METAMORPHO.ORG ORIGINS

Well, here I am with my very first post on this new blog and I definitely would like to start by telling you the origin of my fondness for Metamorpho, the element man.

When I was a child in the late 70’s and early 80’s our country was being introduced for that time to superheroes due to the coming of Marvel iconic characters such as Captain America (my mom’s favorite), Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Man, Hulk and others (Mego toys were vastly responsible of this new fever). DC comics characters were also very famous for that time specially due to the success of the Superman live action movie and the Batman TV show that was aired in my country at the moment.

The superhero fever was everywhere even (as far I can remember) in the soaps where you could find some small removable tattoos depicting marvel characters. You can see children around playing with their superhero toys and using superhero costumes. I personally owned Mego’s Spider-Man, Shazam, Superman, Batman and a giant Hulk that had clothes. All those toys were so over played that I can barely remember what happened with them all, I tried to recover my giant Hulk browsing on Ebay to look for a chance to buy it, but no way, the prices have skyrocketed lately (after the superhero movie fever fades we will see).

But then appeared something that became in my childhood’s first love, it was a Superman book. This book reprinted several silver age Superman and Superboy stories translated to Spanish, I could not read yet but my beloved mother gave me a Superman book. I was hooked and I asked my grandmother to read me the stories.

My involvement with superheroes and comics was easy from them on, many factors helped: the Hulk TV show with Bill Bixby, The Batman TV show with Adam West, the Super Friends cartoon, the Batman cartoon and so on. I was in love with superheroes such was my fever that I asked a Batman costume which my loving mother did not have problem to buy for me. I think she regretted later since she had a hard labor to convince me to put it off once I was wearing it. Those were fond memories of that wonderful time of life.

Comics from DC and Marvel were not something we could find abundantly on the newsstands, they were translated and published only in Colombia and Mexico so this kind of publications were not very accessible to say the least, however still you could find superhero comics here and there, they were relatively cheap and were treated as entertainment disposable items (no one cared about its future value).

My father was not as generous as my mom but still he knew I liked comics and he gave me a comic whose cover had a strange superhero fighting side by side with Batman, it had a weird four color suit and could create tongs out of his hand. I was in love with my Batman comic but since I did not know how to read I just looked at the pictures. But the tragedy came upon me since I lost it when it fell down from my hand to the street when I was in the car that transported me from the kindergarten to home. That was a tragedy for me, I lost my beloved comic but never could forget that cover and the superhero with the tongs hand.

I always wondered who that superhero was, it looked cool but could not read that adventure since I still was trying to figure out how to do sticks and circles at the kindergarten. After some years when I was a teenager I could find out that the mysterious cool superhero was no other than Metamorpho and the comic was a reprint of Brave and the Bold #154.

Years passed and when I was about seven a new breed of heroes were taking a piece of the cake and the market share. Hasbro and Mattel were introducing their action figures and as you can know the G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe and Transformers phenomena took the whole world even South America where I live.

After my short affair with Star Wars action figures, the new love of my life was the Masters of the Universe and his cartoon series, my loving mom did not skimped on money to help me to amass a small army of these figures, years passed and I divorced from Masters of the Universe to embrace G.I. Joe to which my mom also was generous to purchase some figures of that line.

However years have passed and school days were to get to an end kicking me off to the teenager ground and for that time mom was not so willing to expend money in toys since I was already fourteen. My interest in toys especially those from the G.I. Joe line had not faded yet, despite the fact I was almost fifteen but life is hard and the playing time was over so I faced my new status in life. I still remember the last toy I purchased with my own money, it was a small G.I. Joe vehicle with which I played a few times before I simply grew up and set farewell with toys.

One day I was strolling by the streets with a few friends and I could see a new store in a place where there was nothing before, for the sake of curiosity I walked closer to the place and there they were, comics! I had not seen a single comic book in years so totally ignoring my friends I just got in the place, they followed me but they were not interested in comics so they only walked around and looked the other available merchandises in the place since it was really a bookstore with a comic-books section.

The first comic I took was one called “Batman and the Outsiders”, it was a Batman comic one of my longtime favorite superheroes. But I thought that I was really outdated since I did not know that Batman did not work alone anymore but with a bunch of other guys who I totally ignored their names. I was short of money but I bought one of the comics (those comics were not exactly cheap and I was always run out of money). I bought it for Batman but soon I discovered that in the Batman team there was a guy strangely familiar, oh yes! It was the same tong hand superhero from the comic I lost road to home from the kindergarten. I discovered his name was Metamorpho.

The collection was a reprint of Batman and the Outsiders #10 published by Editora Zinco, a Spanish company that specialized in publishing DC Comics translated to Spanish. As long as my economy would allow me, I purchased some other comics of the collection and other DC heroes and a few Mexican ones that still were available. But while I was trying to enjoy a Batman comic, I discovered how cool Metamorpho was, his powers are really amazing and his depiction as he stretches is fantastic (not to say that I am a big fan of stretching heroes).

Now it is my time to post all my passion for this character using this blog and show others how fantastic he is. And although Rex Mason a.k.a. Metamorpho has been for many years only a background superhero I have faith that post over post, comic readers will see in the element man a stupendous character who deserves more.