Metamorpho the Element Man #4 – Al Ewing, Writer; Steve Lieber, Artist; Lee Loughridge, Colorist
Ray – 9.5/10
Ray: There is no other book on the stands that captures the sheer anarchic joy of comics the way that Ale Ewing’s Metamorpho does, with stories lifted right from the silver age with a veneer of modern commentary. Coming off of Java’s epic super-spy adventure last issue, we head back to Stagg headquarters, where Simon Stagg is ready to end his Rex Mason problem for good – by creating a new, better Metamorpho who will be his personal superhero and be ideal to marry his daughter. And he’s turning over the creation process to his personal super-computer, which takes his simple prompts and turns them into something he wants. Sound familiar? If so, you probably know this isn’t going to go well. Naturally, shouting commands into the supervillain computer version of Chat-GPT results in the mainframe going haywire and bringing the building itself to life as it rampages across the city.
While Al Ewing’s writing is fantastic, it’s Steve Lieber’s art that really sends this issue into the stratosphere this month. As the building monster tears its way across the landscape and Simon and Sapphire battle to stay alive within its walls, Metamorpho returns along with Urania and Java – and semi-willing associate Mad Mod, who has his own agenda – right into the middle of this chaos. Metamorpho proceeds to inflate himself into a giant man and do battle with the monster in some of the most visually entertaining fight scenes I’ve seen in the comics in a while. This book is a fast-paced read, but it’s also surprisingly dense, with a whole lot of lore and mad science packed into every page. I’m not sure if there are any plans for this series to continue past the sixth issue, I hope this is just the start of Ewing working with some of the weirder and wackier characters in the DCU.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
