Once upon a time there was a young, handsome man named Rex Mason. He had it all: a great job at Stagg Enterprises and secretly dating the boss’ hot daughter, Sapphire. But when Rex starts asking around about a recent accident caused by some mysterious chemicals Stagg Enterprises manufactures (and when the boss finds out that Rex has been picking fruit from the family tree), things take a turn for the worse.
The evil but powerful Simon Stagg uses Rex as the test subject for his new mutagen, code-named project Metamorpho. It’s a variation on the comics origin in which Rex was a soldier of fortune sent after the Orb of Ra by Stagg. In both cases, the basic relationship remains the same, and Sapphire remains hot, and that’s all that matters. (It also changes things up after the archaeological peril of the Etrigan episode.)
Transforming into an ugly shape-changing mutant, Rex has no choice but to flee his old life. Because Rex is an old war buddy of John Stewart (Green Lantern), the Justice League steps in to help.
This week’s story continues a streak of Justice League episodes with famous DC character cameos. So far, Metamorpho seems far more interesting than Etrigan.
However, the episode does have a number of odd moments. When Metamorpho runs through the city on a rampage and gets splattered on the front of a moving truck, the pedestrians seemed more concerned with the safety of the driver rather than the mutant splattered all over the front of the truck. Also, despite being very close old friends, John and Rex are quick to believe the worst in each other is true when any doubt is raised. It’s almost as if they run a website together. With friends like that, who needs archenemies?
This is the first time viewers have specifically heard of John’s former military career, but it’s been obvious that John has a very military type attitude. In comic continuity, John works as an architect. Maybe they changed his backstory to give him a more straightforward personality, or maybe they just decided that an architect might have a more creative imagination and that meant the artists would have to animate more. In either case, it’s new information for comic geeks to note.
The rest of the Justice League makes little more than cameos this week. Batman investigates a train wreck (nothing better to do, eh?), Superman and Martian Manhunter are shown flying over the city in search of Metamorpho and Hawkgirl exchanges some lines of dialogue with Green Lantern
Flash and Wonder Woman are nowhere to be seen and since this is a G-rated show, let’s just assume they are at the Watchtower playing Hero Clix.
Despite a few flaws, the episode was good fun. Tune in next week for part 2.
