- by Owen Morton
Today we’ve got a review of a He-Man story with a difference: it’s not a TV episode, it’s a book. I count myself very lucky to have acquired this book. It is the result of a combination of a remarkable set of coincidences that I have managed to lay my grubby little paws on it. We could take this chain of events a long way back – indeed, it is traceable to the origin of all things, but we’ll start with me having got to York University. Firstly, I was placed in Goodricke B Block to live last year while I was staying at the uni, in a room which coincidentally was next to Anton Le Brun’s. Thus I got to know Anton. Secondly, Anton is a member of the York University Outdoor Society, so I was kept informed of this society’s activities. Thirdly, in May this year, Anton informed me that the Outdoor Society was going to Malham Cove on a walk, which – coincidentally – happens to be one of my favourite places to walk, so I went along with them. Fourthly, I coincidentally met someone on this walk who inspired me to keep coming back and eventually to join the society. Fifthly, this – it’s suddenly occurring to me that anyone reading this probably doesn’t care. I’m going to cut straight to the point.
Basically, yesterday the Outdoor Society, of which I am now a member, went on a walk to Haworth. On walks to Haworth, there is a walk in the morning and the afternoon is yours to spend in Haworth as you see fit (i.e. in the pub). But anyway, there are a lot of second-hand bookshops in Haworth. (Can you see where this is going?) In one of these bookshops, my friend James found a piece of fiction entitled ‘Castle Grayskull Under Attack!’, which was priced at the princely sum of 75p (which is, you would do well to note, a full 5p more than the book originally cost). I was obliged to buy it, really, because it firstly provided me and many others an afternoon of laughter while we read it in the pub, and secondly provided me with something suitably asinine to review for my website.
Plus I seem to think the story of how I got this book is really rather interesting, so buying the book provided me with an excuse to write that out as well.
Right, we’ll now get on with the serious business of this article. Castle Grayskull Under Attack! is one of a series of Ladybird He-Man novels – as one might call them – which were published in the mid-1980s. I can’t actually remember having possessed this particular book, though one I do remember having was ‘He-Man Meets The Beast’, which I believe was a crossover with ‘Beauty and the Beast’, but had a slightly different ending in that He-Man did not fall in love with the Beast. He killed it instead, I would imagine. Or incapacitated it in some non-violent manner, more likely.
Anyway, I’ll do my trick of summarising the plot, making criticisms as I go, and then discussing any random points which occur to me. And I may use more quotes than usual in this article, given that I don’t have to keep rewinding to get them – all I need do is look at the book! In fact, given the number of quotes in this article, it’s easier if I put them in italics, so you can see them coming.
The book’s plot is what one might call fairly typical of a cartoon episode. (Actually, for all I know, it is the novelisation of one of the cartoon’s episodes; I’d have to check on the He-Man and She-Ra Episode Review Website to find out, and I’m not going to do that, because – quite frankly – I can’t be bothered. And also, did you know that Microsoft Word does not regard ‘novelisation’ as a word? I’m fairly sure it is one.)
Anyway, the book starts with Skeletor cackling away in Snake Mountain, having obtained for himself “an ancient stone tablet”. This tablet apparently contains the secret of the ancient Eternians, which – as far as I can make out – is the ability to “tap the power of the planet itself”, which I will assume means some sort of geothermal energy-gaining process. Nowhere does it actually state this, but I’m going to assume it just for the sake of being generous. I think I may have to be fairly generous a bit today.
Having gained this ability, Skeletor sets his slaves, the Skelcons (who look quite cool but I can’t remember ever having seen in an episode of the series), to work building a “machine which would tap the power of Eternia and convert it to energy of untold strength”. Having done this, they then create something called “a mammoth power-shield projector”. What this may be, we are at this point left to guess, since all we know about it is its name, and also that it has “three telescopic legs”. There is a picture of it, which I’d scan in if I could be bothered, and if I really thought you were that fussed about seeing it. Interestingly, in this picture, Skeletor is depicted standing on a rocky crag waving around a sword which looks very much like He-Man’s. So how did Skeletor get He-Man’s sword? Hmm? Or could it just be that the illustrator was having a momentary lapse of reason when he/she/it/they drew this picture?
At any rate, the mammoth power-shield projector, as far as I can make out, is positioned directly on top of the machine which taps the power of Eternia and converts it to energy of untold strength. Skeletor then issues his splendidly melodramatic statement that we have come to expect from him at this stage in the proceedings, and on the next page, the action shifts to the good guys.
In Castle Grayskull, where Teela and Stratos are having a nice little conversation about how worried they are that Mer-Man seems to be massing his armies of Sea-People to attack the castle. They call He-Man to come and help them. Skeletor watches them do this through “a powerful video-lens” which he creates with his “energy-blade”. What I’d like to know is quite how he does this. We’ve recently discussed how physics is defied in He-Man, but really, if Skeletor’s got the power to create whatever he wants using an energy-blade, why does he need to steal the secrets of Castle Grayskull? To be totally honest, defining Skeletor’s motives at the best of times is extremely difficult to do. He never seems to have any objective other than causing a little bit of trouble, which he succeeds in admirably until He-Man comes along and distributes a few punches in the direction of all concerned.
Anyway, I’d better get a move on, because we’re only on Page 7 of 43 at this point, and bearing in mind that it’s only been Pages 4, 5, 6 and 7 which have had any story on them, this could turn out to be an unnecessarily long review. I may have to split it into parts like I did with The Little Mermaid.
Right, next Skeletor orders Mer-Man to take his army of Sea-People to a gorge of the River Doom, where they are poised to attack Castle Grayskull. In the meantime, the Skelcons drag the mammoth power-shield projector to the same place. Sadly, the author responsible for this literary atrocity, who shall be here named and shamed as John Grant, makes no mention of precisely how far this journey is, but I’d guess a fair distance lies between Snake Mountain and Castle Grayskull, and given the size of the bloody thing (looking at the pictures, I’d estimate it’s about forty feet tall), it’s going to take them an incredibly long time to drag it. It does occur to me to ask, considering that Eternia seems to be full of tremendously improbable vehicles, why they didn’t just drive it there.
Anyway, this is where the next part of Skeletor’s cunning plot is revealed. As far as I can make out, he is going to set up an ocean next to Castle Grayskull, in which a load of sea monsters will live and attack the castle. He also spells out that he has the power to “stop any mechanical device”. This is presumably as a result of his mammoth power-shield projector, though we are still kept in the dark about how precisely this is going to work.
We are treated to a little paragraph in which Prince Adam becomes He-Man, in a really quite undramatic sequence, and then goes to Castle Grayskull to join Teela and Stratos. At the same time, the Skelcons finally get the power-shield projector ready. Now this is where the book gets a little confusing, since the projector now appears to be back at Snake Mountain (as indeed does Skeletor, though he was messing about near the River Doom not long before). Anyway, the Skelcons activate the machine, which drills down to the power core at the centre of Eternia (this is definitely some kind of geothermal device). I think what happens next can really best be described by quoting the book:
“The projector module rose on its elevator stem until it topped the hills. Nothing lay between it and Castle Grayskull. The glow of the projector pulsations increased, and waves of power sped invisibly out to ring the castle. Within a few moments Castle Grayskull was enclosed in an unseen bubble of energy.
‘Now for the second part of my plan,’ gloated Skeletor.”
Do you have any idea what the hell all that lot means (apart from Skeletor’s little comment)? Because I certainly don’t. The projector device is definitely in Snake Mountain at this point, even though on the previous page it was equally definitely pictured near the River Doom. Someone – specifically John Grant – didn’t really think this thing through before writing it. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care, because – to be totally honest – on the very next page, I am faced with almost incontrovertible evidence that he’s taking the piss.
The second part of Skeletor’s plan turns out to be a “slimy band of Sea-People” who come out of the river carrying zero-energy weapons. From these weapons they fire “Brilliant green bolts of zero energy” at the river, a process which turns it into ice. The Sea People pour “more and more zero energy into the river until a huge ice dam filled the gorge from one side to the other”.
Okay. Zero energy. Let’s just think about this, shall we? Something which is called zero energy does rather suggest that it’s made up of, well, not a lot of energy. And although I am not a scientist, several of the people in the pub when we were reading this book are, and they said that zero energy would not consist of brilliant green bolts, in that you need energy to create light, nor would it have the effect of turning a river into ice. (More specifically, it would have the effect of doing nothing at all.) Phrases like the above given “more and more zero energy”, moreover, call to mind the old maxim, “Twice nothing is still nothing”, and do rather lead one to suspect that John Grant was either fundamentally stupid or, as I suggested earlier, taking the piss.
Right, we’re going to leave it there, because we’re still only on Page 13, and I’m getting bored, yet I don’t want to rush through this to finish it, and lose the opportunity to review such relentlessly stupid material. So we’ll finish another time. And I suspect that that time will not be too far in the future, really.