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AN UNALLOYED PLEASURE: the Silver Age
METAL MEN
"Heavy metal," indeed. 
Given the somewhat slapdash nature of the title's origins, it's nothing less than a minor-grade miracle that the characters have proven as enduring as they have, over the decades.
As the story goes: Irwin Donnefeld (a member of DC Comics' publishing board) approached OUR ARMY AT WAR and WONDER WOMAN writer Robert Kanigher with a problem, one Friday afternoon in 1961. Due to a scheduling snafu of some sort, the company's "try-out" magazine (SHOWCASE) was minus any sort of usable material for it's next issue... which was due to hit the stands -- come Hell or high water -- a mere two weeks away (!!).
Now: the good Mr. Kanigher had, at this time, earned himself something of a reputation as the company's "speed demon-in-residence," due to the unfailing rapidity with which he would tear his way through his writing assignments. (In blunt point of fact: Bob Kanigher was of the time-honored "throw-a-bag-over-her-head-and-get-it-done-by- Monday" school of comics scrivening. With him manning the typewriter, you weren't always assured of such airy fripperies as, say, "theme" -- or even, oftentimes, simple coherence -- but: any script assigned him, by God and by jingo, would get done. PERIOD.)
Well: two weeks simply is not enough time to cobble up an entirely new character conceptualization; hammer out a functional script for same; and have the entire package decently penciled and inked, ready for publication and nationwide distribution. It. Simply. Is. Not. Done.
As I said: Donnefeld approached him on a Friday afternoon.
By the following Monday morning,
Kanigher had the completed script for SHOWCASE #37 -- detailing the initial
appearance of a robotic group of adventurers known as "The Metal Men" -- in
the hands of a (doubtless) disbelieving Ross Andru.
Andru -- who already had a full plate and then some, assignment-wise, penciling practically everything else Kanigher was scripting for DC at the time -- burned his way through that twenty-four page bad boy in just under four days. (!!!)
By the time Mike Esposito had finished feverishly applying inks to the entire affair (one suspects he must have used a roller, given the circumstances)... a grand total of TEN DAYS had elapsed, from start to finish.
DC was (obviously) in no position to be finicky. SHOWCASE #37 went out on schedule, with the you-gotta-be-kiddin'-me "Metal Men" as its headline feature.
(Deadlines were no laughing matter within the comics industry, back then. Mailing privileges for subscription copies were based upon maintaining a pre-set publication frequency; and printing press "time" for any comic -- whether profitably utilized or no --- still had to be paid for, once reserved and set aside.)
The issue was a sales smash.
Another three issues of SHOWCASE (just to make certain that their shock-widened eyes weren't playing some unholy trick on them, sales-wise)... and THE METAL MEN were awarded their own ongoing monthly title.
I love telling that story.
Initially, they numbered a scant half-dozen, all told: noble Gold;
"strong man" Iron; steadfast (albeit dull-witted) Lead; abrasive
and irascible Mercury; stuttering, self-depreciating Tin;
and "vampy," love-struck Platinum.
Once established by Kanigher, those six personalities were (you should pardon the expression) all but graven in metal. You'd certainly be forgiven, then, for making the assumption -- sight unseen -- that the characterization in METAL MEN was a static and uninteresting component of the series; an afterthought. If that.
... and you'd be dead wrong,
of course.
By "fixing" each of the robots to a set personality polestar, Kanigher was able to carom the characters off of one another as if they were sharply-struck billiard balls. The actual plot to any given issue of METAL MEN was (often as not) of little or no import. (Frequently, they were about as comprehensible as the frenzied scrawlings in William Burroughs' diary, during his Naked Lunch period.) For loyalists of the series, and its title portagonists... it was the characterizations of (and interplay between) the six that was the "selling point."
For this fan, in particular,
the two "stand-outs" in this regard were Mercury and Platinum ("Tina"). The former was -- quite simply
-- a raving, self-obsessed (and self-adoring) egomaniac, whose standard
comeback to every perceived "slight" (whether real or imaginary) was the heated
retort that he was "the only metal that's liquid at room temperature!"
Why, precisely, the incessantly argumentative 'bot should have found this distinction
such a telling one was never reasoned out, in so many words; it was simply an
article of faith with him that he was, a priori, the superior to his
fellows in this regard. In short: he was a complete and thoroughgoing
lunatic.
The curvaceous Platinum, on the other hand... welllllllll...
... okay. She was
a nutcase, too.
The problem, in a nutshell, was this: the intrepid band of 'bots had been outfitted (courtesy of their pipe-smoking, checkered sports coat-wearing creator, supergenius Professor Will Magnus) with miniaturized, emotion-inducing devices known as "responsometers." In the cases of the other five mechanoids, these devices operated within acceptable baseline parameters; the robots did precisely whatever "Doc" Magnus told them to do, when he told them to do it.
In the heavy-breathing Tina,
however... said "responsometer" came with an unforseen "bonus," of sorts.
The "Platinum Doll" (as herferrous
fellows often referred to her) was hopelessly; helplessly; head-over-heels in
starry-eyed love with Magnus.
[See pictures, accompanying]
Kanigher has been quoted as describing the character of Tina as "delicious... the kind [of woman] that men fantasize about." While this may (or may not) tell us quite a bit more, re: the terrain of the gent's, ummmm, "inner fantasy life" than might be considered strictly necessary -- and which was already on fetishisticc display, in fact, within the pages of the concurrent WONDER WOMAN monthly -- the canon is clear enough in this particular, at least: the stodgy, stoical Magnus had no intention whatsoever of returning his creation's misplaced sentiments. "Those cold, clammy platinum lips of yours," he often retorted -- a bit cruelly, perhaps -- "make me feel as if I'm kissing a wet mirror!"
(Even as a kid, though... I
always used to wonder: "... well, Good God, man; who programmed
the silly 'woman' in the first place, anyway?" You really had to
wonder, at some point, if maybe Ol' Doc Magnus was just... you know... getting
off, somehow, on constantly being pursued by the shapely [and subservient]
automaton, solely for the sick thrill afforded in being able to respond, in
turn: "... naaaahhhhh... I don't think so, toots." I'm just
sayin', really.)
As you've doubtless ascertained from the covers represented on this page: Magnus' Metal Men spent an inordinate amount of time whompin' up on... well... other robots, for the most part.
In all honesty, I'm not entirely certain whether this recurring quasi-motif was the result of conscious deliberation, on Kanigher's part; whether the DC universe was simply going through a little-heralded spate of Killer Robot Infestation, during the 1960's; or what-have-you.
(In one story, mid-way through the series' run [METAL MEN #21], the 'bots
themselves make a conscious effort to break their "all robots, all the time"
rut by actually going out in search of some flesh-and-blood super-villains to
capture... only to find -- in each and every instance -- that they've been "beaten
to the punch" by the likes of the Batman; the
Flash; and Wonder Woman! Mortified, the metal myrmidons slink away
to do battle later on in that issue with -- you guessed it -- more robots.
It was a decidedly "cute" moment, within a series with an already well-established
reputation for same.)
Even when the ambulatory alloys were allied with other adventurers (sorry), within the pages of such monthly team-up venues asTHE BRAVE AND THE BOLD [see cover reproduction, accompanying], the order of the day was: "pimp-slap anything that isn't demonstrably a carbon-based life form."
One thing's for certain: If and When robots ever do assume rulership of our planet, within the confines of the DC canon... these guys are gonna have a whole lot of fast, desperate explaining to do, to their unsmiling fellows seated on the Robot Tribunal...
... and -- call me a big sillyhead, if you likee -- but: somehow, I just don't see their self-appointed inquisitors "buying" the stammered explanation of: "... no, no... you don't understand. See... Doc Magnus and the Atom... they told us to do it, guys! Honest! Get away with that blowtorch, for the love of God! AIIIIIEEEEEE -- !!"
Sure... it's sick. But: I'd buy the poster.
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