformed into Darth Vader by the Emperor. Many years later, Santalucia and Val Staples would bring the Unnamed One back in a very roundabout way; he is the Balrog-like monster at the end of the 200X comic miniseries “The Shard of Darkness.”¹ I don’t know where the MOTUC bios will take the notion of the Unnamed One, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he were revealed to be Horde Prime/Supreme.
Next we learn that the Unnamed One (UO) sent the Snake Men to Eternia, raising the question of what planet the Snake Men hail from (my money’s on “Ophidia”). Hssss rules until he’s overthrown by King Grayskull, then they’re attacked by the Horde (which, if you’re following the Santalucia/Staples origin for UO, gets into a really weird area as UO and Horde Supreme fight one another).
Then we get the truce regarding the building of the Three Towers, which takes its cue from another minicomic (“Enter…Buzz-Saw Hordak!”) and was also mentioned in the Tytus bio. Hordak evidently betrayed Hssss after this, and then five thousand years pass between the defeat of Hordak and the return of the Snake Men. I’m glad they connected Kobra Kahn to the Snake Men; even though he came before them and was originally one of Skeletor’s warriors, I always liked his retroactive association with the Snake Men, and the 200X cartoon found a clever way to work both aspects of that idea into the story (which is basically the same as described here).
Finally, the bio ends with the line from the packaging, citing Hssss’s penchant for surprising people with his snake-body.
On the whole, I like this particular bio. A lot of its information just verifies, validates, or simply repeats things we already knew, but it also clarifies the timeline a bit and confirms some of the suspicions fans already had. It also offers a few new tantalizing questions, like the question of who the Unnamed One is in MOTUC continuity, and where the Snake Men originally came from.
¹ And even that is an oversimplification; Nordor from the New Adventures of He-Man was also part of it. Read Emiliano’s full post for the scoop.