wildcat

(Cover by Joe Orlando)

On my travels today, I picked up a copy of Metamorpho #5, from 1966. Little bit chewed at one corner (Baby? Dog? Doctor Doom?), some tape over the logo, but it was only a buck and it's Metamorpho, man! The Element Man! I loved Metamorpho as a kid, ever since I locked eyes upon him in an old Batman & The Outsiders annual, Metamorpho's wedding, as it turned out. He's a complete freak, so I liked him - weird-looking, prone to changing shape and chemical composition (Today his hand is made of cobalt! Or now, when he makes himself into an aluminum foil wrapper! Or he vaporizes into a gas, turns bits of himself into magnesium that explodes on contact with air...).

I mean! Look at that cover! Imagine meeting your evil twin and then RUSHING AT EACH OTHER in a fit madness, mashing together into barely contained metamorphic rage and then exploding into gooey crap-textured flesh piles. That's some bitter body horror.

Rex Mason, two-fisted archaeologist, happens upon a weird artifact called the Orb of Ra while tooling around inside a pyramid -- as you did, in the Sixties -- and it changed him into a weird customer with one leg one colour and the other leg another colour. And running around in little black trunks. His supporting cast, well, of course there was the love interest. Sapphire Stagg, blonde and pretty and having no problem with hanging out with her boyfriend when he's (a) freaky-deaky with a giant, say, magnet for a hand, or (b) covered himself with a rubber "Rex Mason" mask to look "normal." Right. After that was his sidekick/rival Java, a -- um -- super-evolved neanderthal? And by "super-evolved," I mean, "Neanderthal who can speak English and wears a cheap polyester suit." He was in love with Sapphire, of course, and when he wasn't driving the pair of them (usually making out, regardless of whether or not Rex had his face on), he was plotting to get Rex out of the picture and swoop in on the girlfriend. And the last cast member? Simon Stagg, Sapphire's father. Millionaire scientist who, like Java, was Rex's best friend and worst enemy. He was always plotting against Rex and then helping Rex and kidnapped his own daughter from that wedding I mentioned.

I also, for another buck, picked up a Metal Men comic from 1976 as well, with the robots (each one a different metal, including Tina the Platinum Blonde) fighting soldiers in Antarctica due to (shock!) a misunderstanding, and their mentor/creator, Doc, facing his own neuroses and psychoses as a pipe-smoking robot made out of pure plutonium. All my neuroses manifest mostly as paper and ice cream and lunch-time sushi runs. I fail at life.