Metallo, like Bizarro, is born of an endlessly recycled sci-fi archetype. Also like Bizarro, and also because of his own sci-fi mold, that of a man made machine, he is characterized as the victim of an identity crisis. It is a rather standard crisis exhibited in The Way of All Flesh, complicated by Corben’s amorality and thusly the framing of his loss of self in sensory, more specifically tactile, terms as opposed to emotional ones. The chilling thing about Corben’s iron mold is that he is not in the least bit bothered by the loss of his humanity per se, but by the loss of pleasure. If anything, one could say that Metallo is a reversal of the usual metal man figure, because he starts out robbed of the morality one might associate with an immersion in machinery and yet the very human emotions that yield destruction, anger and vengefulness, remain intact.
Action Figures begins with a Metallo, stricken with amnesia, wandering listlessly until he arrives on a volcanic island inhabited by a research team and the head scientist’s two naïve children. This is identity crisis in its purest form, destruction of self-image (his skin has been entirely ripped off) and amnesia yielding a Tabula Rasa emptiness with a slight pang of remembrance. Like Amazo of Justice League, but without obsequious devotion to a ‘maker,’ Metallo becomes the puppet of the children. The episode’s preferable characterization is that of an action figure, and in that context the children’s inability to distinguish between their playthings and a robot, except in the sense that the latter is autonomous, becomes potentially horrifying. Of course when Metallo regains his memory the episode loses the dimension of a child’s dangerous perception of reality, but it retains its suspense, in that one gets the sense that Metallo’s amorality has serious potential to harm the children he now finds at his beck and call in a 180 degree role reversal.
The denouement is circular in recalling the opening images of Metallo aimlessly walking after the fallout of an enormous disaster. This time, he is in full possession of his memory but without any desire of being John Corben again, softly repeating “I am Metallo.” If there is anything problematic about this ending it is that there never was much distinction between Corben and Metallo, and if this affirmation of a cyborg self is supposed to imply a loss of scruples and inspire a shudder then it sadly fails. However, in stripping away the basis of most stories that attempt to differentiate between man and machine, that which is rooted in our own self-perception as a moral and ideological species, then this finale can be viewed as an ominous look ahead to future stories that have the potential to demonstrate even more atypical implications of such a transformation. Sadly, this never happened.
What makes Action Figures is its climactic fight scene, and its only tie-in to the major theme is that, from the vantage point of Lois and the two children, Superman and Metallo do look like two action figures sparring with one another, flailing limbs and all. It is one of the most brutal fights, a mixture of camerawork, environmental interaction and a preference for actual fight technique over an endless series of consecutive blows. The fight’s signature moment occurs when Metallo uppercuts Superman, achieving such an impact that his Kryptonite-proof helmet flies off. The camera swings upward in conjunction with Metallo’s fist with the same vigor that Superman’s head suddenly swings backward, with the vertical tilt serving a secondary purpose in that we see the helmet catapult into the air and subsequently vanish. The direction team at TMS always seemed prepared to pioneer new and dynamic ways to communicate violence, and the premise of two titans sparring in the midst of a volcanic eruption seemed too good not to go wild.
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