- kcvidkid
Metamorpho Pt. 14: Metamorpho #7 & 8
Cover Date: July-Aug. 1966
On Sale Date: May 24, 1966
Writer: Bob Haney
Penciller: Sal Tapani
Inker: Charles Paris
Editor: George Kashdan
I’m warning you, don’t read this one – unless you love thrills, action, suspense, goose bumps and laughs, when yours truly tries to best the…
Terror from Fahrenheit 5,000
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Simon Stagg attends a meeting of volcanologists on the island of Tarboli, leaving his daughter and his empire in the capable hands of the Element Man. Soon Zorb, Simon’s “chief hood,” announces that “the master” and other volcanologists have been kidnapped. The C.I.A. summons Metamorpho to Washington D.C. They have an interest in Tarboli, but ask Metamorpho to investigate on the down-low.
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Metamorpho, Sapphire, and Java arrive on Tarboli and…
Later, the trio arrives as Seashell II, the U.S. scientific platform for drilling the “Mohole,” the first penetration of the Earth’s crust. Dr. Otto Von Suttgart meets them with news that the Mohole is acting like a great dissolving drain in the ocean floor. If not stopped, it could suck the sea itself into it causing a great disaster.
Dr. Von. Stuttgart was top adviser to the Mohole project – a genius! Surely, you don’t suspect… "Suspect” isn’t the word, chum! Everything points to him being the baddie in this deal!
Von Stuttgart reduces the Element Man to a helpless blob, but our hero is able to destroy his “magno-machine.”
However, Von Stuttgart has hidden a “neutron dissolver” in the densest part of the Earth’s crust, and Metamoprho must reach it and destroy it…
Cover Date: Sept.-Oct. 1966
On Sale Date: July 21, 1966
Writer: Bob Haney
Penciller: Sal Tapani
Inker: Charles Paris
Editor: George Kashdan
Since old Staggsy turned me into a chemical curiosity, I’ve had some real, way-out, weirdo adventures! But even I was all freaked out by the curve ball fate tossed at me, when I had to make a change you won’t ever find in your chemistry sets – the switcheroo that made me into…
Element Man, Public Enemy
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The action is at the newest, hottest discotheque in town where the latest dance craze is called, “Metamorpho a-go-go.”
When Rex and Sapphire return home, Simon is waiting for them with the police commissioner. They want Rex to infiltrate the gang of the infamous Doc Dread.
After battling each other, Doc Dread surrenders…
I bow to superior power, Dyna-Man! We will be a great team together… we’ll construct a crime empire the like of which the world has never seen!
It’s good work, but Metamorpho’s job is just beginning. And Doc Dread soon becomes suspicious.
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Meanwhile, Java, the million-year-old ape-man with the heart of a jealous schoolboy, leaps over the fence at Doc Dread’s lair and perhaps not so inadvertently reveals that Dyna-Man is really Metamorpho.
Notes . With two issues this week, I chose not to spoil their conclusions. However, I assure you that both stories have happy endings.
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In Metamorpho #7, I like this little DC Universe tie-in. Inside the cave on Tarboli, Metamorpho sees this sign that another hero has been there:
Cave Carson, his highly skilled team, and his pet lemur, devoted their lives to uncovering the secrets of the world beneath the Earth. The character first appeared in Brave & the Bold #31 (Aug.-Sept. 1960) in a story called, "The Secret Beneath the Earth."
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In the same issue, DC's marketing approach changed from poetry to riddles:
...and...
The story in Metamorpho #8 was padded with two full pages of the fun, but irrelevant-to-the-story, antics at the discotheque. In fact, it may be the weakest story yet... drawn out with fewer plot turns and increasingly-dangerous situations for Metamorpho.
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I did, however, like the story's science lesson in the form of a cross-section of the Element Man's weapon:
