Brave And The Bold #57 (1965)
by Bob Haney & Ramona Fradon
After a long stretch of Marvel origins, we return to DC Comics for one of its most Marvel characters.
Our protagonist is Rex Mason, a ridiculously famous adventurer.
Rex has it all: fame, fortune, and a hot super-rich fiancée who is nearly as crazy as he is.
Rex loves living dangerously in more ways than one. For example, instead of attending a parade for his retrieval of a shrinking formula, he pulls off a stunt to make the authorities look like idiots…
…but he’s also doing this while sleeping with the billionaire who commissioned the adventure: his fiancée’s father.
Would “making love” have had a different connotation in 1965 or did Bob Haney manage to slip something past the Comics Code?
This is probably THE quintessential Bob Haney series, so you should expect insanity.
Like the fact that Simon Stagg is not just a billionaire scientific genius, but he also employes the unfrozen caveman Java who is ALSO in love with Stagg’s daughter.
Yes there is an unfrozen caveman around in this story and nobody finds anything weird with it… like I said, it’s a Bob Haney series.
Stagg has ALL the hallmarks of a straight-up supervillain, but the comic most definitely doesn’t treat him like that.
Most of the time.
Definitely the guy you want to antagonize, Rex.
Rex decides to accept One Last Job from Stagg, using the pay to marry Sapphire.
Nothing toxic about this father-daughter relationship, at all.
Stagg just sent Rex to his doom: he’s supposed to enter the dreaded Pink Pyramid.
The prize is the Orb of Ra, which has been carved from a meteorite.
Which you might think is comic book nonsense, but there ARE actual examples of Ancient Egyptians using meteorites them for royal gifts… Tutankhamun’s tomb has a dagger made from iron taken from a meteorite!
Although that one doesn’t have magic powerscitation needed.
Too bad Java is a Neanderthal, which in comics means he’s super-strong.
(well at least Java is WAY stronger than any Neanderthal would have been)
Instead of just murdering Rex, Java just traps him in a room with a different meteorite.
Rex survives thanks to a formula hidden in his ring (?), which does… actually I’m not entirely sure WHAT the formula does.
Every subsequent story credits the energies from the meteorite was doing all the work, so part did that “secret formula” play???
The meteor has completel transformed Rex… and his clothes, I guess?
I highly doubt he stripped to his underwear.
The meteor ruined Rex’s good looks, but on the plus side it gave him the power to transform into any element, in any form he can think of.
It’s kinf of hard to read this story and recalling that Stagg will stay around as a supporting character for A LOT of Metamorpho stories without being the villain.
Unfortunately for Stagg, Rex is now basically unstoppable. Especially because, as it’s tradition for DC, he already has total control over his powers.
Sapphire doesn’t take the news well.
I said before that Java is way stronger than he should be… but he’s still almost human.
Rex’s only weaknesses are the Orb of Ra and his willingness to trust Stagg’s words.
Something I didn’t expect: we kind of get an explanation for what exactly Metamorpho is supposed to be.
I’m not convinced that Stagg is trying to cure Rex. It really looks like he’s looking for a way to just kill him.
Does THIS sound like a man who has your best interests in mind?
His only redeeming quality is that he doesn’t want his daughter to die.
Clearly he doesn’t care about her being HAPPY, given how he tried to kill her fiancée, but hey that’s something!
Sapphire still loves Rex despite his monstrous appearance, but he’s convinced himself they will never be happy until he turns human again.
So basically he’s the DC equivalent of the Thing from the Fantastic Four.
I’m sure Stagg will spare no effort in actually helping Rex, without paying no attention to his personal wealth and power.
And that’s the setup for Metamorpho: a reluctant hero who is mostly interested in looking for a cure for his monstrous appearance.
Historical significance: 6/10
I wouldn’t call Metamorpho a pillar of the DC Universe, but he’s been around.
Silver Age-ness: 6 / Bob Haney
What does the secret formula inside the ring do!? Why did the meteor give Metamorpho superpowers but not the Ancient Egyptians? Why does nobody find it weird that Stagg has an unfrozen caveman as his personal assistant?
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
Despite the unusual length for the time… it’s 25 pages, pretty long for DC in 1965… it feels a bit rushed, and the distracting naiveté towards Stagg, it holds pretty well.
But the comic and the artwork REALLY sell Rex’s anguish, plus for 1965 Sapphire is surprisingly well-developed as a character.
How close is this to the modern character? 8/10
He tends to be a lot more depressed in modern stories, or at the very least start that way, but he’s sort of already there.
Bob Haney needs little introduction, as I’ve talked about him many times in other retrospectives, but Ramona Fradon is more influential than you’d think.
She was one of the EXTREMELY few women working in comics; aside from a lengthy Aquaman run, Metamorpho is easily her most famous work for DC Comics.
And she credits editor George Kashdan as being the one to come up with Metamorpho.
Metamorpho was George Kashdan’s idea. He had studied science when he was in school and he thought of a character made of four elements who could change himself into different chemical compounds. He gave Bob Haney the idea, and Bob fleshed it out brilliantly. I believe George continued to supply the “scientific” details for Bob to use throughout the life of the feature.RAMONA
FRADON
Even the character’s look was a group effort of sorts.
Bob, George and I got together to figure out what the character should look like. He wasn’t your average super hero so capes and masks didn’t suit him. I tried a lot of those and finally decided that since he was always changing his shape, clothes would get in his way. So I drew him in tights, with a body made up of four different colors and textures that were supposed to indicate the four elements.
RAMONA FRADON
One thing that made Metamorpho stand out, other than being a non-traditional hero in a very traditional superhero universe, was that Fradon’s artwork (in combination with Haney’s zany scripts) meant that his series looked nothing like anything else.
His goofy stories gave me ideas about how the characters should look and act, and my goofy pictures gave him new ideas.
RAMONA FRADON
Metamorpho would appear in the following issue of Brave and the Bold…
…which is technically where he picks up the name. Luckily, he doesn’t keep the costume.
Those two issues were popular enough to launch a Metamorpho series, which would last 17 issues from 1965 to 1968.
It’s a unique combination of craziness and wholesome fun.
Another parallel with the Thing? The public LOVES Metamorpho!
The tenth issue introduces Element Girl. She only appears in a couple of issues of this series, only to be completely forgotten until 1990… where she has an incredibly depressing ending on Sandman.
Issues 14-15 are probably peak Bob Haney. Its villain is The Thunderer, who is a planetary menace despite looking like this…
…it has Metamorpho and Element Girl blown up into atoms and surviving through Kirby Space…
…and the near-omnipotent alien cyclops dwarf is defeated by a laser-shooting guitar built by a genius teenager.
During the course of the series he had a few appearances in other books, most notably on Justice League of America where he becomes a reserve member.
After the cancellation of his book, Metamorpho bounced here and there with occasional stories until he joined the Outsiders in 1983 and would stay in the team until the end of the book in 1986.
He was actually the one to come up with the team’s name.
During the run, he also finally got the chance to marry Sapphire.
With most of his pre-Crisis history preserved in the post-Crisis universe, Metamorpho eventually joined the Justice League.
And in 1990, Sapphire would give birth to their son. Although Metamorpho was dead for some time, so he wouldn’t learn about his powers for a bit.
Well that was dark. Don’t worry, the kid was eventually cured in a 1993 miniseries by exposing him to the same meteor that gave Metamorpho his powers.
Also: yes, the 2025 Superman movie was right, the kid really is named Joey.
He’s been all over the DC Universe… joining different teams and dying a bunch of times, because he’s VERY easy to resurrect.
I would say that he’s done well for himself, considering he’s had his own miniseries as recently as 2025.
Which is still as weird as always.
I mean, a comic that includes a parody of Stardust the Super-Wizard is after my own heart.
For some reason, the 2025 Superman movie never actually calls him “Metamorpho” and just uses his nickname of Element Man.
As mentioned it also features Joey and presumably a cameo by Sapphire.
Simon Stagg doesn’t show up, but he does have a movie version that you probably missed.
He’s the billionaire scammed by Max Lord at the beginning of Wonder Woman 1984.
For all that movie’s faults… and there are MANY… it does make Stagg recognizable despite giving him a human hairstyle.