Chemo
9 years ago - Chemo is built by Professor Ramsey Norton, a purely plastic containment android meant to resolve chemical catastrophes. When exposed to an unknown combination of toxic chemicals it's programming is scrambled, causing it to go haywire and rampage through Midway City before it is stopped by Will Magnus's Metal Men.
6 years ago - Chemo is secretly shipped out of cold storage by General Wade Eiling and released in Washington DC. The Justice League are able to contain it, minimize loss of life, and eventually neutralize it's chemicals to destroy it, but only after massive property destruction.
5 years ago - General Wade Eiling's involvement with the Chemo disaster is exposed, & the First Strike Program is decommissioned.
This is a really fun timeline to do, because we really don't have to do much work in order to have faithfully captured the incredibly fun energy and story of this character. It's all right there, primed for us to adapt to our timeline. Also, we have some very specific story beats we want him to fulfill, but it's really just as simple as putting him where he needs to be. Sometimes these things are easy.
One quick note about pronouns; We actually did start out by trying to use 'it' as the pronoun for Chemo, since it's definitely just a rampaging sack of goo, and I think we pulled it off in the timeline. Within our actual writeup below, however, we kept finding that Chemo is referred to as 'he' in the comics and even by the writers, so we just ran with it. I trust that we can all grant a little leeway in the gender identity of this chemical bomb with feet.
One quick note about pronouns; We actually did start out by trying to use 'it' as the pronoun for Chemo, since it's definitely just a rampaging sack of goo, and I think we pulled it off in the timeline. Within our actual writeup below, however, we kept finding that Chemo is referred to as 'he' in the comics and even by the writers, so we just ran with it. I trust that we can all grant a little leeway in the gender identity of this chemical bomb with feet.
Chemo's Comic HistoryThe Metal Men first debuted in four issues of Showcase comics in 1962. After the first two issues introduced the concept, Chemo was introduced with issues #39 & 40, making him the first recurring villain the Metal Men faced. Originally, he was a large person-shaped plastic container where Professor Ramsey Norton dumped all of his failed chemical experiments, a series of choices that sets off a number of alarm bells in my nerd brain even as I write it. After dumping in the results of his experiments with unspecified growth hormones, Chemo, the inert plastic container, came to life and rampaged, forcing the Metal Men to fight him.
There's obviously some comic book silliness to Chemo, but it was the exact same silliness present in the Metal Men themselves, making him an ideal baddie for them to face. He would go on to appear in practically all of the Metal Men series over the years, but other writers really latched onto him as a great challenge for all sorts of characters. Len Wein notably acknowledged that he liked using him as a challenge for Superman. His biggest appearances were probably in both Crisis on Infinite Earths, where Brainiac & Luthor use him to destroy Earth-4's New York City & where he notably kills the original Aquagirl, and in Infinite Crisis, where he is dropped on Bludhaven, killing thousands and setting up the Uncle Sam & the Freedom Fighters series. |
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Our Chemo StoryThere is so very little work that we have to do in order to adapt Chemo, it's kind of fantastic. We are doing a teeny twist in his origin, where rather than being built as an inert plastic container that somehow just sprung to life, he's a containment android meant to clean up chemical catastrophes, which means he's at least already ambulatory when the unknown combination of chemicals scrambles his circuitry and makes him start rampaging through cities.
We just had the Metal Men stop him in his first outing, which should be obvious, as that's where he actually came from. After that, however, we really only wanted one specific story where he's used as a deliberate weapon by someone. For our story, we went with General Eiling, who wants to prove that metahumans are dangerous and chooses to secretly stage a disaster he can blame on the Justice League. Chemo is basically a walking, pre-built disaster, and he just becomes the perfect addition to that story, letting us have an excuse to use one of the most iconic giant DC monsters. |