Minicomics

“L’Impossible Combat” French minicomic (1984)

Several months back I was looking for He-Man information via Google’s French, Italian and German search engines, just to see what fans are talking about and sharing outside of my own U.S. bubble. I stumbled upon a French blog called Super Shogun, with quite a lot of great Masters of the Universe material, some of which I hadn’t seen before.

One post in particular caught my eye, about a short French minicomic called L’Impossible Combat. According to Super Shogun, this was given out with registration for Club Des Maîtres De L’Univers in 1984.

Image source: Super Shogun
Image source: Super Shogun
Image Source: Super Shogun
Back cover, which includes an image of the prototype version of Tri-Klops. Image source: Super Shogun

Like the Italian Più series of He-Man comics, this very short issue was clearly influenced by the artwork of Alfredo Alcala. Beyond that, there are several pieces directly taken from illustrations by Mark Texeira. It’s not just the style – distinct scenes and poses from He-Man and the Power Sword, King of Castle Grayskull, and The Menace of Trap-Jaw! are replicated in the story, like a minicomic mashup. In fact, almost 100% of L’Impossible Combat is borrowed material. Take a look:

Despite the comic’s dire lack of originality, it’s a fun piece of memorabilia, and I’m always happy to see more comics in the style of Alcala and Texeira (even if the artist’s reproductions can’t match the skill of the originals). I do have to give credit for the ingenuity of taking scenes totally out of their original context and constructing a new story from them.

Update: ManicMan has kindly put together a “scanlation” (a translation edited into the comic pages) of the story, below. Thanks again, ManicMan!

6 thoughts on ““L’Impossible Combat” French minicomic (1984)

  1. mm.. So Via treachery, Skeletor has succeeded in seizing Castle Greyskull, which he now thinks makes him King so he can begin his reign of Terror on planet eternia!

    interesting ^_^ I can rig up a nice scanlation but is it worth it?

      1. Initial version. I’ve done a bit of translation work and you need to do it correctly, in this case, things like changing He-mans French name to English etc, so this should be pretty good.. some bits i’m not 100% keen on, I hope to get around to cleaning up bits and doing the backcover too, but that is…. less intresting.. kinda the hardest bit of translation bit is the last thing He-man says.. since it is a play on Skeletor’s French subtitle (Genie of Evil basically from what I can work out) I decided to go with the English subtitle Lord of Destruction.. which I think still works..

        http://www.TESP.co.uk/Translation_25_5_2017.zip
        any questions or comments welcome ^_^

Leave a Reply to ManicManCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.