Justice
League
Metamorphosis, part one
Original Airdate - 10/4/02
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, Jon 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 Jon 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.
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