Showcase Corner - Metal Men Volume Two!

Writer Robert Kanigher and artistic team Ross Andru and Mike Esposito found good success with the Metal Men. It's a wonderful fusion of talent, with Kanigher supplying fast-paced and weird stories for the art team to draw. The Metal Men are famous for their constant transformations which enable them to eventually defeat a vast array of mostly metallic enemies from this Earth and beyond. Gold, Lead, Iron, Mercury, Tin, Nameless, and Tina are all there to help their builder Will Magnus to defend mankind. Good stuff indeed. 

The Metal Men were a colorful band of characters and their ability to change shape made for creative tales and evocative covers. The Metal Men covers by Andru and Esposito are some of the most inventive and eye-catching at DC, a company which was quite excellent at supplying a good cover. 

The comic had a marginally Marvel feel to it. Stories might continue from time to time and the constant bickering among the characters does remind a reader of the squabbles which were a staple of Marvel's efforts in these years. Metal Men could not be a Marvel comic by any means, but there are echoes. 

When DC made the decision to add Go-Go Checks to the tops of their covers to make them distinctive in the copious spinner racks of the time, it was a stylistic change much in keeping with the established tone of the Metal Men comic. Their adventures were just the zany kind of tomfoolery which we often identify with the Go-Go Checks era. 

There were of course attempts to broaden the Metal Men's appeal by having them show up in the pages of the Brave and the Bold alongside another odd hero -- Metamorpho the Element Man. This is an ideal pairing and gave artist Mike Sekowsky his first chance to draw the "Metal Band".  It would not be his last. 

Behind this truly wacky cover is the even more bizarre villain Dr. Yes, the ovoid robot duplicate of bizarre Wonder Woman villain Egg Fu. Even counting Marvel's MODOK, I don't think there has ever been a stranger character in comics. Being racially offensive is just the stuff of what happened back then. Strange even by Metal Men standards. 

The Sizzler was a strange robotic addition to the team. Beginning as an enemy, she was taken in by Magnus so that he could help her deal with her immense powers. The character would stick around for several issues. 

As always, Doc's complicated feelings for Tina are on display with his usual blend of disdain and concern. I guess DC just couldn't commit to a love relationship between a man and a robot, but they skirted it barely. 

Strange villains like the Balloon Man and others added to the zest of the Metal Men. 

Chemo remains my favorite of their antagonists, despite his inability to speak. His relentless onslaught when he confronts the team makes feel somehow more dangerous than the other freakish threats they confront. 

After four appearances in Showcase and twenty-nine issues of the comic itself, the original art team of Andru and Esposito steps away. They move over to the pages of The Flash to replace Carmine Infantino who was moving up into his role as publisher. 

Otto Binder takes on the writing chores from Kanigher and the very talented Gil Kane steps into give us a few exceedingly well-done issues in his distinctive style. 

Mike Sekowsky shows up to take the artistic reins from Kane joining Binder for one story. Then things really begin to change for our Metal Band. 

With the next issue Kanigher is back to take the controls of the comic again, and now working with Sekowsky they swing the team into a new direction. The Metal Men had often been at odds with humanity in the past but usually by the end of a single story things were put right. Not the case now as the robots become hunted by men. 

This second volume ends with the team still on the outs with humanity but still fightng the the good fight to protect man and the world in which he lives. They have to battle giant grasshoppers and volcanic ghosts to do so, but the press on. It's truly unfortunate that these Showcase volumes couldn't have been just a little heftier or that we might have gotten another one. The original Metal Men run is about to end after the team is utterly changed by Mike Sekowsky who takes over the writing as well the art. The book will be cancelled soon thereafter but revived in the 70's with art by the likes of Walt Simonson and Joe Staton. Those are some dandy stories, well deserving of collection. Maybe some day. 

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Showcase Corner - Metal Men Volume One!

I've always loved the Metal Men. Six sentient robots created by the genius Doc Will Magnus, these artificial heroes sacrificed themselves time and time again to save their allies, their creator, or the very world itself. They battled mostly other mechanical threats, and stymied many an alien invasion. The robots are of course named for the elements from which they are primarily created, and each individual Metal Man has powers which derive from the aspects of that element. 

Gold is the leader of the team, handsome and shinty, he says little but seems the most level-headed using his highly ductile body to solve problems. Lead is the one they depend on for protection from the varied radioactive menaces they confront, and he often uses his body to create a protective wall. Not the smartest Metal Man, Lead is nonetheless utterly reliable. Iron is the strongest, making formidable hammers and other weapons from his body to attack the sundry threats. Iron seems to be Gold's solid right hand in their adventures. Mercury is as his name suggests quite mercurial, changeable both in body and in mood. He often loses his temper but in the end is there for the fight. Tin is the weakest of the team, and he knows it. His stuttering reveals his lack of confidence in himself, despite often being the only Metal Man able to save the day. Tin will eventually get a girlfriend made from the same stuff and who quite literally will remain Nameless. And finally, there is Platinum, the gorgeous original female member who due to presumably faulty programming is hopelessly in love with her creator Doc Magnus. 

The Metal Men debut in the pages of Showcase and their first mission is to defend the Earth from "The Flaming Doom", a strange giant creature from the planet's distant past. The team is all but destroyed their debut, but their singular characteristic is that from the smallest of remnants the originals can be recreated. 

It's unfair when reading these large collections to judge some aspects of a story. One thing which these Metal Men stories are is repetitive, the conversations and internal conflicts are exceedingly similar from issue to issue. Reading these on a monthly basis that wouldn't have been as noticeable, but in a collection such details are glaring. 

Perhaps the Metal Men's most infamous enemy is Chemo and he debuted in the third issue of their Showcase run, but he's not on the cover. Chemo has always been an awesome and deadly enemy. 

The Metal Men begin their run and with the talents of writer Robert Kanigher and artists Ross Andru and Mike Esposito still in place and that trio gives these early issues an incredibly sophisticated look for the time, and especially when compared to other DC books which were still suffering with old-fashioned graphics 

The Metal Men could also feature continued stories. The saga had continuity, a memory from issue to issue generally but they'd go so far in some instances as to have cliffhangers such as the two stories featuring the Metal Men encouraging a blind boy on a planet full of robot carnival rides gone mad. 

Ramona Fradon takes the artistic reins in the Metal Men's appearance in The Brave and the Bold when they team with The Atom. 

Tina's endless and possessive affection for Doc Magnus was a regular feature. Many stories begin with Doc rebuffing her advances and proclaiming he will fix her so she won't be a problem. He never does and we all draw the correct conclusion, that despite his protests he's at a minimum flattered by her attentions. 

The Metal Men covers are fantastic fun to look at. The ability of the characters to transform gives Andru and Esposito a wide range of options in how to portray them. They use their imaginations to great effect. More on the Metal Men when the Dojo features volume two next week. 

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Showcase Corner - Legion Of Super-Heroes Three!

The Legion of Super-Heroes was immensely popular in the 60's with hardcore comic book fans. In those halcyon days when conventions were rare and fan contact was only beginning to take shape, the Legion fans formed devout clubs dedicated to the team. It was during the stories in this collection that the interest was likely highest. The youthful Jim Shooter was writing and laying out the stories for regular artist Curt Swan, with inks by George Klein. A few stories in this volume are by E. Nelson Bridwell, another fan turned pro who ambled the halls of DC. By the end of this tome we are getting some stunning covers by Neal Adams who is beginning to make his mark on the comic book world.

The membership of the team has been pretty well established, though Shooter did add Karate Kid and Princess Projectra to the roster soon in his tenure. Shadow Lass shows up and is inducted in later stories in this collection.  He also added Ferro Lad, a helmeted hero who could turn himself iron hard and was possessed of great strength. The death of Ferro Lad was a momentous event in the history of the Legion. Lightning Lad had died but then returned to life, and Proty, the pet of Chameleon Boy had also famously died, and Triplicate Girl tragically became Duo Damsel, but the death of Ferro Lad was something I'm pretty sure Shooter had in mind from the moment he was inducted and his death to my knowledge has never been undone. (At least in any version of the DCU I give a hoot about.) There is a great two-part tale of the adult Legion starring Superman. We get glimpses of the Legion's future and find many of the heroes have married and moved on to other careers. A few have died in ways not revealed and some have simply gone on to pursue a useful career. 

We also meet some intriguing villains. Dr. Mantis Morlo gives the Legion some trouble and in stories drawn by Pete Costanza looks more than a bit like an infamous Dr. Sivana of Marvel Family fame. Universo is a villain who brainwashes and hypnotizes his enemies and the Legion have to put his schemes to rest a few times with the help of his son Rond Vidar. We meet alien cultures like the Khund and the Dominators which will play crucial parts in the DCU in years to come. There's a viscous bloke called The Hunter who lives up to his name as he tracks down some of the Legionnaires. But easily the most significant addition to the rogues gallery of the 30th century was the Fatal Five. This quintet becomes the Legions most heinous counterpart and show up in two engaging two-part tales in this collection. We meet Tharok the half-man and half-machine villain, Mano possessed of a hand that can explode a world, the Emerald Princess with her Evil Eye, the Persuader and his atomic axe, and most incredibly the creature known as Validus, who is perhaps the deadliest villain in the Legion canon. (At least until Mordru appears.)

The Legion even gets a new headquarters in this volume after long years in their wacky inverted spaceship. 

Here are the covers in this Showcase volume. 

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