Metron
1066 - Metron comes into being on a higher plane of existence after Ragnarök, the fall of Asgard. It is unknown if he was from Apokolips or New Genesis.
1102 - Metron invents / discovers the Mobius chair. He trades access to Boom Tube technology to Uxas to acquire enough Element X to construct his chair, and departs traditional reality to explore the limits of creation, sealing the technology behind him.
64 years ago - Metron, knowing that the fate of creation hinges on Scott Free, speaks directly into his mind, making him confront his own unfamiliar capacity to hope for more. Scott is slowly driven mad, but is driven to find the sanctuary of Himon.
9 years ago - Metron and Darkseid watch as Scott Free, bombarded with Mass-Gravity, finds the will to survive and escapes Apokolips through a boom tube to Earth opened by Himon.
2 years ago - Metron observes the awakening of Mageddon beyond the limits of reality, and warns Highfather of the coming manifestation of the end of all creation.
Metron might be one of the most regularly appearing New Gods characters, Darkseid notwithstanding. It just seems to occur fairly often that a lot of stories, regardless of whether or not the New Gods are featured, seem to benefit from the appearance of a near omniscient, impartial observer. The concept of the Mobius chair has been picked up and included in a lot of corners of DC's larger story, so much so that building a timeline for Metron becomes more about pulling back from all of his appearances and trying to pare it down to just the actual story elements relevant to the actual character in question.
Metron's Comic HistoryJack Kirby's original concept art for his New God characters were all fantastic, colorful explosions of imagination, but the original art for Metron actually stands out even among those designs. It's very clear that this character was going to play some extremely complex and esoteric role in the larger story of the New Gods. He was introduced in New Gods #1, appearing to Orion and Highfather to share more hidden information about the mysterious Source... with Orion admonishing him "For a scrap of knowledge you would sell the universe into slavery!", setting up exactly where his priorities lie in the most dramatic way possible.
It's hard to describe just how peculiar and unconventional Metron's role in the story of the New Gods was. He appeared in several issues of New Gods off on his own adventures, but none of them ever were trying to develop a particular plot so much as they were just exploring the extremes of the universe these characters existed in. He appeared in the backstory of Mister Miracle, part of the events that led to his eventual escape, but he always seemed to be more of an observer, evoking Jack's prior creation over in Marvel, the Watcher. Metron would go on to make appearances all over DC, but always seemed to play the role of the perpetual outsider in someone else's story, or a sort of dealer of deus ex machina, specifically in stories that were too scientific for the Phantom Stranger. |
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Our Metron StoryWe're skipping over a LOT of content here, because Metron really does show up interacting with the rest of DC a LOT, but we've all agreed pretty much unilaterally that NONE of those appearances have ever really been a good use of this character. If any part of the world of the New Gods should NEVER interact with anything outside of their higher dimension, it's Metron.
We actually started out saying that Metron NEVER interacted with the timeline. He was one of the original New Gods, very deliberately not stating which of the two planets he came into being on (we're putting him on the site under New Genesis, but that's really just for organizational purposes), he invented the Mobius chair and retreated from traditional reality, never appearing again until he came to warn Highfather about the coming of Mageddon, As the timeline grew, we found a few more moments when we wanted him to interact with the other gods, particularly in the role he plays in leading Scott Free to seek out Himon, but otherwise it should be understood that Metron is spending most of the timeline on the outside of reality exploring the limits of creation. |
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