Metal Men #18 – Comics Archeology

METAL MEN 18 (1966)
by Robert Kanigher & Ross Andru

Believe it or not, but “The dinosaur who stayed for dinner” is not the weirdest Metal Men title.
It’s up there, though.

As it’s often the case for this series, the story begins right in the middle of the action. This time with a Godzilla ripoff!

Will the Metal Men save the day? What do you think?

Wait, Gold can do THIS!? Why does he always turn into a pile of coins or giant teeth if he can TURN INTO A FREAKING TORNADO!?

Only now the comic bothers to tell us how we got to the robot dinosaur, and since this is a Kanigher story you KNOW it’s going to be insane.
It starts with the girls wanting to make themselves pretty, and remember that Kanigher should have quite some experience writing women since he was the regular Wonder Woman writer for 20 straight years.

So, uhm, yeah.

This leads to a new look for Nameless… which is exactly identical to the previous one.

Then something random even for Kanigher standards happen: someone sends a gift to Doc Magnus that turns into a dinosaur!

I’m beginning to think Doc has a gambling problem.

Of course Tina thinks like a woman, and so does the only thing a woman would do when facing A GIANT ROBOT DINOSAUR: invite it to dinner!!!

I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Mercury, but you want to know the real crazy part?
IT WORKS.

A deep dive on how the mind of Robert Kanigher works: this makes sense in his head.

I’m sure things are going to work out just fine.

The Metal Men knock out the dinosaur with one hit (???) and then they have to go visit… and I’m not kidding… the “ward for violent comics writers”.

Even by Kanigher standards, WTF!?!?

Also, Kanigher apparently had a reputation of being difficult to work with, so I wonder if that was a little inside joke. But really, “who knows what Kanigher was thinking” is ALWAYS a good question.

Sadly we don’t get to see the “ward for violent comics writers”, jumping immediately to where we were at the beginning. I’m glad we had that flashback, where we learned… basically nothing.

Good to see that the Doc Magnus Awfulness Scale is back to a 10/10.

Then the dinosaur turns up to be a ship (!?!??) who flies into space (WTF!?!?).

What’s going on!? Well, it turns out the dinosaur… which I remind you was SENT BY MAIL… was actually sent to retrieve Doc and Tina for a robot inventor!
Not as in “an inventor of robots”, mind you, but a robot that invents other robots.

The dinosaur sends the Metal Men (except Tina) into a cauldron. Which for some reason doesn’t melt them like it usually does.

We don’t learn immediately what happens to them, because first we have to witness Tina being pooped out of the dinosaur’s tail… (WTF!?)

…then see the inventor create a Doc Magnus duplicate.
And WTF does “stop speaking in capital letters” even MEAN with 1960s lettering!?

The Clone Saga, Metal Men style!

But then Tina figures out that this is not the real Doc because he’s not enough of a jackass!!!

After being rejected, the inventor reads Doc’s mind to be a better impersonator, and WHY DIDN’T HE DO THIS BEFORE!?

And it STILL doesn’t work!!!

This leads to the inventor ordering the dinosaur to MELT THEM TOGETHER.

I don’t know what it’s worse. That Tina is so obsessed that she WISHES to die in the cauldron with Doc, that he’s such a jackass that he insults her to his last breath, or the monstrosity that the Metal Men have created.

The inventor wants to exile the Metal Man to outer space, but the dinosaur instead decides to poop them back to Earth.

And so we end with Kanigher basically admitting that even he can’t keep his own plots straight.

Metal Men significance: 0/10

Silver Age-ness: ∞/10
I’ve been reluctant to go THIS high with Metal Men since they’re fairly tongue in cheek, but holy crap is this one insane!!!