Count Marzo (200x)

"Mekaneck's Lament," written by Erik Runnels and Lara Runnels and aired on November 22, 2002, introduces him in disguise. Mekaneck, sure that a stretching neck is the least of the Masters' powers, is sulking in a swamp when a hooded old man drifts up on a raft and offers to grant him every power he wants. Mekaneck's first instinct is a good one, "If you could, you'd have a better boat," but the old man has an answer for everything, including why his magic will not work on himself, and his pitch is the oldest one going: "Why limit yourself? You can have it all. Just counts as one wish." The fee is a small favor, an amulet from the Sands of Fire.

The Sorceress supplies the rest in a flashback. Count Marzo once attacked the Hall of Wisdom and was captured by the army of Captain Miro, Adam's grandfather, and the Elders locked him in an old man's body and hid the amulet that was the source of his power. Once Mekaneck hands it over, Marzo walks away from the deal and is himself again: long hair, dark armor, a red cape and a pink glow in his fist. He beats He-Man in their first round, sets his beasts loose and fills the palace with a choking vapor, sneering, "These are the protectors of Eternia? Pathetic."

The idea at the heart of this Marzo is that his power is something he can lose, and the episode makes that literal. The vapor that brings down everyone else cannot reach a man whose neck stretches above it, and the fight ends on the palace stairs with Mekaneck's neck wrapped around him and Marzo headed for a cell. Michael Donovan gives him his voice.^[2]

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, The Once and Future Duke (1983), 6:32 to 8:29, 1 minute 57 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

He does not stay in the cell. Dean Stefan's "The Council of Evil," in October 2003, seats him among Skeletor's new allies, and when the trap on the Masters has been sprung in Part 1 it is Marzo who flatters the plan: "And a brilliant plan it was, Lord Skeletor." In "The Last Stand" a week after Part 2, Skeletor counts retrieving Count Marzo's amulet among his labours, and at Castle Grayskull, when the freed Masters arrive and the rest of the council decides it would rather work for itself, Marzo is the one who stays and fights, until he loses the amulet.

The series' last word on him is Larry DiTillio's "History," first shown on January 3, 2004, and he opens it hunched and hooded again, a pickpocket fleeing a street of horned barbarians: "Easiest pockets I ever picked." Evil-Lyn corners him because she needs a spell to open a gateway to Despondos and free Hordak through the Well of Darkness, and she keeps his amulet as leverage until she decides to give it up. At the Well, with Hordak half summoned and He-Man in the way, she insists they keep trying; Marzo answers "Oh, I think not," and turns on her, telling her that weak magicians such as herself "need to know their place." The man who spent the episode being pushed around gets the last word.

Later series have not returned to him, and Revelation's credits have no Count Marzo.

Mattel's 2010 Masters of the Universe Classics Count Marzo, sold through the MattyCollector subscription, was built on this design rather than Filmation's, amulet included, and it is long retired.^[3]