#reptons

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.

How would you outline Masters of the Universe’s “Preternia” era?

For me, it’s important that the Three Towers be there, as they always were until Revelation said they only exist in Heaven.

Central Tower would be built by Noah, his student Hordak (with a softer head design than is-that-metal-or-your-bare-skull, matching whatever his skin color was) and a Cat folk architect.

I haven’t figured out if there would be a King Grayskull that Grayskull Tower was named after, or if such a person only comes along later and it has to be named after something else.

There would be a team of heroes, led by He-Ro and including Hordak.

His mentor Eldor would fill a mentor role rather than one of the main hero slots. Eldor would bring He-Ro, who was raised as a primitive tribesman, to the Hall of Wisdom, the pole that balances King Hiss’ fortress.

(The Powers of Grayskull style guide says that Gray/He-Ro was raised by Eldor and the tribal chieftess Sharella. Perhaps she could be his big sister and they lost their parents to the Snake Men, for motivation.)

The first story arc would end with the Snake Men conflict becoming so hopeless that they combine their magic to sink the Three Towers into a fault in the ground to keep King Hiss from using their combined power.

In the next arc, King Hiss accumulates enough power to still come close to winning the war. The team casts another ritual spell, creating a portal to a timeless dimension under Snake Mountain, sucking the evil Snake Men in, at the cost of Eldor’s life. Many Snake Men remain, and they have to decide how to treat their defeated enemies. Hordak and Sharella are the most sympathetic to them, but the others vote that they be denied self-determination.

Hordak leaves his seat on the ruling Council to hole up in his laboratory. As the mortal son of the demon Seferus Kur and an Eternian witch, he envies his evil paternal relatives their immortality and make an evil artifact so that when he dies, he can cheat death as a lich. With no fear of death, he re-emerges and rallies the Snake Men to fight their “good” rulers. He dies, but that doesn’t stop him. The undead Hordak goes as far as reducing the Hall of Wisdom to rubble. Yet the Snake Men eventually suffer a third and final defeat, whereupon some of them flee Eternia through a magic portal.