The show, Under The Influence: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe will show at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, will run from January 8th through the 29th. But several of the participating artists have already posted their contributions to the show.

Many of these are via Super Punch.

He-Man - The Bad and the Ugly by Alex Fugazi
He-Man - The Good by Alex Fugazi
Stinkor by Brennan Kelly
The Creeping Hordak by Brennan Kelly
Skeletor Atop a Throne of Skulls by Keith Noordzy
Trimming the Bowl Cut by Kiersten Essenpreis
Skeletor Gets a Root Canal by Kiersten Essenpreis
Greyskull by Jeff Boyles
Just kidding at Castle Greyskull by Alessandra Fusi
The rest of the Pricess of Power by Alessandra Fusi
Beastman Garbage Pail Kid by Layron DeJarnette
Battlecat by Bill Carman
Cringer by Bill Carman

Since the mid-2000s, Mishka NYC has been at the vanguard of popular streetwear. A cornerstone of their success has been designing clothing influenced by gonzo horror, Z-grade sci-fi, and the overall dank and stanky underbelly of pop culture. Indeed, their gear is worn with equal aplomb by metalheads and hip-hoppers (Lil Jon and Lady Sovereign have sported Mishka in music videos), and the label's past collaborators have ranged from everyone from Iron Maiden album artist Derek Riggs to erotic photographer Ellen Stagg to electro-reggae supergroup Major Lazer.

Label heads Mikhail "Mike" Bortnik and Greg Rivera were nice enough to sit down with io9 and answer some questions about Mishka's design philosophy, winter line, and how Stan Lee cold lamps it at Comic-Con:

What's the Mishka origin story?

Mikhail Bortnik (left): It started sometime in '03. My job I was working at was going to close, so I decided to take a stab at t-shirt design, which I had wanted to do since college. This was about the same time I met Greg. A few months into it, I realized I was in over my head so I asked Greg to join on-board and sell the line. Greg immediately came on as a full-time partner. The basic idea was we wanted to sell street wear, but we soon realized there were so many fans who were into both street wear and scifi that there was absolutely no reason we couldn't incorporate these two things.

In terms of scifi, what were your earliest influences?

Greg Rivera (right): A lot of our influences have come from B-horror films, straight-up scifi films, and comic books, especially for Mike. I was big into horror comics when I was kid and also things like The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, anything with the ironic twist at the end. Both of us are also big toy fans. Being in our early thirties, we grew up with 1980s toys, which ended up being a huge influence in our designs.

MB: One example of this influence was in our Fall 2008 Skyway Trippers collection – we tweaked an Israeli Special Forces design to include the phrase "Spaceknights" in Russian, as a homage to the old Spaceknights comic and toy line.

ROM Spaceknight allusions? That's wild. On a similar note, Mishka has a roster of kaiju-like characters who appears on a lot of your apparel – i.e. the half-serpentine, half-ursine Death Adder and the Cyco Simon skull. What's the story behind them?

MB: Actually the notion of bringing characters into the clothing brand goes back to metal bands. Cyco Simon is a reference to [Megadeth's ] Vic Rattlehead and Eddie from Iron Maiden, and we wanted our own. As for the Death Adder, we use our designs to tell a story with him – he's often seen teaming up with our Soviet super-soldier character.

Are we going to see an Adult Swim series with these guys anytime soon?

MB: I'll be honest, Greg and I would love to be able to a comic book or cartoon series with them.

What was the first sci-fi influenced Mishka piece?

GR: "They Live" was probably one of the first ones. It's hard to remember since we've had so many designs over time.

One of my early favorites was your Judge Death-inspired "Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode" logo.

MB: That was a mixing of the old Brian Bolland artwork with what people guessed [what the name of German industrial band] KMFDM stood for. KMFDM actually gave us a cease-and-desist for that one.

Really? Not the 2000 AD people?

MB: We figured we'd get something from them or Depeche Mode, but no, it was from the KMFDM people!

On a similar note, when was that moment when you said to yourselves, "Holy crap. We can't believe we just put that on a t-shirt."

MB: The "Tom of Eternia" t-shirt.

GR: Mike had the idea of doing a Tom of Finland-style shirt [featuring He-Man].

MB: If you've never hear of Tom of Finland, he's like the homoerotic artist. There was this impetus [to create this shirt] early on when someone made the comment that all we do is put naked girls and 80s cartoon characters on our shirts. Street wear on a whole seems more macho than we are as a brand, so Greg and I were like, let's do this.

GR: Our friend Robin Nishio – who is this amazing illustrator – met up with us and Mike pitched him the idea. Robin actually went and bought two big books on Tom of Finland and aped the style exactly. That was the coolest because we got so much shit from our customers because it was like, "Here's Skeletor as the master and He-Man down on his knees, gay porn style."

What sort of pieces are in the pipeline at the moment?

GR: We did this series of shirts for [the new heavy metal-themed video game] Brutal Legend and we're working with Dark Horse Comics on a project.

Oh wow, are you at the liberty to talk about that right now?

MB: Not really, but if anyone has followed our brand, you'll know that one particular Dark Horse character particularly sticks out.

As far as the Winter 2009 line goes, you seem to have strong robot theme going. You have the Terminator cyclops, the Decepticon hearse, and my favorite, the Ultron bear. Why robots this season?

MB: We've gone so far doing themes that this season just happened to be robots. This was probably one of our most rigid designs themes. The Ultron shirt's been particularly popular.

You guys hit up the San Diego Comic-Con this year. How was it being a street wear brand at what's been historically a comic and scifi show?

MB: We were selling some things there, but we were mostly there as fans.

GR: It's been a little calculated – and not to reveal all our secrets – but if a lot more other brands saw the potential of that market, you'd see a lot more people doing it. It's hard for us to do business, because Mike and I go and we're just geeking out. Besides going out there to meet Tim and Eric [from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!], we're both really into Japanese kaiju and we had the chance to show off our own kaiju designs.

MB: Comic-Con 2008 was my first one. We wanted to see the Lost panel, but after we saw it spilling into the street, we just said "fuck it" and went to the Battlestar Galactica panel. That crowd was pretty big too, but Dean Koontz was still speaking. So yeah, we killed two hours listening to Dean Koontz.

Any good Mishka Comic-Con party tales?

GR: We crashed an Activision party at the Hard Rock Café and saw Stan Lee. If you're at a Comic-Con party and you see Stan Lee, you know you're at the coolest party.

MB: He was just hanging out with this girl on his arm.

GR: (laughs) She looked like she was twenty years old.

MB: I don't if she was, like, hitting on him or he was hitting on her, but Stan Lee's exactly how you picture him. He really says "true believer."

I wouldn't want him any other way. Do you find yourselves getting calls from influences who've enjoyed your work?

MB: Other than the artists who we're huge fans of and end up working with – like Derek Riggs and L'Amour Supreme – no, not really. A lot of our influences are grumpy old men.

What would you say is the most quintessential Mishka design?

GR: On our first trip to Japan, we stayed in this little town outside of Tokyo and found all these old Japanese horror and sci-fi press kits. These kits would take the coolest part of the movie and turn it into poster art. We found this great Westworld kit and Mike added some comic book stuff, like Ultron and Cyborg from Teen Titans to the design. To this day, it's still one of my favorite ones.

MB: We also found this Motel Hell kit in which we used for our "Electric Funeral" shirt. We electrified the faces and it turned out great.

Alright guys - some final lightning round questions. Kim Cattrall in Big Trouble in Little China or Kirstie Alley in Wrath of Khan?

MB: Kim Cattrall. I'm a Next Generation fan, what can I say.

Zardoz or Troll 2?

GR: Troll 2.

MB: Zardoz.

Would you rather have John Carpenter compose you a personal theme song or direct a movie about your life?

MB: I'd rather have him direct the movie because then he'd have to compose the film's theme song.

Shit! I hadn't thought of that loophole. Any final words to io9 readers?

GR: By all means check Mishka out - you'll definitely find something you like.

Mishka apparel is available at their website and their Brooklyn store at 350 Broadway in Williamsburg, NYC. Store photography courtesy of Dave Digioia.

Brooklyn-based illustrator Vermilyea's extremely limited edition project (Only 21 made!) is a particularly trippy take on the 1980s toy, filled with Porky Pigs, Bullwinkle Mooses and, yes, even Big Bird being strangled by the Eternian hero. What does it all mean? Is it a metaphor for cartoons and toys destroying childhood innocence? We have no idea, but we love it anyway.

He-Man and the 13 Trials of Eternia [Jon Vermilyea]

Reimann explained the idea behind his reimagining of the childhood icons:

I imagined them somewhere in the indie/hipster/fashion-scene, as if they were doing a photoshooting for some magazine. I'm a fashion-nerd myself, so I dressed them up in things that really exist and that I like.

We're unconvinced that Teela would really go for stockings, but apart from that, we're sure Tim Gunn would approve.

Masters of The Universe [Behance Network] (Via)

Mattel pulled the rights to the toyline from producer Joel Silver less than three weeks ago, but have already set up a new deal with Sony Pictures that'll see an all-new script and direction courtesy of Knowing and The Taking of Pelham 123 producers Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal and Steve Tisch's Escape Artists production company. As long as we get to keep Orko, I'm happy with whatever they come up with.

Barbie's a living doll at Universal [Variety]

Variety is reporting that He-Man is all but being abandoned by the WB, which is a very very good thing. The original script written by Justin Marks was swapped out by Producer Joel Silver for a more realistic and "gritty" take on Prince Adam, which meant a Dark Knight-inspired brooding, morally conflicted He-Man or something like that. I'd love to see how they would go about explaining Battle Cat or Orko, if they'd included them at all. If we're going to do He-Man lets just go full-on Beastmaster with it, shall we? Tiny shorts and all.

So there's one toy/studio movie partnership down. Mattel will no doubt take the property to another studio, but still, it gives us time. Now if we could just get them to drop the Hot Wheels and Viewmaster films.

The revelation came in yesterday's Hollywood Reporter story about the movie getting a new writer, as the paper explained the studio's take on the franchise:

Warners sees the big-screen version as a gritty fantasy and reimagines Adam as a soldier who sets off to find his destiny, happening upon the magical world of Eternia. There, Skeletor has raised a technological army and is bent on eradicating magic.

There is so much fail in those two sentences that I don't know where to start. A gritty He-Man? A guy with a skeleton for a head "bent on eradicating magic"? The whole "magic versus science" thing in general? It's all so wrong, and that's coming from a movie that was destined to be pretty wrong in the first place. Is it too late to stop this monstrosity?

'Grayskull' lands new writer [Hollywood Reporter]

The giant blue Faker greats you at New York Comic Con's entry way (he's available for purchase, in a smaller, much cheaper form at the Mattell booth.) And slowly, the masked faces and poster-protection-tube-carrying bodies are filing in. It's a beautiful thing to see the miniature Batman dolls all in a row, a Forbidden Science viewing tube (for porn-watching early in the morning) and rows upon rows of comic retailers.

The buzz is starting to circulate: have you seen the Master Chief suit or the Rorschach grappling gun? What's Marvel going to announce today? Where's Terry Moore? Who's going to show up and drive the fans berzerk? Will the new Terminator bot be on display, and have you played the new Riddick game yet?

But that's just the beginning of the play-by-play we'll be bringing you from NYCC this weekend. Keep your eye out for io9ers at panels and events, especially the Saber Academy. I'm sending my intern to that one, because while her classic training is good, her tonfa lightsaber technique is crap.

John Stevenson, one of the directors of Dreamworks' Kung-Fu Panda, has been tapped to direct the new movie based upon the 1980s Mattel toyline, from a script written by Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li's Justin Marks. Stevenson was selected for the gig because of his love for the characters, according to Mattel's Barry Waldo:

John had such passion that we found ourselves running to catch up with his vision.

Stevenson's passion may come from the people who've handled the franchise prior; for all that He-Man may have a bad rep, a lot of talented people have been involved with the character in the past; animation living legends Bruce Timm and Paul Dini both honed their craft on the character when he first appeared, and J. Michael Straczynski was one of the writers of the original 1983 cartoon that accompanied the toys.

The project - to be produced by The Matrix's Joel Silver - will be Stevenson's first live-action movie as director, although his CV includes art department stints on movies like Little Shop of Horrors and Labyrinth. Who knows? Maybe the future of the planet Eternia is in good hands after all.

Flickr image by Phil_G.

WB, Joel Silver shaping He-Man film [Variety]

Admittedly, the news (via Variety) that movies are planned for the Magic 8-Ball, Barbie, Hot Wheels and He-Man may sound like overkill, but apparently all of the movies will be done with something approaching integrity, according to Mattel's VP for entertainment and marketing, Barry Waldo:

[Hot Wheels is] a billion-dollar brand for us. We want to continue making it relevant for kids [but w]e won't have the cars talk... That would be off brand position for us. It won't be another 'Knight Rider,' I promise that.

Phew, that's a relief... until you read that the movie may be based upon Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5, a new cartoon due to premiere on Cartoon Network this year that apparently sees the non-talking cars fighting "intergalactic" crime.

Getting slightly better treatment is He-Man, whose movie will apparently serve to reintroduce the character and concept to a mainstream audience, without sacrificing what made him the muscle-bound hero of so many children's homo-erotic fantasies. Variety quotes Waldo as saying,

There's a fine line to walk between staying loyal and true to the fan community and doing what we need to do to bring the idea to the masses in a way that's going to be relevant today and be something that hasn't been done before... we always start out not wanting to make a long toy commercial. We want to make a credible story that will make people go to the theater.

A credible story? That'll be a step up from Transformers, then.

Studios tell toy stories [Variety]

Yes, He-Man. Maybe it’s because of that fateful December 24 when I, at the tender age of five or six, snuck out of bed and discovered that Castle Grayskull had appeared under the tree, and the milk and cookies next to it had been consumed—despite the fact that my parents were still awake in the next room. “Holy fucking shit,” I thought. “Santa is fucking fast.” Or maybe it’s because of that same night, several hours later, when I woke up my mom and dad to ask if we could open presents yet, and my mother said something to me that I have never forgotten: “Joshua, it is four o’clock in the fucking morning. Get your ass back in bed and stay there.”

Maybe. Or maybe it is because I love both Christmas and He-Man, and yet both get hated on time and time again. The big complaint about He-Man, after all, is exactly the same one you hear about Christmas: that it’s a corny, mawkish fantasy camouflaging little more than an exercise in crass materialism. That whatever myth might surround it, its core reason for being is (or was) to get people to spend money.

Well, to that critique of both, I say: Bah. Humbug.

Oh, sure, both Christmas and He-Man do (or did) get people to part with their hard-earned; there’s no question of that. And I’m not going to deny the corniness or mawkishness of either. What I do deny, though—vehemently—is the implicit presumption that because something has commercial, corny, or mawkish qualities, it is wholly devoid of substance. Further, I’ll bite the bullet and argue that those corny and mawkish qualities are often exactly where the substance lies.

Take, for example, He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special, which I just watched for the first time in almost a quarter-century. The premise of the special—which would probably not qualify as “science fiction” under Harlan Ellison’s standards—is that two Earth children are accidentally brought to He-Man’s home planet of Eternia by his friend Orko, and then kidnapped by villains Hordak and Skeletor, whose boss wants them and the Christmas spirit they’ve brought with them (it clings to Earth children like the scent of pine needles) destroyed.

After a series of battles, the kids end up stuck with Skeletor, and a cyborg puppy, in a snow-covered mountain range. And as in so many of the best Christmas stories (Orko, incidentally, delivers the last line—“Merry Christmas, everybody!”—in perfect Tiny Tim intonation), the heart of the plot sees the bony ol’ grinch from that point on starting to redeem himself, at least temporarily.

Is it absurd? Not really—Skeletor has always smacked of being a softie (how else could his henchpeople have survived for so long, and why else would he have hired them in the first place?), and you always suspect that he’s secretly happiest on the rare occasions he deals with He-Man and the Masters as peers instead of enemies. (At the end of the special, when he protests, “I don’t like to feel good! I like to feel evil!” and everyone chuckles, the moment is much more Oscar the Grouch than Cobra Commander.) Still, it’s definitely cheesy.

Nonetheless, there is something very important, very substantial, about the lesson here, however clichéd, which is of course that there’s good in everyone. That’s not to say you should be overly trusting in the case of someone who has repeatedly tried to overthrow King Randor’s peaceful rule. But which lesson—“There’s good in everyone” or “Don’t be too trusting”—is ultimately more important?

Well, if the former is evocative of a He-Man cartoon, I’d say the latter suggests The Wire, that critically acclaimed HBO series that was anything but sentimental. But while the former is a straight-up moral of the story, I don’t think that’s true of the latter. No, although “Don’t be too trusting” is something I think most of the characters in The Wire would agree on, the message you take away from the series is that the only truly bright moments in a bleak existence come when people hew to the sappy ideals He-Man lurrrrves so much.

So, O jaded readers, as you go about your lives this holiday season, maybe don’t be so quick to dismiss the mushy, the maudlin, or even the trite out of hand. Immersed in the sickly sweet bathwater may be the Baby of All That Is Meaningful. And the baby’s name may just be Jesus. Or it could be Dylan—that’s a pretty popular name lately. Dylan, get your ass back in bed and stay there. Merry Christmas, everyone!

He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Commenter Moff’s real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found at scribblescribblescribble.com/blog.

According to Latino Review, a long list of directors, including Doug Liman and Bryan Singer, have passed on the project and eventually Warner Brothers passed on the Silver Studios picture, much to the dismay of Mattel. But now out of the mist arises one John Stevenson, who "dazzled" the execs.

Honestly Stevenson may have the sense of humor and Hollywood connections to make this happen. Panda fans are aware that it had an all-star collection of stars lining up to voice the characters. Plus, the humor is pretty cheeky, and exactly what a He-Man movie would need. I say lets make this happen, as He-Man was a huge part of my childhood and is all but forgotten these days. Bring back the shorty-short heroes of yesterday, and maybe, just maybe, this will lead to the Thundercats live action movie I desperately desire.

[Latino Review]

Transformers: "Don't Run Away From Home"
Transformers tell you how selfish you really are.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: "Don't Smoke Weed: Get A Teacher"
Classic turtle lingo, but seriously, getting a pizza isn't that bad of a suggestion.

Thundercats: "Don't Do Anything"
A hosts of cat characters give you the run down.

Star Wars: "Don't Drive Drunk"
Friends don't let friends drink and do Kessel runs.

He-Man and She-Ra: "Don't Get Sexually Assaulted"
Love the shout out to a minister or a rabbi.

Power Rangers: "Don't Be A Jerk"
Good thing Billy had the temporal displacement unit handy.