Category Archive

The Elongated Man. Worst. Name. Ever. Even Nameless of the Metal Men who didn’t have a name was better off than the Ductile Detective also known as Ralph Dibny. Editor Julius Schwartz later said he’d never have used such an unwieldy name, if he’d known DC had acquired the rights to Plastic Man in 1956. But the Elongated Man debuted in 1960 as a … Read More

Congo Bill is probably a surprising choice to illustrate for these cards, even to the most devoted comic fans. Although moderately popular in his heyday, today he’s nearly forgotten. Plus, it’s almost impossible to draw a fully-clothed grown man next to a nearly naked boy without it looking inappropriate. However, Bill has an interesting history. His long-running adventure series debuted in 1940, detailing his escapades as … Read More

The Chief was the genius who brought together three victims of fate who had become outcasts of society and turned them into the Doom Patrol. Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, and Robotman would never have become heroes without his leadership. In fact, Robotman wouldn’t have existed if The Chief hadn’t invented his metallic body and transplanted his brain into it. Confined to a wheelchair, The Chief convinced the Doom Patrol to use their … Read More

The robot Tin of the Metal Men, though timid and shy, yearned for a companion. Lonely and dejected, he one day aimlessly wondered the streets of the city until he stumbled upon a do-it-yourself robot kit in a toy store window. Tin quickly purchased the kit and assembled it incorporating one of Doc Magnus’s discarded “responsometers.” (Doc Magnus was the inventor of the Metal … Read More

Zatanna is the daughter of Zatarra, a character that debuted in Action Comics #1 (1938), the same issue that featured the first appearance of Superman. Like her father, Zatanna was a stage magician who also cast magic spells by talking backwards. Introduced in a 1964 Hawkman story about her search for her missing father, Zatanna popped up from time to time over the … Read More

If you’d never read a Superman story from the late 50s to early 60s, you’d probably think they dealt with Superman fighting crime or fending off some threat to humanity. But you’d be wrong. Back in those days, Superman spent a lot of time protecting his secret identity, being pulled into romantic dramas, and investigating situations more perplexing than menacing … Read More

Urania Blackwell was a US secret agent who purposefully exposed herself to the same radioactive meteorite that turned Rex Mason into Metamorpho. Like him, she gained the ability to totally control the elements in her body, and likewise turned into a monstrous-looking freak in the process. No one in her right mind would “volunteer to change herself into a walking chemistry set” (as Rex put it), and like her namesake element, Urania … Read More

  Rex Mason was a handsome and famous soldier of fortune (only in comic books, right?), employed by super wealthy scientific genius Simon Stagg. Not a fan of Stagg’s power-hungry ways, Mason agreed to one last job for (wait for it) ONE MILLION DOLLARS so he could quit and marry Stagg’s beautiful daughter Sapphire. While on his mission to retrieve … Read More

Like all the Metal Men robots created by Doc Magnus, timid and stuttering Tin had a unique personality. Unsure of his abilities, Tin suffered from an inferiority complex, thinking he didn’t measure up to the rest of the team. But brave Tin was harder than Lead and always did his best to prove himself worthy, even when he thought it was hopeless. He never hesitated to sacrifice … Read More