Hey, be honest with me for a second. This is a judgment-free zone. How much do you really know about Metamorpho? With Anthony Carrigan (formerly Victor Zsasz, of TV’s Gotham) marking the character’s cinematic debut in Superman, now’s as good a time as ever to get familiar with one of the DC Universe’s strangest heroes. A versatile team player and a character with quite a legacy, here’s everything you need to know about Rex Mason. (First: that’s his name.)

Metamorpho came to be during a period of wildly explosive creativity for DC in the 1960s. Before it became a vehicle for Batman team-ups, The Brave and the Bold was a comic where new concepts could be tried and tested before finding their way into the wider DCU. Both the Justice League of America and the Teen Titans made their first appearances here. In 1964’s The Brave and the Bold #57, inspired by recent hits for DC like the elemental Metal Men and the strange misfits of the Doom Patrol, Brave and the Bold mainstay writer Bob Haney and multi-generational artist Ramona Fradon put to paper what may have been DC’s strangest creation yet: a man with fantastic powers who wishes for nothing more than to be rid of them.

Rex Mason is a man whose life has been defined by two choices: going into business as a career adventurer-for-hire and falling in love with an evil billionaire’s daughter. Powerful industrialist Simon Stagg, upon learning of Rex’s engagement to his lovely daughter Sapphire, arranged an expedition for his prospective son-in-law from which he was never expected to return: an excavation of a mystic, legendary artifact in Egypt called the Orb of Ra. Exposed to the meteorite from which the Orb was originally fashioned, Rex was not killed, but transformed into a multi-colored monster with strange new powers. Just as the Metal Men each had mastery over an individual element, Metamorpho had complete mastery over every element that could be found in the human body.

As “The Element Man,” Rex could express himself, or any part of himself, as oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen or any of the trace elements in a human body, in any combination. The only thing he couldn’t do was retain his humanity—a sore point for his own ego and his relationship with Sapphire.

Since that day, Simon Stagg has strung Metamorpho along, convincing him to continue working for him with the empty promise of finding a cure for his condition. That arrangement has had its own ups and downs over the years, as Metamorpho has come to earn a place of respect among his peers in the metahuman community.

Whether Metamorpho’s powers are the result of cosmic radiation or something spiritual is a matter of contention and mystery. Some interpretations have Metamorpho as the chosen champion of Ra himself, the latest in a line of elemental men empowered to battle the Egyptian chaos deity Apep. Other interpretations, like the 2013 animated Beware the Batman series, originate Metamorpho’s powers as the result of a chemical experiment gone wrong. For a time, Metamorpho even had the ability to express himself as any element, whether it could naturally be found in his body or not. But all iterations of the character share one thing: a longing for the man he once was before he was thrust into superhumanity.

Metamorpho is a character of surprising firsts. He holds the distinction of being the first leading DC superhero with a female creator. He’s also the first superhero to turn down membership in the Justice League, as he was initially recruited in Justice League of America #42 (though he would join later). But despite that first standoffish encounter with the League, Metamorpho is most often seen today as a team player. He’s been part of Justice League Europe, one fourth of the Terrifics and even, allegedly, part of the Doom Patrol for a short time, though he doesn’t talk about that much. But Metamorpho is most closely associated with the Outsiders, a team formed by Batman in the ’80s to go where the Justice League couldn’t. There have been many incarnations of the Outsiders since its founding, but some version of Metamorpho can usually be found among them.

Metamorpho is also one of the characters in the running for most trips back from the pearly gates. He’s died no less than three times. The first was in 1987’s Outsiders #27 when he was killed by Manhunter sleeper agent Helga Jace (before he was later resurrected by a gene bomb in Invasion!). The second time was in an attack on the JLA satellite by the Hyperclan in JLA #1 (until he was eventually resurrected with the Doom Patrol). And the third was in another satellite explosion in Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes! (which was revealed a year later to have been faked).

Metamorpho seemingly just died for a fourth time at the end of his latest series, Metamorpho: The Element Man, after expending his powers to create a new sun after our last one was destroyed by the living tyrant sun Solaris. Simon Stagg himself, in a very Silver Age Doom Patrol appeal, ended the series by putting the impetus on us, the readers, to demand that DC Comics print more Metamorpho stories. With a new generation of Superman fans now getting to know him for the first time, it’s a fair bet that he’ll soon get his wish.
 

Superman, directed by James Gunn and featuring Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, is now in theaters! Click here to get tickets.

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.