#lizorr

Reptilian humanoids started appearing in MotU in the first, 1983, season of the Filmation cartoon.

Here’s Lizard Man, a supporting hero who appeared in four episodes.

Here is Fang Man, a bad guy who only appeared in “The Time Corridor”.

Bands of unnamed reptile men then appeared as wizards’ henchmen in two episodes, “House of Shokoti” and “Ordeal in the Darklands”.

So it already looks like we have two races of lizard people on Eternia. In Season 2, Kobra Khan was introduced.

In the very last episode, “The Cold Zone”, writer J. Michael Straczynski revealed that Kobra Khan had left the underground Repton civilization to commit crimes with Skeletor and friends. While their name was generically reptilian, named characters such as King Pythos indicate the entire people’s snakiness.

In 1986, the Snake Men faction was introduced to the toy line and its accompanying mini-comics. Members King Hiss, Sssqueeze and Snake Face were treated as having been banished by the Elders to a timeless dimension while living their evil lives thousands of years ago. Writer Steven Grant alluded to Kobra Khan’s people as descendants.

However, by the time kids would have opened this comic, the entire first season of (literal) sister show She-Ra would have aired, in September-December 1985. There, two other characters identified as Snake Men, Rattlor and Tung Lashor, were seen as members of Hordak’s Etherian Horde.

Both the mini-comic “King of the Snake Men” and newspaper comic arc “Vengeance of the Viper King” addressed these two being magically teleported from Etheria to Eternia to join King Hiss.

Unnamed Snake Men made two further appearances in the 80s: as hunter-gatherers who preceded Eternia’s first humans on the planet in the newspaper comic arc “Terror Takes Time” and as disorganized enemies of the five good wizards (Elders?) who organized under Hordak in the Power Tour stage show.

So much for official Snake Men. But we’re not done:

Almost simultaneously with him joining the Snake Men, Kobra Khan was seen commanding a band of evil lizard men (not to be confused with Lizard Man the hero) in the mini-comic “The Fastest Draw in the Universe”.

Jump forward to the summer of 1987 and fans were introduced to Saurod, a blue-scaled, bronze-armored mercenary employed by Skeletor in the live action film. He also appeared in all sorts of comics (mini-comic with the 3 film-related action figures, monthly comic, newspaper comic).

(pictured: Classics toy from 2015.)

While his armor looks like a fuller version of the partial plate armor we saw in the Repton culture, whether he was even native to Eternia was not explained at the time.

Then there’s one more before the Classics era. When He-Man traveled to another solar system in The New Adventures of He-Man, the Mutants of Denebria has their own lizard person, Lizorr.

Yeah he’s a shameless ripoff of Gorn from Star Trek, And they were a poor-man’s Tongue Lashor who despite having tongue as a listed power, didn’t have it as an action figure in the toy.

But I like him and he got no respect working along the Space Mutants, only got one fight scene and then forgotten/

He’s also from the same series Mara was lifted from (The New Adventures of He-Man), so also a plus.

I’ll go with the idea they were born on a post-apocalyptic world that the man who would later be Horde Prime used as a testing ground for genetically engineered soldiers against the native, including the Snake Men. Thus a hybrid like Kobrah Khan rather than an original Horde Prime “out of the workshop” creation.  They gets shanghaied into a pirate crew, brought to Eternia and joins the Snake Men after ditching the crew. And gets banished to Etheria with the rest of them/

He fits in fine with the extras from the original toy-packaged minicomic

I like the idea of him being kind of like a WH40k Ork when it comes to technology: doing it instinctually.

They wouldn’t speak, but unlike Rogelio its because he has no idea what’s going on. They gradually learning Etherian language, but even then Lord Gr’asp is usually the one giving him orders thanks to him speaking many languages or Vypor (who will be included in a post of ideas about all of these guys) beaming telepathic commands.