Part 2 of the "Lifetime" story is also the final story to be told of the Masters of the Universe in this particular iteration of the series. It's a fitting ending to the series, and offers a more blatant, but still somewhat effecting, version of the end of Final Crisis: Superman Beyond, the notion of the story never ending, of the battle of good against evil being an ongoing struggle.
More and more I think that there's a link between serialization and mythification that's an important thing for us to be thinking about. Why do we create never-ending stories? The easy answer is that to cap a franchise such as this one is to terminate its usefulness as a marketing vehicle. But a quick glance at the revisions and re-imaginings of just about everything these days trumps that idea. Even if a story is finished, it can be (over)hauled back out and told again. There's something deeper happening, some thing pedagogical, I think. If we are presented with a definitive victory of good over evil, we are taught that good can triumph - this is simply unrealistic, and despite the setting and premise of the series, the lessons it teaches need to have real world application. The struggle between good and evil, however one might define such terms, must be ongoing for it to have meaning. And it's not even the external struggle to which such teaching moments are directed, but toward our inner dialogues and the struggle against our lesser angels.
Which is to say that, as He-Man proclaims his renewed dedication to the struggle against Skeletor, the story teaches us to face evil head on, always, and not back down. A simple message, perhaps, but a fundamental one.
Barring suggestions from readers, I think we may move on to a week of romance comics tomorrow. I have some fairly old pieces from the genre, and they're certainly amongst the least-read of the various genres in the collection. Onward!
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