Metamorpho

39 years ago - Rex Mason is born.

20 years ago - 19-year-old Rex joins the marines & meets John Stewart.

16 years ago - 23-year-old Rex leaves the marines. He is hired by Simon Stagg to head his exploration devision. He meets Stagg's daughter Sapphire Stagg, with whom he begins a secret romance.

14 years ago - 25-year-old Rex & Sapphire Stagg are engaged. He is sent along with Java to Egypt by Simon Stagg to recover the fabled Orb of Ra, unaware that Java has instructions to kill him once it's found. Java stabs him and leaves him in the tomb, bathing him to the artifacts's radiation, mutating him into Metamorpho. He returns to Stagg Industries to confront Simon, not wanting Sapphire to see him, but she chooses to accept him despite his deformity, and Simon promises to find a way to change him back.

13 years ago - 26-year-old Rex is recruited by Niles Caulder into his reassembled Doom Patrol.

8 years ago - 31-year-old Rex returns to the tomb where he & Java found the Orb of Ra to save the kidnapped Sapphire Stagg, where he's forced to kill Java. Simon Stagg reveals that he manipulated Java, hoping to drive Rex & Sapphire apart so he could finally dissect Rex. He attacks Rex with the Orb of Ra, but when the tomb collapses he shooses to leave Simon behind. Sapphire can't stay with him after he allows her father to die. He leaves the Doom Patrol & is recruited into the Outsiders by Batman.

6 years ago - 33-year-old Rex & the Outsiders discover that Helga Jace has been harvesting metahuman DNA for her experiments. While trying to stop her, she triggers her hypontic control of Brion through his artifically enhanced Metagene. He fights the other Outsiders to a standstill before Violet is able to fully disable his powers, freeing him from Jace's control. The Outsiders are dispanded, & Rex tries to retire.

4 years ago - 35-year-old Rex joins the Justice League.

3 years ago - 36-year-old Rex saves most of the Justice League during the White Martian attack. Once recovered, he joins the new Outsiders where he meets Indigo.

now - 39-year-old Rex refuses to allow the Outsiders to destroy Indigo when her programming revolts against her, allowing her to rewrite her own programming.

Metamorpho was created by Bob Haney, who had previously found success with team books like the Metal Men and the Doom Patrol. Rex was designed to capitalize on that style of character. Obviously, he succeeded. There's something inherently comicy about him; the same sort of Saturday morning weirdness that permeates much of Haney's work, but re-purposed as a standalone character and turned loose to roam the DC universe. He's a fun mix of pathos and humor. It's very difficult to get him wrong..

Metamorpho's Comic History

Metamorpho appeared for the first time in The Brave and the Bold #57 in 1965, which was quickly followed up by his own series that ran for 16 issues. Metamorpho was Rex Mason, a sort of adventurer-for-hire. He had been set up by the evil industrialist Simon Stagg to be marooned inside an Egyptian tomb, since he disapproved of Rex's romance with his daughter, Sapphire. He was altered by a magical artifact within the tomb, gaining the ability to adapt his body into all the different elements. His series basically followed the strange adventures of Rex and Sapphire, with Simon (and his assistant Java) always in the background scheming to break them up and never quite succeeding.

Metamorpho didn't appear much until he joined the cast of Batman and the Outsiders in 1983. He would go on to join the Justice League in 1989, and remained a regular member right up until Grant Morrison redefined the League in 1997. He remains a regular, journeyman style character, but one with an incredibly unique style.

Our Metamorpho Story

We added a pretty big shift to Rex's story, in that we ended his relationship with Sapphire. This might be a controversial choice because there's a certain silver-age cuteness to that relationship. If we want to actually use it, however, it's not really something that should be sustained across his whole career. We'd rather lean into the idea of their he's-a-monster-but-she-loves-him-anyway energy while it happens, and then, when the strain of that relationship becomes too much, we let Rex move away from it and deal with his existence as such a strange character in other ways.

Another big change we've made is by making Metamorpho a member of the Doom Patrol... specifically, the reformed Patrol after the supposed deaths of the original team. Even though Rex has never been in the Doom Patrol, he actually fits in with them really well, so much so that adding him to this temporary team makes them feel much more like the Doom Patrol than they would without him.

We also want to make sure that he's a member of the Justice League when they are attacked by the White Martians, because he's the one that really managed to save them by protecting them in a bubble as they freefall from the destroyed satellite. In that moment, as he falls and scrambles for what to turn into to protect everyone, he finally, in desperation, screams out "Sapphire!" I only just now realized how poetic that was.

Metamorpho's Look

The original look for Metamorpho, with it's clearly-defined colors, is a fantastic example of the sort of design that only comics are ever going to give you. It absolutely works within that world, and countless artists have been able to seamlessly bring this design into less fantastic-looking styles without any problem, So we're all for keeping this original look.

Still, there's been some interesting attempts to rethink his design. Most of them seem to rely on the idea that the different colors of his body are actually composed of different elements (which makes sense), and then really leaning into depicting the textures of those elements differently. When done well, this can actually be really cool.

Alternately, there have been plenty of attempts to reject that design completely, maybe the most extreme being the look he sported as a member of the 90's Justice League. It should really go without saying, we're going to be avoiding this sort of look.

Metamorpho's Future

We leave our timeline with Metamorpho having again joined the Outsiders. This is meant to mirror the events of Judd Winick's 2003 Outsiders series. As the book began, Metamorpho is awakening from his coma after saving the Justice League from the White Martians, but has amnesia. By issue #7 it's revealed that this isn't actually Rex, but a new entity that has formed from some of his body, that soon starts going by the name Shift. Shift is able to access new versions of Rex's powers, and soon is in a very cute romantic relationship with Indigo. After the One Year Later timejump, Shift is gone, and the original Metamorpho is on the team. We liked the role he played in this book. The relationship with Indigo was one of the most fun parts of that series, and we really like them together. We can actually just use the original Rex the whole time, since he's no longer in his original relationship with Sapphire Stagg.

Rex is a really cool character. We could have used him in a lot of places, on a lot of different teams. Our Justice League Task Force would have been a great place for a character who has served the League with such distinction. Ultimately, however, he's just too great an Outsider for him to be anywhere else. That team did so much to define him, and he did just as much to define the team.

Allies & Teams