Simon Stagg
63 years ago - Simon Stagg is born, heir to the Stagg fortune.
50 years ago - 13-year-old Simon Stagg's parents die in a plane crash.
45 years ago - 18-year-old Simon Stagg goes to college.
41 years ago - 22-year-old Simon Stagg graduates, & begins building Stagg Industries with his family fortune.
40 years ago - 23-year-old Simon Stagg meets & marries his wife.
36 years ago - 27-year-old Simon Stagg's daughter Sapphire Stagg is born.
32 years ago - 31-year-old Simon Stagg's wife dies on an undiagnosed blood disorder.
23 years ago - 40-year-old Simon Stagg's Stagg Industries revolutionizes hazardous enviornment exploration, quintupling accidents but vastly increasing his companies worth.
18 years ago - 45-year-old Simon Stagg begins searching for mystic relics to craft new technology. Stagg Industries finds the living Cro-Magnon Java. Simon makes him his personal valet & bodyguard.
16 years ago - 47-year-old Simon Stagg hires Rex Mason to head his exploration devision.
14 years ago - 49-year-old Simon Stagg discovers that Rex Mason is engaged to his daughter Sapphire Stagg. He sends him to Egypt to acquire the Orb of Ra, sending Java to kill him. His plan backfires when Rex becomes Metamorpho, but he takes control by promising Rex that he can find a way to change him back.
8 years ago - 55-year-old Simon Stagg manipulates Java's love of Sapphire Stagg so the he kidnaps her, forcing Java and Rex Mason into a climactic battle, hoping to drive Rex & Sapphire apart so he could finally dissect Rex. He goes with Rex to Egypt, attacking them with the Orb of Ra when Sapphire stands by Rex. The tomb collapses, and Rex chooses to save Sapphire instead of Simon, letting him die.
Simon Stagg's Comic HistoryMetamorpho has spent most of his time in DC as a very prolific supporting character, but when he first started out back in Brave and the Bold #57, he was actually the star of his own very particular story, leading his own supporting cast. In fact, while the comic starred one of the weirdest superheroes in DC's catalog, a very real argument can be made that the real appeal of the series was it's strange cast of characters.
Simon Stagg was the villain of the story, that's inarguable, but he didn't occupy a traditional villan's role. He was the father of the hero's love interest, and even though he schemed and plotted to somehow control Rex and keep him away from his daughter, he would just as often wind up right in the middle of the adventure at hand alongside the heroes. This meant that he was often a little more buffonish than downright evil. The best comparison I can think of is the role of Dr. Smith in Lost in Space... which also just so happens to have started in 1965. Stagg has appeared less in cannon as Metamorpho hasn't lead his own series in some time, but he's still a very commonly referenced character in larger DC cannon. .
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Our Simon Stagg StoryStagg is a classic corrupt industrialist archetype, and his constant scheming is a huge driving part of what makes the early Metamorpho stories work. Because we're building a whole timeline, step one is to actually build up his early life, because there really aren't any references to how he went about building his fortune. We're stealing from his appearance in the Justice League cartoon a little, making his company specifically about hazardous enviornment exploration, but also giving him an obsession with collecting magical artifacts as a way to build his technology, which explains why he has a treasure hunter on payroll. Beyond that, his story unfolds largely like it does in the comics.
We are, of course adding one final story between the Metamorpho supporting cast, because it just makes sense to bring the ongoing story of these characters to a final climax. |