Metamorpho

• 1. Introduction

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  Metamorpho, the DC Comics hero, begins as a mercenary named Rex Mason who takes a job to steal an Egyptian artifact called the Orb of Ra. For a man who sells his skills to the highest bidder, it should be a routine theft. Instead it sends him into a pyramid, and the figure who emerges no longer looks entirely human. He is made of chemical elements, and he does not welcome the change.

  That single theft raises questions this documentary will follow. Who sent Mason into the pyramid, and why did that employer want him gone? Can a man built from elemental substances ever return to flesh and blood? And how does a character designed to poke fun at the comic books of his day survive decades of deaths, rebirths and reinventions?

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• 2. A Parody Is Born

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  In 1964, writer Bob Haney enjoyed success at DC Comics with Metal Men and Doom Patrol, two titles built around bands of heroes with fantastic powers. Editor George Kashdan then asked him to cash in on that popularity with a similar character. The answer was Metamorpho, who debuted in The Brave and the Bold #57, dated January 1965. Haney conceived him as a parody of the fantastic characters crowding 1960s comics.

  Artist Ramona Fradon had stepped away from comics for motherhood, and she was coaxed back to draw his first appearances. Readers responded. Between 1965 and 1968, Metamorpho earned a 17-issue ongoing series of his own.

  The two creators met again at the 1974 San Diego Comic-Con. While reminiscing, they discovered that each counted Metamorpho among the features they had most enjoyed. They asked DC for one more story together, and it appeared in 1975 in 1st Issue Special #3, an anthology of one-shots. Fradon later recalled, "I think we both felt that Metamorpho was our baby." She said she never had another working experience quite like the one with Haney.

  The character kept coming back. He became a charter member of the Outsiders in 1983, and he received a four-issue mini-series in 1993. In 2005, DC reprinted his early Brave and the Bold stories and the whole 1965 series in a Showcase Presents volume. Dan Jurgens launched the six-issue Metamorpho: Year One in 2007.

  Neil Gaiman wrote a 12-page Metamorpho story for Wednesday Comics, with art by Mike Allred. In 2016 the hero starred in an anthology series called Legends of Tomorrow, alongside Firestorm, Sugar and Spike, and the Metal Men. In 2024, under the DC All In initiative, writer Al Ewing and artist Steve Lieber produced the six-issue Metamorpho: The Element Man.

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• 3. Stagg's Trap

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  Simon Stagg, the CEO of Stagg Enterprises, is the man who hires Mason for the Egyptian job. Soon afterward, Stagg learns that Mason has been secretly dating his daughter, Sapphire Stagg. That discovery and other incidents feed his resentment. The resentment hardens into a plan to kill Mason.

  Inside the pyramid, Stagg's brutish bodyguard, Java, knocks Mason unconscious. Mason is then exposed to a radioactive meteorite, the very material from which the Orb of Ra was fashioned. The exposure turns him into Metamorpho, the Element Man.

  Stagg is stunned that Mason is still alive. He adapts quickly, using the meteorite's energy as a threat to make the transformed Mason do his bidding.

  A later revelation gives the accident a far older meaning. According to the comics, the god Ra created Metamorpho and beings like him to help in his battle against his mortal enemy, Apep.

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• 4. The Freak Wants Out

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  In Justice League of America #42, the Justice League invited Metamorpho to join, and he refused. He never became a full member, though he appeared in that issue and in #44 and was treated as a reserve member. His reason was simple. Unlike most DC heroes who are more than human, he lacks a fully human appearance. Like Marvel's Thing, he thinks of himself as a freak and wants only to be restored.

  Green Lantern tries to help by using his power ring to change Mason back. A "yellow" component of the meteorite radiation stops him. The cover of Aquaman #30 shows how far Metamorpho had entered the wider DC world. There he appears as a pallbearer at the "Sea King's Funeral," next to Batman, Hawkman and Superman.

  His abilities explain why he is both prized and pitied. He can transmute his body into a wide variety of elemental compounds and shape them at will. At first he was limited to elements found naturally in the human body, but he later outgrew that restriction. He can stretch, bounce and elongate like rubber or plastic, and he can change the consistency of the elements and blend them into complex compounds. His body also gives him natural armor against blunt and energy attacks. He is a skilled martial artist, archaeologist and detective as well.

  He briefly has a crimefighting partner, Urania "Rainie" Blackwell, who deliberately exposed herself to the Orb to gain its powers. Calling herself Element Girl and nicknamed "the Chemical Doll," she works with him on several cases. Her story would end in a surprising place.

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• 5. Loose Ends

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  Issues #16-17 of the 1965 series were meant to send the book in a new direction. Sapphire was to marry a man named Wally Bannister, and Metamorpho was to join a mysterious Mr. Shadow to deal with an immortal queen. The queen, who looks exactly like Sapphire, wants to conquer the world and marries Metamorpho. When she steps outside her mystic city, she instantly ages 2,000 years.

  Then Wally Bannister is murdered by Algon, a metamorph who has lived for centuries in a depowered state, and Metamorpho takes the blame. Mr. Shadow, instead of defending him, turns out to be an enemy who wanted to enslave him all along. A jury of rabble convicts Metamorpho, and he is executed.

  Element Girl revives him. Algon, the real killer, dies in molten lava while trying to regain his burned-out powers. The Prosecutor, who engineered Bannister's murder, is killed by an insectoid villain. Issue #17 ends there, and the story is never continued.

  Metamorpho returns in The Brave and the Bold #101, dated April-May 1972. He has spent the years since his series ended soaking in a chemical bath that Stagg brewed to cure him. Stagg pulls him out early because he needs Mason to rescue Sapphire. A backup series then begins in Action Comics #413, in June 1972, and it ignores the last two issues of the old series entirely.

  Element Girl's fate surfaces much later. She left Metamorpho because her unrequited attraction to him became too painful. At her own request, Ra removed her powers, and the loss killed her. That scene appears in Neil Gaiman's Sandman, where Death of the Endless tries to persuade Blackwell that she will not live forever, mentioning Algon's death in passing.

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• 6. Many Deaths, Many Returns

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  Mozombia, a despotically ruled nation, is where the Outsiders meet disaster. Metamorpho is subdued and disassembled there, and the tyrant's forces keep him inert with constant radiation. Katana's indestructible sword, latched onto a live electrical wire, frees him. The team's plane is then shot down by the Bad Samaritan, and the survivors are stranded on a deserted island too far from land to escape by themselves.

  In the 1988 event Millennium, Helga Jace betrays the Outsiders and kills Metamorpho. The 1989 event Invasion! resurrects him when the Dominators' gene bomb detonates.

  With Justice League Europe, he meets Sapphire Stagg again. Simon Stagg has tricked the Metal Men into battle, while Java detains Metamorpho's teammates Rocket Red and Animal Man. Afterward Metamorpho learns that he and Sapphire have a baby son. The boy's touch harms everyone except his parents. Java's arms melt when he holds the child. Metamorpho hands the baby to Simon, who immediately fears he will die. Something in his genetic structure protects him, and his stance softens. Doc Magnus, leader of the Metal Men, offers to build Java new arms. Metamorpho's puzzled friends ask how he knew Simon would be safe. He tells them he hoped the baby would kill Simon.

  A romance with Crimson Fox ends when she is apparently murdered, and his investigation exposes layers of lies and deceit. Later, a blast from the planet-smashing aliens called The Family destroys his body. He reforms it with a new appearance.

  When the Hyperclan destroys the Justice League of America's orbiting base, Metamorpho shields Nuklon, Obsidian and Icemaiden inside a giant, fluid-filled ball so they can survive reentry. They live, injured, and he dies. Sapphire Stagg later brings him back with the Orb of Ra, and he briefly joins the Doom Patrol. Meanwhile, the "Metamorpho" in the third volume of the Outsiders turns out to be a regrown fragment of his body. A satellite explosion orchestrated by Talia al Ghul apparently kills the team again. In 2011, as "The New 52" rebooted the DC universe, a story reveals that he saved them with the same technique he had used against the Hyperclan.

  During DC Rebirth, Simon Stagg turns him into Nth Metal as part of a plan to open a portal to the Dark Multiverse. Plastic Man and Mister Terrific are drawn in after him. They land on a lifeless world and meet Phantom Girl. A hologram of Tom Strong tells them they are needed to save the universe. Afterward, a bond created by the Dark Multiverse energy keeps the four from drifting far apart.

  As one of the Terrifics, he faces Algon, who plans to turn everyone in the world into element people. Using the Orb of Ra against him, the heroes turn Metamorpho human again. The man who spent years begging for his old body finds himself feeling dull and worthless without his heroic role. Rex and Element Dog sneak into Stagg Industries and use the Orb to become elemental once more. Afterward Rex becomes chief security officer at Stagg Industries, and his relationship with Sapphire is repaired.

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• 7. Rogues Gallery

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  Edifice K. Bulwark, an architect, chemist and engineer, called himself the "Big Builder." Simon Stagg once transformed him into a Metamorpho of his own, so that he could use the powers to construct a special building. Franz Zorb was a scientist assigned to restore Rex Mason, but his experiment covered for the manufacture of his Chemo-Robots. There were six of them, named Halfnium, Osmium, Selenium, Strontium, Tantalum and Thallium.

  T.T. Trumbull, an entrepreneur and engineer, plotted to blackmail the United States of America from a hidden Grand Canyon base called Science Station Alpha. Otto von Stuttgart captured Simon Stagg and 11 vulcanologists, planning to threaten the world with a neutron dissolver. Vrag-Kol led his gang in posing as invading aliens. Nicholas Balkan wanted to use the Telstar satellite for his criminal empire, and his sons Gunther, Lothar and Siegfried joined his schemes.

  The Thunderer, a pint-size demagogue from another dimension, came with a henchman named Neutrog. Ahk-Ton, a priest from the time of Ramses II, had the same powers as the Orb of Ra. Jezeba, the Queen of Fury, ruled the hidden African valley of Ma-Poor and knew the history of Algon.

  The strangest may be the Phantom of Washington. He was Achille Destinee, a French soldier who worked for Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin before dying during the American Revolution. After contact with an Egyptian artifact, his ghost began appearing before figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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• 8. Beyond the Page

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  In the 1960s, Filmation made a Metamorpho pilot after the success of The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure, and the studio even produced a concept drawing. The plans collapsed when CBS secured the animation rights to Batman, following ABC's success with the Batman series of 1966.

  The character finally spoke in the Justice League two-part episode "Metamorphosis," voiced by Tom Sizemore. This Mason is a former Marine and old friend of John Stewart, engaged to Sapphire Stagg. Simon Stagg mutates him with mutagens originally meant to help workers resist hostile environments. Simon then tricks him into fighting Stewart, claiming Stewart stole his fiancee, until Sapphire clears up the misunderstanding.

  Scott Menville voiced a teenage Metamorpho in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, where he belongs to the Outsiders. Adam Baldwin voiced a version in Beware the Batman whose powers come from mutagen exposure and who becomes a founding Outsider. In Young Justice, Fred Tatasciore voiced a member of Batman Inc. who lives with constant pain from using his powers.

  Comics have given him darker turns. In JLA: The Nail #2, an alternate version is brainwashed by Jimmy Olsen, who threatens his family, and forced to kill the Thinker. In the Injustice: Gods Among Us prequel comic, he is the warden of an underwater prison and is eventually killed by Deathstroke. The Batman: Arkham Knight prequel comic presents him as Stagg Enterprises's "Project: Meta," originally intended to weaponize a sample of Clayface's body. Batman destroys him after the project's head scientist accidentally releases him. He is also a minifigure in Lego's DC Super Heroes series.

  In the 2025 film Superman, Anthony Carrigan plays Metamorpho. Lex Luthor holds him and his son, Joey, in an extradimensional prison and coerces him into weakening Superman. He relents when Luthor torments Superman by murdering one of his supporters. Once Superman agrees to rescue Joey, Metamorpho helps him escape and returns the boy to his wife, Sapphire. He then helps the Justice Gang foil a foreign invasion and is invited to join it formally.

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