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Description

    Intelligence reports claimed that military manufacturer Simon Stagg was developing a formula to grant superpowers to whoever took it. If completed, whoever had the formula could make their own personal superhuman army. Going undercover, top spy Rex Mason was able to get a job working at Stagg’s company. But suspicious of the new hire, and disapproving of his growing closeness with his daughter Sapphire, Stagg sent his bodyguard Java to do away with him. Java tailed Rex as he discovered the pit where Stagg dumped his chemical wastes. Unseen, Java knocked Rex in, leaving him for dead.
     Bathed in a cocktail of incomplete metamorphic formulas, Rex’s body began to destabilize. One formula was for turning hard as stone, another for turning soft as putty. One caused his cells to freeze, another caused them to burn. Some bit like acid, and some were dangerously radioactive. Subjected to all these effects at once, a lesser man would have dropped dead on the spot. But Rex used all his training to drag himself out of the pit and call for an ambulance before he lost consciousness.
     Awakening in the hospital, Rex found that the doctors had been able to stabilize him. But the damage was severe. The warring chemicals within him had altered Rex’s body chemistry completely. His skin had degenerated into a hideous mosaic of ever-shifting organic compounds. He would never be the same again.
     Fortunately, it turned out that he had some control over his fluctuating chemistry. Rex could now turn any part of himself into any chemical element or simple compound he could think of. With practice, he also learned to stretch, form simple shapes (nothing too detailed or complicated), or even turn into liquids or gasses. He could even use his powers to heal his own wounds, though this leaves him feeling weakened and presumably has its limits.
     With his new powers, Rex is able to fight crime better than ever. He often mourns the life he lost, but he soldiers on with the help of his wry, sardonic wit, and his determination to bring Stagg to justice.

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     There’s a really interesting and creative idea at the core of Metamorpho’s appearance, undermined by how overly simplified and cartoony it is. I kept the general colors and their placements, but made them asymmetrical to make them feel random and organic. I tried to make him out of materials that felt like they could be found in the human body to further reduce the cartooniness (his right leg is basically softened flesh, like Clayface, and his top-left is caused by his blood crystallizing) with only his left leg needing a major change. It’s variously been drawn as either glass or pale wood, neither of which was I crazy about. I ultimately modeled it after charcoal, which is an organic form of carbon (the second-most common element in the human body) and can at times look sort of like a mineral or sort of like wood. I kept his silhouette completely human, as a painful reminder of how ruggedly handsome he once was.
     His "Orb of Ra" origin... doesn’t really work. His powers are so science-themed it seems silly to have them come from ancient magic, and what do they have anything to do with Egypt, anyway? The Justice League cartoon has him given a metamorphic formula by Stagg, but that raises the question of why they never make more. Anyway, his appearance and extreme chemical versatility make me feel like his powers could have come from a confluence of many sources at once, so I made it be multiple incomplete formulas competing. I borrowed the spy aspect from his female counterpart, Element Girl.

Description

    Intelligence reports claimed that military manufacturer Simon Stagg was developing a formula to grant superpowers to whoever took it. If completed, whoever had the formula could make their own personal superhuman army. Going undercover, top spy Rex Mason was able to get a job working at Stagg’s company. But suspicious of the new hire, and disapproving of his growing closeness with his daughter Sapphire, Stagg sent his bodyguard Java to do away with him. Java tailed Rex as he discovered the pit where Stagg dumped his chemical wastes. Unseen, Java knocked Rex in, leaving him for dead.
     Bathed in a cocktail of incomplete metamorphic formulas, Rex’s body began to destabilize. One formula was for turning hard as stone, another for turning soft as putty. One caused his cells to freeze, another caused them to burn. Some bit like acid, and some were dangerously radioactive. Subjected to all these effects at once, a lesser man would have dropped dead on the spot. But Rex used all his training to drag himself out of the pit and call for an ambulance before he lost consciousness.
     Awakening in the hospital, Rex found that the doctors had been able to stabilize him. But the damage was severe. The warring chemicals within him had altered Rex’s body chemistry completely. His skin had degenerated into a hideous mosaic of ever-shifting organic compounds. He would never be the same again.
     Fortunately, it turned out that he had some control over his fluctuating chemistry. Rex could now turn any part of himself into any chemical element or simple compound he could think of. With practice, he also learned to stretch, form simple shapes (nothing too detailed or complicated), or even turn into liquids or gasses. He could even use his powers to heal his own wounds, though this leaves him feeling weakened and presumably has its limits.
     With his new powers, Rex is able to fight crime better than ever. He often mourns the life he lost, but he soldiers on with the help of his wry, sardonic wit, and his determination to bring Stagg to justice.

---

     There’s a really interesting and creative idea at the core of Metamorpho’s appearance, undermined by how overly simplified and cartoony it is. I kept the general colors and their placements, but made them asymmetrical to make them feel random and organic. I tried to make him out of materials that felt like they could be found in the human body to further reduce the cartooniness (his right leg is basically softened flesh, like Clayface, and his top-left is caused by his blood crystallizing) with only his left leg needing a major change. It’s variously been drawn as either glass or pale wood, neither of which was I crazy about. I ultimately modeled it after charcoal, which is an organic form of carbon (the second-most common element in the human body) and can at times look sort of like a mineral or sort of like wood. I kept his silhouette completely human, as a painful reminder of how ruggedly handsome he once was.
     His "Orb of Ra" origin... doesn’t really work. His powers are so science-themed it seems silly to have them come from ancient magic, and what do they have anything to do with Egypt, anyway? The Justice League cartoon has him given a metamorphic formula by Stagg, but that raises the question of why they never make more. Anyway, his appearance and extreme chemical versatility make me feel like his powers could have come from a confluence of many sources at once, so I made it be multiple incomplete formulas competing. I borrowed the spy aspect from his female counterpart, Element Girl.