The following contains spoilers for Masters of the Universe: Masterverse #4, on sale now from Dark Horse Comics.
In the He-Man lore, it's hard to deny there's a villain more powerful than Skeletor. Even Hordak needed an army and lots of technology to come after Prince Adam and Eternia. However, Skeletor had many tricks and weapons to break He-Man physically and mentally, reiterating he was the best enemy around.
Whether it be supernatural tools, mutated armies or evil clones like Faker, Skeletor really put He-Man through hell across many cartoons and comics. It's why he's considered an iconic '80s villain, as well as one of the most signature tyrants in all of pop culture. However, in Masters of the Universe: Masterverse #4's "The Megabeast Matrix" (by Tim Seeley, Fico Ossio and Deron Bennett), He-Man fans have been exposed to someone, or something, much smarter, more monstrous, and way more powerful.
He-Man's Megabeast Is a Multiversal Threat
This story focuses on the Megabeast, which is a monster created by the villain Modulok. The mad scientist is one of He-Man's more unheralded enemies, but this creature's able to traverse many worlds. It infects and incorporates heroes, villains and anything in its sight into one giant red blob. This "megabeast" then keeps on feeding, nodding to the monsters from Stranger Things and The Thing.
The way it spreads at rapid speed, and became sentient adds a horror feel to the He-Man mythos. It also connects Modulok's consciousness across all these realities as he searches for the secrets of life. To protect the Multiverse, He-Force comes together, using the Power of Grayskull to short it out by overloading it. Still, the body gore, how many worlds get assimilated, and the devastation wrought is way more than Skeletor could ever have enacted. Even Skeletor's wars required just He-Man and the Masters, not an army of Eternian champions. It speaks to how powerful the entity is in this case, which feels like something Skeletor wishes he could have made.
He-Man's Megabeast Breathes New Life Into the Franchise
Admittedly, many He-Man stories do feel run-of-the-mill, with heroes and villains confined to one Eternia. Of course, there are incursions from the Horde, or the rare foray for Adam to meet other champions in the afterlife, per the Netflix Revelation cartoon. But no threat has required this sort of Justice League or Avengers-like approach with sop many different variants coming together. What further stands out is while this megabeast seems like a physical powerhouse, there's a mental game at play. Moduluk ends up unlocking the location of the Nexus of All Realities where he tries to destroy the Multiverse after attaining knowledge from all his feeding sessions.
Luckily, the heroes take him out at this creation point, but it's worth noting once more, this is something even Skeletor failed to accomplish. He's tried to get to the Nexus and warp it, but he's never succeeded. Modulok, though, goes from a joke to an ambitious overlord using a near-perfect misdirection strategy that plays to the strength of this anthology. These Elseworld stories allow minor villains to become scarier and more sinister, changing the dynamic up from the obvious. Sure, Skeletor and his goons are fun to see in action, but they're a tad repetitive. Ultimately, this is a prime example how other villains like Modulok can be incorporated and subverted to create a more engaging, thought-provoking and nuanced story that tests many iterations of Adam and his peers.