13 Days of D.C.F.I.S.-mas! Part 3

Welcome back. DC First Issue Special wasn't just a place where new concepts could debut and fail. It was also a place where older characters could be dusted off and fail. I present: Metamorpho, the Element Man.



Metamorpho, like the Doom Patrol and Ultra the Multi-Alien, was a response by some DC staffers to the surging popularity of Marvel's freak/monster heroes--The Thing, the Hulk, the X-Men, etc.

Most of the top brass at DC were a bit mystified by Marvel's early success. One editor--Mort Weisinger I believe--was heard to remark "I guess kids like ugly art these days."

But some forward-thinking guys at DC (Bob Haney, Bob Kanigher, Arnold Drake, and others) saw the appeal of the tragic, outsider heroes Marvel was coming up with, and attempted to work the same magic at DC.

You could say Rex Mason was the "Ben Grimm" of Silver Age DC. Running afoul of an artifact called the Orb of Ra, he was transformed into a misshapen freak with the power to change into any element. He has a troubled romantic interest in Sapphire Stagg, because (a) he's a freak; (b) Sapphire's dad, Simon Stagg, is a megalomaniac who hates Rex; and (c) Sapphire's dad's manservant is an unfrozen caveman who wants to kill Rex and take Sapphire for himself. OK, those might be the sort of tragic elements you might find in a Marvel comic. But we're putting a square peg into a round hole here, and I'll demonstrate why Metamorpho was never an A-lister among DC readers. His comics haven't been big sellers historically, and this issue--despite reuniting Metamorpho's original creative team of Bob (Teen Titans, Brave & the Bold) Haney and Ramona (Aquaman, Brenda Starr) Fradon--was no exception.

You know, originally, his power was to change into any element found in the human body, but it's a rule at DC that if you hang around long enough your power will probably increase exponentially. It's how Superman went from leaping tall buildings to pushing planets out of orbit and breaking the time barrier. It's how Wally West became the personification of velocity, Wonder Woman became Goddess of Truth, Billy Batson turned into a super-wizard, and Booster Gold became guardian of the timelines. It's what DC does.



OK, see that? Right there, Metamorpho is a pansy by the standards of Marvel heroes. He can just put a mask on! Can Ben Grimm just put a mask on? No, because he weighs like a ton and he's as wide as an SUV. Nightcrawler had a holographic image inducer, but he used it once in a blue moon. Nightcrawler ain't got nothing to hide. Put a mask on Rex Mason and bam, he blends into society. When trouble strikes, he pulls it off and assumes his secret identity of The Element Man. You know, just like damn near every other DC hero.

Side note: Are you thinking Sapphire tends to say, "Rex, honey, let's do it with the mask on."

OK, what the hell's this plot? Some ghostly Frenchman is wrecking historical landmarks in Washington DC. He's Dr. Destinee, but no relation to the JLA villain Dr. Destiny, who predates this story. During the War of 1812 he approached President James Madison with a mysterious "chemical warfare" device he found back when Napoleon invaded Egypt. Um, yeah.



When the Brits burned Washington DC, Destinee was killed, but his ghost haunts the city still. He's attacking national monuments in order to distract the authorities so he can retrieve the device from its hiding place. The authorities have been pretty much powerless to stop him, so concocting an intricate plan to distract them suggests a penchant for plot-padding worthy of a Scooby-Doo villain.



Anyhoo, in a mad chase for clues that will probably be ripped off for the plot of National Treasure 3, Rex and Destinee intercept each other at the secret hiding place only to find that Simon Stagg has beaten them to the device and is going to use it to...steal the gold out of Fort Knox?



I just want to point out that Metamorpho NEVER bothers to arrest Simon Stagg and take him to jail, EVEN when he does something like, oh I don't know, melting all the gold in Fort Knox.



Dude. This isn't like the post-Crisis dynamic between Superman and Lex Luthor. Simon Stagg doesn't even bother hiding the fact that he does dangerously illegal things on a monthly basis. I mean, this seems to suggest that wealthy people are above the law or something, and we all know that's not true.



Anyways, Destinee and the device are apparently destroyed in the pool of boiling gold, and Metamorpho explodes his way out by turning into flammable gas. The end.



So where is he now?: Since this story, Metamorpho joined Batman & the Outsiders, died, came back, joined the Justice League, had a kid, died, came back, accidentally duplicated himself, and joined Batman & the Outsiders again. That may seem like a large number of deaths, but I'm told that in an upcoming issue of JLA Red Tornado will die in every third panel.

13 Days of D.C.F.I.S.-mas! Part 2

Welcome back. DC First Issue Special was a place to try out fresh new concepts for the DC Explosion. It was a showcase for the hits of the future! Or, you know, not. I'm your host, and fair warning, I've been drinking all night and I have NO attention span.

Behold, The Green Team! Second-to-last gasp of the "kid gang" genre. Joe Simon, along with Jack Kirby, had pretty much created the "kid gang" comic what with The Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos, Young Allies, and so on. Ol' Joe went back to the well one last time, and like every other comic made during Simon's triumphant return to DC, it was a mind-buggering disaster. Meet THE GREEN TEAM, won't we?


First up is Commodore Murphy (left), shipping tycoon who, when we meet him, is about to purchase the town of ROCKMUCH, Oregon. In his defense, I do admit that "Rockmuch" is a frickin' AWESOME name for a town, and despite having a population of 2, it should be in the forefront of the DC Universe's fictional cities. Wouldn't you like to live in ROCKMUCH? People could ask you, "So, where you from?" and you could say, "ROCKMUCH!" Puzzled, they'd respond, "ROCKMUCH?" and you'd say "EVERY DAMN DAY, MOTHERF*CKER!" Yeah.

I seem to have drifted from the point. Er, next we have J.P. Houston (center), the oil magnate. His job was (1) being token hick and (2) caring more about adventure than oil. Ideally, we should all care more about adventure than oil, but nobody's invented a car that runs on adventure. I bet J.P. does have a car like that, but he's hiding it from the world, the selfish bastard. YOU'RE why we're in the Middle East, J.P.--you and your damned adventu-car.

Third in line is Cecil Sunbeam (right), FABulously effeminate child prodigy Hollywood director. I like to imagine Uwe Boll before his balls dropped. Not to visualize Cecil Sunbeam, mind you; it's just a mental image I like to go to sometimes.

It's the fourth member, however, who's the true star of the show. This being 70s DC, they needed to make some attempt at social relevance and then fail utterly (see also, every DC comic published circa 1970-1979). Meet Abdul Smith (wait for it), an African-American (wait for it) SHOESHINE BOY on Wall Street. Thanks to a computer error at his bank, the $5 in his account became $500,000 overnight. He quickly invested it and more than doubled his money by the time the bank caught on--thus making the million dollars required for membership in The Green Team.

Boss screamin' in my ear about who I'm supposed to be
Getcha a 3-piece Wall Street smile and son you'll look just like me

I said "Hey man, there's something that you oughta know.
I tell ya Park Avenue leads to Skid Row."

Ah, Sebastian Bach, you make me feel young again. Where was I? Oh yes, Abdul Smith. Just imagine what Grant Morrison would do with this treasure. He'd have a metahuman gene for making money! Wealth as a superpower! Code name: Bankroll(tm)! Who's been funding Cave Carson, the Sea Devils, the Challengers, Rip Hunter, and S.T.A.R. Labs? Now you know!

Anyway. The plot of this comic, such as it was, involved something called The Great American Pleasure Machine.


Yeah. The jokes pretty much write themselves from here on in, don't they? I don't even need to be here. Um, some bad guy tries to sabotage the G.A.P. Machine, thus depriving the 70s of much-needed happiness. But the Green Team saves the day, and guess how!


THEY THREW MONEY AT THE PROBLEM. So...many...jokes...fighting to get out...But let's pause a mo' to take a closer look at the Green Team super uniforms, which needed their own text page:


To sum up, their secret weapon: POCKETS. Deep, deep pockets.

Amazingly, if it hadn't been for the DC Implosion, two more issues of The Green Team were waiting in inventory AND WOULD HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED. You dodged a bullet there, Planet Earth. High five.

So where are they now?: The GT was last seen during Karl Kesel's run in the Superman titles, funding a youth center in Metropolis' Suicide Slum.

A few chapters from now, we'll witness Jack Kirby killing off the kid gang genre for good. But next time, a beloved Silver Age character's comeback fails in the pages of FIS...get used to it, 'cause that kind of happened a lot.

13 Days of D.C.F.I.S.-mas! Part 1

Who is this guy fighting Superman?


James Robinson knows. I know. And after this, so will you.

Hello and welcome to the 13 Days of D.C.F.I.S.-mas! Where we'll be dissecting DC First Issue Special.

You could say F.I.S. was the 1970s answer to Showcase. Or you could say it was Bizarro-Showcase. Whereas Showcase brought us the first appearances of the Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern, the Metal Men, Adam Strange, the Challengers, Enemy Ace, Bat Lash, and many other classic DC characters, First Issue Special gave us one character that was actually popular and a lot of one-hit wonders that only people like James Robinson or Gail Simone remember.

"Sounds like a flimsy premise to milk for 13 posts," you say.

"Bite me," I say. Let's begin with the guy pictured above? Who is he? Hercules in a hijab? Samson in a scarf? Conan in a keffiyeh?



It's ATLAS! No, not the titan Atlas from Wonder Woman. No, not the Atlas who puts the first "A" in "SHAZAM." Not Charles Atlas, who can make a man out of YOU (and who can sue you for creating Flex Mentallo). This is the other other other other Atlas. Is he legend or man? Man or monster? Floor wax or dessert topping?

Sword & sorcery is not a genre Jack Kirby really touched, apart from a few pin-ups in Marvel's Conan comics. This comic is Exhibit A of why he didn't do Sword & Sorcery. The King was not really firing on all cylinders here.. It's a pretty pedestrian story of vengeance seeking hero, evil overlord, weaselly sidekick, etc. What is notable about it is how accurately Kirby was able to predict the plot of the Schwarzenegger/Milius film "Conan the Barbarian" nearly a decade before it came out:



You can probably piece together the rest. The boy grows up into an impossibly muscled barbarian, swears to bring down a reptilian cult, befriends a wizened annoying old guy, etc. etc.:



If there had been a next issue, we would almost certainly have seen Atlas tied to the Tree of Woe and go on to kill several mighty warriors with Wile E. Coyote traps. CROM!

OK so where is he now?:Well, apart from some tantalizing cameos in "hypertime" when Karl Kesel was writing Superboy, and standing in the background of Kingdom Come (yeah, him and like 900 others), we never saw much of old Atlas. But James Robinson's bringing him back, just like he dredged up long-forgotten characters like Stalker or the Blue Starman.

But that's another story.