GOOD OR EVIL?

The debate over whether Zodac is an evil or good character is one of those areas of MOTU mythology upon which opponents will never agree. It is a shame that the argument over-shadows the character himself. As this is such an important subject, I thought Zodac deserved his own page on this website.

Over the years Zodac has been seen as a warrior in the service of Skeletor, an ally of He-Man and a middle-of-the-road, sit-on-the-fence sort of enforcer who helps either side whenever he feels like doing so in order to maintain a balance between good and evil. Bizarrely, this actually appears to be the official viewpoint, if there is such a thing.

Of course, the Vaults Of Grayskull website is perfectly happy to rock the boat and disagree strongly with that! My Grayskull story deliberately puts a new twist on the motivation and purpose of Zodac, because I thought the character had such great potential that was never fulfilled.

As far as I'm concerned, Zodac is an evil warrior. He was originally packaged as the evil cosmic enforcer, in the servitude of Skeletor. Somehow that perception was altered, and it was a case of messing around with something purely for the sake of change. I suspect this happened about the time Prince Adam turned up. The result was that Zodac became something of a pointless individual.

If the change was an attempt to make Zodac more mysterious, it simply did not work. The designers had made him a dark and unusual character by hiding his features behind that fabulous helmet with the black eye-pieces. That was what gave Zodac his enigmatic appearance, and no one knew what he was thinking or planning. Was he really content working for Skeletor, or did he have an ulterior motive? These themes should have been developed thoughtfully. By simplifying the character to one who helped out both sides in the battle between good and evil, the need for the mask was effectively removed. Zodac became predictable.

So I stayed with the original evil cosmic enforcer version of Zodac. The idea that among Skeletor's warriors there was one who even the lord of destruction himself did not fully understand was brilliant. It gave the mythology an element of risk and danger. When I wrote Grayskull, I knew I had to take that concept even further, and the Zodac sub-plot is one of my favourite parts of the story.

Below are two important Zodac images. The first shows the card art that was printed for Zodac. As you can see, the wording on the card reads Zodac attacks the Heroic Warriors using all the evil power at his command! The second image is a scan of the middle pages of an early minicomic and shows Zodac (spelled with a K) as the Evil Cosmic Enforcer in the Evil Warriors category. For more information about Zodac, including the good versus evil debate, go to the Wikipedia page by clicking here.