#nyeh!

Don’t fret. I know exactly what it is.

For the war effort, I’ve procured a collection of spooky tunes for the troops in the graveyard trenches. I’m doing my part!

I have pulled 5 legend/king cards… and 3 of them were Mammon 😐 he makes up a third of my team now. He is a gemini (I know I know, my kryptonite), but gimme Satan or Beel you cowards!

Sources are what I’ll call “the main 80s continuity”. This includes both Filmation cartoons, mini-comics packed with the action figures near the end of the line but not before, the newspaper comic and The New Adventures of He-Man.

PHASE 1, Backstory. Skeletor was either a demon from another dimension who always had a bare skull for a head, or King Randor’s brother Keldor. If the latter, his experiments with magic caused him to uncontrollably cross spacetime (”The Search for Keldor”).

He studied magic under Hordak (making it possible that his extra-dimensional demon homeland was Horde World, but no writer has explicitly said so) and arrived/returned to Eternia with his invasion fleet. As the Horde conquest failed, Skeletor was stranded behind enemy lines at the end of a half-successful commando mission to steal the King and Queen’s twins (She-Ra, “The Secret of the Sword”/”Reunions”)

Between the Horde invasion landing and its failure, they made Snake Mountain their base. Skeletor convinced Zanthor, a member of the Council of the Wise, to betray its Golden Discs of Knowledge to him, using knowledge their contained to shape the Snake Mountain base. Zanthor was banished to a phantom dimension by Zodac and the rest of the Council of the Wise, then they disbanded. (He-Man episode “The Golden Discs of Knowledge”)

Besides Hordak any other named Hordesmen in the invasion force, and briefly Zanthor, Skeletor’s earliest allies were Beast Man, Mer-Man, Trap Jaw (AKA Kronis), Tri-Klops and Evil-Lyn. The 2002 continuity showed the order they joined Keldor (Beast Man -> Kronis / Tri-Klops or vice versa -> Evil-Lyn, Mer-Man implicitly last) but this one didn’t. Fisto also held his forest domain as a fief from Skeletor for some time, defecting when Prince Adam was 16. (He-Man episode “Fisto’s Forest”)

PHASE 2-1 (Filmation Season 1)

Skeletor and Beast Man reassemble the Evil Warriors. They spend many months on various schemes to take over Eternia, though rarely in the full group of six. Prince Adam is 18.

PHASE 2-2 (Filmation Season 2)

New Evil Warriors join: Clawful, Webstor, Whiplash, Kobra Khan, Two Bad, Spikor and Modulok.

PHASE 2-3 (Filmation She-Ra)

Skeletor meets Hordak again. They briefly team up (”Secret of the Sword”/”Battle for Brightmoon”), then fight whenever they meet (”Gateway to Trouble”, “My Friend My Enemy”, “Of Shadows and Skulls”, “Horde Prime Takes a Holiday”, Christmas Special). Modulok soon defects to the Horde. Prince Adam turns 20 or 21. Skeletor, Beast Man and Trap Jaw are last seen together assaulting the Bee People’s Hive starship (She-Ra, “Assault on the Hive”).

PHASE 3, honorary Snake Man and new Evil Warriors

One day when only he and Kobra Khan are at Snake Mountain, Skeletor goes spelunking into unexplored caves beneath Snake Mountain. King Hiss is released from mystic confinement. Rattlor and Tung Lashor are summoned from the Etherian Horde to join him. Hypothetically, Skeletor and King Hiss are independent allies living together and each planning to backstab the other when He-Man and Hordak are defeated, but all the old Evil Warriors stop coming to Snake Mountain and the pair act like co-commanders of the Snake Men. King Hiss manages to free Sssqueeze and Snake Face from where they were mystically banished. The robots Blast Attack and Twistoid are added to this group. (mini-comics “King of the Snake Men”, “Snake Attack”, “The Ultimate Battleground!”, “Revenge of the Snake Men”, “Energy Zoids”. Alternate telling in “Vengeance of the Viper King” newspaper comic.)

Eventually the Snake Men are banished again. Either before or after this, Skeletor summons Scare Glow and Ninjor from across space and time to serve him. This doesn’t seem to work out long-term. (”The Search for Keldor” mini-comic, “Ninjor Stalks by Night” newspaper comic)

With the Snake Men gone, Skeletor summons alien mercenaries Saurod and Blade. Evil-Lyn and Beast Man return to him, though at one point they also try to run away from him and conquer Blade’s home planet Merrian.

PHASE 4, The New Adventures

Some time later, Skeletor has become a cyber-lich, with advanced prosthetics all over his remaining flesh.

He lives at Snake Mountain with none of the Evil Warriors except a tribe of humans who wear ram hides. He also has a different staff from the old Havoc Staff.

He makes his way onto a starship from Primus and joins the Mutants of Denebria led by Flogg. (New Adventures, “A New Beginning”)

On the moon of Nordor, he finds a power crystal that changes his body/armor again. (New Adventures, “Sword & Staff”)

He falls in love with a Mutant woman, Crita.

His beloved Crita schemes her way into a position of power independent of Flogg as the Queen of the Gleanons of planet Necron. When a peace treaty is signed between the rulers of Primus and Flogg’s Mutants, he and Crita do not abide by it and attack He-Man and his friends. He-Man knocks them into a small spacecraft and sarcastically officiates their wedding before tossing it into orbit. (”The Final Invasion”)

Nyeh!