Genesis #3 closes Skeletor's origin on Wednesday, and nobody in Dark Horse's preview says his name

A villain is easy to write once everybody already knows the name.

Masters of the Universe: Genesis has spent its first arc on the harder job: introducing a man nobody on Eternia has yet learned to be afraid of. The five pages Dark Horse has put out ahead of Wednesday’s final chapter show how Rich Douek means to finish it. Skeletor appears on one of them. Nobody says his name on any of them.

The warning nobody can describe

The preview opens at Castle Grayskull, with the Sorceress on the battlements and Duncan beside her, and neither of them can say what is wrong. “You look concerned, my lady,” he says. “I am, friend Duncan. Gravely concerned.” He reaches for the explanation he has, the same one a reader of the ongoing book would reach for: “What troubles you? Has the Horde returned?” She tells him no. “This is… different. A new threat. But one that feels just as deadly.”

Then the exchange turns to Prince Adam, who is not named either. “What of the boy? Is he… ready?” Duncan hedges: “I… Teela and I are doing our best to train him, but…” The Sorceress does not let him finish. “He must be ready, Duncan.” We never see the boy they are talking about.

It is a good scene to put at the front of a villain’s origin, because it is the only warning anybody in these pages gets, and the people it concerns never hear it. [1]

“Nothing there but dust and skulls”

The rest of the preview is a column of King Thales’ soldiers marching into a pass on the way to Snake Mountain, and Gavin Smith stages it so that the reader can see what the men cannot. A lieutenant does not like the look of the ground. “It is the perfect place for an ambush,” he says, and the reply he gets is the kind of line that only ever appears in a comic immediately before it is proved wrong: “And who would ambush us? Ghosts and shadows? King Thales himself has told us this mission is a mere formality to quell Princess Rhea’s fears.”

The man who is right gets talked out of it by a man who likes him. “You are a good soldier, Grandu, but I fear Princess Rhea’s paranoia has infected you.” Then the order, “Forward! To Snake Mountain!”, and then the promise: “You’ll see. We’ll find nothing there but dust and skulls… and be back in our own beds by daybreak.”

A warrior with a mechanical hook arm, drawn small and patient on an outcrop the column never looks up at, is already in place as he says it, and Fabi Marques keeps the march in a cold purple that holds right up to the point where the guns open and the page turns orange. “Fire!” “Take cover!” “Flee!” And then a close-up of the warrior calling the shots, grinning under a crested helm: “Hit them again. And again!”

What is new here

Genesis was announced as a twelve-issue series rather than a miniseries, so #3 closes the Skeletor arc and not the book. [2] Dark Horse’s own listing for #4 starts a three-part story about Prince Randor and Captain Duncan in the Great Wars between science and magic.

Masters of the Universe: Genesis #3 is out on Wednesday 28 October, 32 pages in full colour at $4.99. Rich Douek writes, Gavin Smith draws, Fabi Marques colours and AndWorld Design letters, under a Mark Buckingham cover with a Fero Peniche variant beside it. [3]

Where to get it

Dark Horse does not sell single issues from its own site; the button on the product page sends you to a comic shop. But MyComicShop indexes the series on a single page, variants included. On Sunday afternoon both #3 covers were still want-list only, as a book usually is before its street date.

What is on the shelf there now is the start of the arc. If you have been reading about Genesis without reading it, that is the useful part: #1 is in stock in three grades from $6.00, and #2 sits beside it at $3.99 against a $4.99 cover. The only time this series has turned up on heman.org before today was as a pair of convention variants on the NYCC exclusives list. A book that has been running since August deserved better from us.

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[1] The Sorceress gets the issue’s best piece of staging as well as its best line. Her last balloon on the page, “I cannot sense in full what is coming…”, carries over the page turn into the soldiers’ column as “…but I do sense that we are ill prepared to meet it”, so the warning is still being spoken over the men it is about.

[2] Our own series page had the twelve-issue count from the August solicitations, and Dark Horse’s listings now run to #5. Future arcs have been announced for Cavan Scott, Nick Roche, John Harris Dunning, Giovanna La Pietra and Tiffany Smith, with no issue numbers attached.

[3] Dark Horse rates the issue 14+. MyComicShop’s listing says “not rated”, which is the distributor record rather than the publisher’s.

Sources. Dark Horse Comics, Masters of the Universe: Genesis #3 product page, read 25 October 2026, for the date, price, format, age rating, UPC and credits. Preview pages and cover art: Dark Horse Comics. Stock and cover prices read first hand at MyComicShop on 25 October 2026.