The obligatory last step in the Metal Men retrospective is Crisis, even though they don’t really play a major role in the story.
Crisis On Infinite Earths #5 (1985)
by Marv Wolfman & George Perez
The Metal Men don’t even appear before the legendary two-page spread that was, for the longest time, the record holder for the highest number of superhero characters in a single drawing.
I’m pretty sure the record has since been broken, and I’m certain it was broken by Perez himself.
Mercury is, of course, the one given the most visibility…
…but the others are around.
(don’t expect me to play “find the Legionnaire” once the Legion retrospective gets here)
We don’t see the Metal Men again until much later in the series.
Crisis On Infinite Earths #9 (1985)
by Marv Wolfman & George Perez
Chemo shows up before the Metal Men, when Brainiac recruits supervillains from multiple Earths.
Doc Magnus ALSO shows up before his creations, in a very bizarre moment… not only because he contributes absolutely nothing, but because Perez draws him like a pipe-smoking Peter Parker.
The Metal Men’s contribution is to say they’re here. To be fair, you could say the same thing for like 80% of the characters showing up in Crisis.
It’s Chemo that steals the show, causing mass murder on Earth-4 (the one where the Charlton heroes are from). I think Crisis went a long way into elevating Chemo into a major league threat.
Even if the scene happens on Earth-4, Chemo is directly responsible for the death of Aquagirl, a.k.a. Aqualad’s girlfriend.
Among the many, many, MANY fight scenes, Iron gets a rematch of sorts with Eclipso…
…while Gold uses Lightning Lord’s electricity to take down Hyena, a Firestorm villain.
(I’ll be honest: I had to look up who she was supposed to be. I had no idea that was a woman)
Crisis On Infinite Earths #10 (1986)
by Marv Wolfman & George Perez
This is it. The Metal Men don’t show up in the last two issues.
Once again Chemo is given a more memorable scene than his original enemies, because he basically gets to chemically burn the entirety of New York City!!!
And it’s not the Metal Men who defeat him. It’s Doom Patrol member Negative Woman, who dies in the process.
(EDIT: I actually got this one wrong, as noted in the comments she survives)
Tina didn’t get to do anything in the previous issues, but now she takes on a couple of villains with mind powers.
At least she got her chance to shine. Tin… not so much.
(no clue about who the villain is supposed to be)
Lead, appropriately enough, also doesn’t get a moment to shine.
Gold is the last one to get his moment: it’s thanks to him that the heroes with electric powers are able to power up the time machines that are used to attack the Anti-Monitor at the beginning of time.
If the rest of the Metal Men follow the heroes in the mission, I don’t see them in any of the group shots.
And since this issue ends with the destruction of the pre-Crisis universe…
…the Metal Men get rebooted with the rest of it.
Action Comics #590 (1987)
by John Byrne
The Metal Men will be completely revamped in a 1992 limited series, but they do get a couple of post-Crisis appearances after that.
That falls beyond the scope of my retrospective, but there IS an interesting point: the Chemo that they battle here is explicitly the pre-Crisis one. Kinda.
How so? Well, first the Daily Planet runs a story on chemical waste reprocessing (slow news day I guess), and Clark Kent happens to fall into the vat.
Turns out the vat contains the remains of the Chemo that destroyed Earth-4. This is an extremely rare case of an explicit reference to Crisis; you would get these VERY rarely from 1986 to 2000.
So… yeah, Chemo survived the Crisis basically untouched!!!
Byrne’s version of the Metal Men is EXTREMELY classic. I wouldn’t have minded him writing a regular series about them.
The main story is about Superman and the Metal Men fight a new Chemo, who is able to chemically duplicate Supes’ powers (from the cells absorbed during Clark’s chemical bath)…
…until the Metal Men block out the Sun, weakening Chemo enough for Superman to punch him out. Minus Tin because he managed to get himself killed first.
(this is not factored in the official count since it’s post-Crisis)
Metal Men significance: 0/10
Crisis itself is, of course, as significant as you can possibly get. But when it comes to the Metal Men, you can easily skip it.
Silver Age-ness: N/A
Does it stand the test of time? N/A
This being a glorified cameo, I can’t in good conscience give it any score.
In honor of the end of the retrospective, this is the final tally of all the counters.
I have to say the only one that surprised me was how rarely Mercury actually said his catchphrase.
Number of elements: 61
That is A LOT of elements.
Planet of evil robots: 15
Mostly during the Kanigher era.
“Mercury is the only liquid metal at room temperature”: 19
Issues when not a single Metal Man dies: 32
Just barely more than the highest number of deaths, and then again it’s only because I’m including the cameos.
Times Nameless has died: 6
Times Platinum has died: 22
Times Mercury has died: 23
Times Gold has died: 24
Times Iron has died: 28
Times Tin has died: 29
Times Lead has died: 30
And that’s a wrap on the Metal Men! Their post-Crisis incarnations have been so different that they fall way beyond the scope of this site.
I have to say I’ll genuinely miss those lovable losers.
We’ll eventually return to the DC Universe, but the next retrospective is going to be a Marvel one.
Because I’ll be looking at one its lesser known heroines: the 80s Dazzler series.