METAMORPHO

likes Flintstones brand push-up pops. But mainly because they afford him an opportunity to make fun of Java.

League Line-Ups That Never Existed (But Should Have) #6

While tooling around arflovers.com reasearching a book Craig Yoe put together, I came across this entry about an old "Songs and Stories" record featuring The Justice League of America.

I re-posted the image of the cover above, but you'll want to follow the link, as you can play the JLA theme song there, and hear the various heroes' voices when they do the roll call. Some of them are absolutely perfect—particularly Superman and Metamorpho—but Wonder Woman is clearly played by a man not trying very hard and Batman sounds...decidedly un-Batman-like. I don't know, maybe the Haney-written Batman of the '60s might have sounded like that. A little.

(A qucik aside: Someone's downloaded the totally awesome Metamorpho theme song onto youtube.com. Give it a listen. In a few verses it pretty much sums up his origin, powers and conflict in life. And here Dan Jurgens and company are spending six issues explaining what can be summed up thusly: "Rex Mason was his real name, a soldier of fortune, didn't care about fame/ Until fate took a hand in the game/ What a change! So strange!/ Trapped in a pyramid he saw a light/ It came from a glowing meteorite/ Shooting cosmic rays stronger than the sun/ Through his body and brain and when it was done ...there stood the Element Man." And goddam, that chorus will be with you all fucking day. I want to go reread the Showcase Presents with that playing in the background now).

Anyway, the good people of Power Records, a division of Peter Pan, seem to have come up with a pretty interesting League line-up there.

You've got your traditional Justice League second bananas The Flash, Aquaman and Wonder Woman, plus Plastic Man and Metamorpho, neither of whom would officially join the team for years and years (Metamorpho teamed-up with them back in the day and was asked to join, however). And, of course, Superman and Batman (not pictured), because who really wants to read about a group of superheroes that doesn't include those two?

All seven of them meet my personal criteria for what makes someone Justice League material—the terms "world's greatest heroes" could apply to them and nobody would snicker, they're somewhat iconic, they have a symbol that can be put on the back of a silver chair. Rex is probably the squarest peg, since he's only starred in, like, two episodes of one cartoon, and thus isn't likely to be recognized outside a comic shop like the rest of that line-up, and having two guys who can do that with their necks might seem a little redundant, but I'd let him in anyway on the grounds of general awesomeness. He'd bring a welcome infusion of zany slang and surly attitude to the group.