Some exciting stuff for He-Man cartoon enthusiastics and 200x fans!
Over at He-Man.org's cartoon-section for MYP He-Man series, under Documents Library are now not one, but two early Series Bibles as written by Michael Halperin!
They are not entirely the same. First version has some lines changed or omitted from Second version, so I encourage you to take a look at both.
▸ Early Cartoon Series Bible
▸ Early Cartoon Series Bible - Extended Version
According to producer Ian Richter (from Mattel), they approached Michael Halperin in 2000, after they had seen his original Series Bible for Filmation (1982) and asked if he could write a new one.
From 2011 Power-Con. Michael Halperin spoke on the Mike Young Productions Panel:
Michael Halperin also explained that the reason his storyline-ideas were not picked up, were because at the time when he worked on them, it was meant as a more serialized story narrative. Which may get handled poorly in syndication when episodes are aired out-of-order."So I went back to my original notion, and I expanded on it, somewhat."
"Later, after I developed this. Mattel asked me if I could come up with some storylines... And I came up with 25 storylines for the first season... None of which Mike [Young Productions] used (laughs)!"
Eventually MYP did have a continuity based story in the show, but perhaps not as tight as their original plans...
Personally I'm so glad to finally get these online for everyone to read. Here's a quick breakdown on my experiences with these....
At first I only knew of one early Bible-pitch by Halperin, with the gracious help of Danielle "Penny Dreadful" Gelehrter. Which includes the storyline suggestions from Halperin. Been sitting on it for some time as luck would have it, it was for the better.
- Now to my surprise, as I was uploading this Series Bible, and there was a delay, which required checking the bible-copy... it turns out that there was an EVEN EARLIER version from Halperin (thanks to Val)!
It bears repeating, but imagine my surprise!
Sadly I don't know why Halperin wrote two bibles, but I hope to interview him in the near future about these to learn more. Fingers crossed.
Hopefully you guys will enjoy these! As a 200x fan and especially cartoon lover, I found these fascinating bits of history and providing a cool take on things. Some things I wish would have actually made it to the cartoon-series, while some I'm glad were not picked up.
Some example pages from the Extended Version:
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