Artist Feature
Earl Norem
The pulp veteran who painted Eternia at full scale, one pull-out poster at a time.
The last of the pulp men
Earl Norem signed his paintings with one word, NOREM, in small block letters, usually tucked against a rock or a boot where it would not get in the way. By the time that signature started appearing in the corners of Masters of the Universe artwork in 1983, he had been painting professionally for over thirty years, and he had lived more adventure than the magazines he illustrated. He fought in World War II with the 85th Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division, trained in Colorado, and fought the Germans in the Northern Apennine Mountains of Italy. He served alongside Torger Tokle, the champion ski jumper he had watched fly at Bear Mountain as a twelve-year-old, and when Tokle was killed in action in March 1945, Norem was one of the men assigned to bring his body down off the mountain. A few weeks later Norem was wounded going into the Po Valley, and his war was over. He was twenty-two.
Back home he built the quintessential working illustrator's career. Through the 1950s and 60s he painted covers and interior spreads for Martin Goodman's men's adventure magazines, the sweat-and-jungle pulps like Male, Stag and For Men Only, alongside work for Reader's Digest and Field and Stream. When Goodman's magazine line and Marvel Comics converged in the 1970s, Norem moved with it, painting covers for the black-and-white magazines: The Savage Sword of Conan, starting with issue 14 in 1976 and continuing for some four dozen covers, plus Rampaging Hulk, Planet of the Apes, Tales of the Zombie and Marvel Preview. He worked in acrylics, fast and heavy, and his specialty was weight: bodies that strained, skies that pressed down, ground that looked like it would hurt to fall on.
So when Mattel's licensing machine needed painters who could make a 5.5 inch action figure look like a legend, Norem was the most overqualified man available. He later explained his hiring on another toy property in terms that apply word for word to He-Man: "Because I could draw action in Conan and superheroes, the art director thought I could make the Transformers move almost human-like, instead of the stiffness of the toys." That was the whole job. Take the toys, lose the stiffness, keep the faith of a seven-year-old who believed the box art was a documentary.
Alfredo Alcala painted Eternia first, in the 1982 mini-comics, as a grim dark-fantasy frontier. Filmation drew it for television in 1983, flattened and brightened for animation. Norem's Eternia is the third pillar: the painted, poster-scale version, more saturated than Alcala, more dangerous than Filmation, hanging on bedroom walls in every town in America. For the back half of the vintage line, if you saw a painting of He-Man, odds are you were looking at a Norem.
Era one, the Golden Books
1983 to 1986. Cover paintings for Golden's MOTU storybook line, $1.95 a copy.
Norem's first MOTU assignments were cover paintings for Western Publishing's Golden Books: The Sunbird Legacy in 1983, then Mask of Evil, The Rock Warriors, The Magic Mirrors, A Hero In Need and Power From the Sky. The interiors were drawn by comics veterans like Fred Carillo and Adrian Gonzales, and one title, Demons of the Deep, was written by a young R.L. Stine a decade before Goosebumps. The covers were the bait, and Norem painted them with total sincerity, like dust jackets for novels that did not exist.
Era two, the Magazine
Sixteen issues, Winter 1985 to Fall 1988. Telepictures Publications, quarterly, $1.95.
In 1985 Telepictures launched He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Magazine, a quarterly of stories, comics, puzzles and fan letters. It became Norem's franchise. His paintings ran on the covers and, crucially, as the pull-out posters stapled into the center of every issue, two or three per copy. For four years, as the toyline crested and then fell, the magazine was the one place new painted MOTU mythology arrived on schedule: the Evil Horde's debut, the Snake Men, the Slime Pit, the Powers of Grayskull dinosaurs, a He-Man movie update, even the create-a-character contest that gave the world Fearless Photog. Norem painted through all of it, right up to the Fall 1988 issue, published when the toyline itself was already dead in most American stores. The magazine outlived the toys it advertised.
All sixteen issues. The painted streak breaks exactly twice, and both breaks tell you what was happening to the brand: issues 11 and 12, Summer and Fall 1987, ran photo covers of Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor to push the Cannon film, then the paintings came back for the final four issues. A companion She-Ra Princess of Power Magazine ran six issues from Winter 1986, though its covers were produced in the flat Filmation style guide look rather than Norem's painted one.
The posters
The center-spread pull-outs, the most loved paintings in the vintage line.
Ask a vintage MOTU collector about Norem and they will not mention the covers. They will mention the posters: full-bleed acrylic battle scenes, painted at easel scale and stapled into a $1.95 kids' magazine. Tape holes and pin shadows on surviving copies show exactly what happened to most of them. They went up on walls the same afternoon.
More from the run
The poster output went far beyond the famous five. Survivors from the rest of the run, kept alive by fan scans and the artist's own gallery archive: reflection puzzles, widescreen centerspreads, dinosaur patrols and one painting that became wrapping paper.
Era three, the 2002 encore
One last wraparound, at age 79.
When MVCreations and Image Comics relaunched Masters of the Universe in late 2002 alongside the Mike Young cartoon, issue 1 shipped with three wraparound covers: one by series artist Emiliano Santalucia, one by J. Scott Campbell, and Cover C, with gold foil logo treatment, painted by Earl Norem. It was a deliberate handshake across the generations, the relaunch hiring the man whose posters had defined the brand's painted look, and it made the variant an instant collector target. Norem was 79. The painting does not look like a 79-year-old's work, but then nothing he made ever looked like the work of a man his age, in either direction.
He retired from commercial work around 2005, his hands slowed by arthritis, with a characteristic absence of sentiment: "All the contacts that I had in the commercial art field are either retired or dead, and the younger art buyers don't want anything to do with an 81-year-old artist." The buyers came back anyway. Topps hired him for the Mars Attacks: Invasion card set in 2013, and he was mid-assignment on another Mars Attacks job when he died in Danbury, Connecticut on June 19, 2015. And between those bookends there was one more quiet MOTU commission: card art for the trading sets packed with BCI's commemorative Filmation DVD releases in 2006, franchise work nobody was watching for from an 83-year-old, delivered anyway.
Era four, the auction block
The original boards, at original scale, and what collectors now pay for them.
Norem painted big. The boards behind the magazine pages run two and three feet on a side, acrylic and opaque watercolor laid on heavy illustration board, signed NOREM in the corner, often with the production glue and crop marks still in the margins. For decades they were just commercial leftovers. Not anymore. Below is every Masters of the Universe original of his we can find an auction record for, fourteen sold pieces plus one headed to the block right now, from a $35,000 reversible showpiece down to a graphite preliminary that sold this very week. The big boards all clear five figures. The scans come from those auction listings, the closest most of us will ever get to standing in front of the boards. Click any of them to go full screen.
Reversible gouache showpiece, c. 1980s
What's Wrong With This Picture
$35,000 · Sold 2022
The cleverest painting he ever made for the brand. Right side up, He-Man and the heroic warriors hold Castle Grayskull; below the waterline their reflections resolve into a second, complete battle where Skeletor's forces are winning. Turn the frame over and the picture still works. Gouache, and the most expensive piece of Norem MOTU art ever sold at auction.
Magazine #6 pull-out poster, Spring 1986
Land Shark Duel
$18,000 · Sold 2022
Skeletor bears down in the Land Shark while He-Man counterattacks in the Laser Bolt, painted in acrylic on a 22 by 28 inch board. The original of the magazine's most famous vehicle poster, and the most expensive of his magazine boards at auction.
The Eternia playset as myth, c. 1986
He-Man and Eternia
$16,800 · Sold 2023
The painting at the top of this page. He-Man raises the Power Sword between the three towers of the Eternia playset, Mattel's biggest and final vintage flagship, rendered not as a plastic toy but as standing architecture. Acrylic, 17 by 19 inches, signed lower right.
Magazine #7, Summer 1986
The Meteorbs Arrive
$15,000 · Sold 2023
Norem introduces readers to the Meteorbs, the egg-shaped transforming oddballs of the line's late period, and somehow makes them epic. Painted in acrylic on an oversized board, and possibly reused on product packaging.
Magazine #8 cover, Fall 1986
Blasterhawk vs Fright Fighter
$14,400 · Sold 2024
He-Man's disc-firing Blasterhawk meets Skeletor's dragonfly Fright Fighter head-on. Opaque watercolor on a 22 by 28 inch board, the original of the issue 8 cover in the grid above.
Painting, c. 1980s
He-Man and Battle Cat
$11,400 · Sold 2022
The definitive pairing at full charge, castle towers behind. Unusually for Norem's MOTU run, this one is oil on board rather than acrylic, 16 by 18 inches, signed in the image.
Painting, c. 1980s
Transformation From the Sky
$11,250 · Sold 2022
Adam raises the sword, the lightning answers, and the most repeated beat in the franchise gets the full painted treatment: He-Man mid-transformation with the power still arriving. Acrylic on board, and exactly the image a generation pictured when they shouted the words.
Poster art, c. 1986
Monstroid Rising
$10,800 · Sold 2023
Snout Spout, Rio Blast and Extendar wade into the surf against the crab-armed Monstroid while He-Man closes in. Acrylic, 29 by 23 inches. Believed used as a pull-out in the UK magazine and as a printed book-cover wrap kids folded around their school texts.
Magazine #10, Spring 1987
He-Man on Bionatops
$10,200 · Sold 2022
The Powers of Grayskull era in one image: He-Man charges on a cybernetic triceratops under a black-violet sky. Acrylic over graphite, 16 by 17.5 inches, used as the background for the Letter from He-Man that opened the issue.
Magazine, 1987
Tower Tools Attack on Grayskull
$9,375 · Sold 2022
The matchup every kid staged on the carpet: He-Man and Man-At-Arms hold Castle Grayskull while Skeletor and Webstor come up the walls. Acrylic on board, painted for the magazine's 1987 run.
Painting, late 1980s
He-Man Discovers Preternia
$8,400 · Sold 2023
Eternia's prehistoric past, painted in opaque watercolor with production glue still in the margins, a working illustration that was never meant to be precious. 16 by 17.5 inches.
The Winter Summit original, c. 1985-88
He-Man Summons the Power
$7,800 · Sold 2022
The unlettered board behind The Winter Summit poster in the wall above: He-Man alone in the snow under a star field, sword catching the light. Acrylic on illustration board, 16 by 17.25 inches. Seeing it without the logo makes the case that these were paintings first and merchandise second.
Painting, c. 1986
Artillery vs Beam Blaster
$6,250 · Sold 2022
Hordak mans the Artillery while He-Man and Rio Blast answer with the Beam Blaster, two toy accessories elevated into a full war scene. Acrylic on board, framed to nearly three and a half feet wide.
DVD set trading card #7 preliminary, 2006
The Transformation, in Pencil
$781 · Sold 2026
Prince Adam raises the sword before Castle Grayskull as Cringer recoils, the franchise's central magic trick roughed out in graphite. Drawn when Norem was 83 for the card series in BCI's commemorative Filmation DVD sets, and sold at auction just this week. The latest dated piece of MOTU art he is known to have made.
Magazine #13 gift-wrap poster, Winter 1988
Christmas on Eternia
On the block · Coming to auction
The holiday oddity fans never forgot: He-Man ties a bow on a present at the center while King Randor and Teela build a snowman, She-Ra, Orko and Extendar trim the tree, and Skeletor carols from the same songbook as the Sorceress. Reused as real wrapping paper for Super7's 2018 holiday He-Man and a Power-Con exclusive roll in 2019. Acrylic over graphite, and the original goes under the hammer as this page goes to press.
Beyond Eternia
Two originals from outside the MOTU run, for scale. The same hand, the same board, the same one-frame storytelling, fifteen years apart.
Cover painting, Marvel, 1980
The Savage Sword of Conan #53
$22,800 · Sold 2023
Conan takes the floor out from under himself in a torch-lit crypt, acrylic on board, 16 by 23 inches. One of roughly four dozen Savage Sword covers Norem painted, and proof the Eternia work and the Hyboria work came off the same brush. His Conan covers now trade above even his He-Man originals.
Topps trading card painting, 1995
Vampirella Gallery Card #37
$3,226 · Sold 2012
Painted when Norem was 72, for a trading card. Vampirella against a brick wall with a sidewalk cafe carrying on obliviously behind her, acrylic on a 10 by 18 inch board. The pulp instincts never left: one figure, one mood, one story told in a single frame.
Why Norem is the sound of the brand turned all the way up
Every MOTU artist owned a different piece of the fantasy. Alcala owned the beginning, the four 1982 mini-comics where Eternia was still a savage frontier. Rudy Obrero and William George owned the box art. Filmation owned the way the characters moved and spoke. Norem owned the wall. His posters were the version of Eternia kids chose to look at every day, the paintings that made a line of 5.5 inch figures with spring-loaded waists feel like a mythology worth believing in.
The brand has spent the decades since paying that debt back. Dark Horse's Art of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe volume put his magazine paintings beside the Alcala pages and the original Mattel concept art as a founding text. Mad Duck Posters now sells licensed gallery editions of the magazine posters, Skeletor Attacks!, The Horror of the Slime Pit, Hordak and the Evil Horde, at sizes closer to the original acrylics than the stapled pull-outs ever were. Super7 issued a limited He-Man and Skeletor print of his work for New York Comic Con 2017. And the boards themselves, as the auction results above show, now trade like the American illustration art they always were.
Norem never treated any of it as beneath him. The same hand that painted GIs and jungle cats for the pulps, and Conan for Marvel, gave a children's toy catalog property the full weight of American adventure illustration, every quarter, for four years. That is the whole secret of why his Eternia still feels bigger than the toys. He painted it like it was real, because painting things like they were real was the only way he ever worked.
Cover scans sourced from the Wiki Grayskull magazine archive. Additional print and gallery scans preserved from the Earl Norem online gallery curated by Eamon O'Donoghue. Poster and Golden Book scans from the He-Man World tribute gallery, June 2015. Career details and quotes from Ryan Yzquierdo's 2005 interview with Norem at Seibertron.com, the Battle Ram Blog's vintage toy features, and Norem's published obituaries. Like everything on this site, shared in tribute: all artwork © Mattel and its licensees.