Superman TAS S01E07 Review: What It Means To Be Human

Superman, the Animated Series, Season 1, Episode 7: The Way of All Flesh

This is one of my all-time favourite Superman episodes. Back when I was a kid, I went into Superman: The Animated Series with a relatively larger knowledge about the DC comics lore compared to Batman or Justice League, which were my introductions to the respective franchises. But I'm already aware of who Metallo was, and I remembered thinking that when watching the pilot episode John Corben would be fused with the LexCorps battlesuit and turned into Metallo. That didn't happen, because they were saving us up for this episode.

And, boy, this is easily the best supervillain origin story so far. Toyman was creepy and Parasite is visually impressive, but the former is your run-of-the-mill maniac and the latter is just a grade-A douchebag abusing his powers. Metallo? Metallo is also a douchebag, but he's also something more.

I remembered being glued on to my television screen as it played through Metallo's anger and desperation as they told him that he's suffering from an incurable fatal virus, his transformation from the flesh-and-blood John Corben into Metallo, the displays of his superpowers... and slowly getting annoyed that he can't feel hungry or smell the roses. There are moments where Metallo just ignores all this and relishes his elevation into a Superman-tier being, but when he attempts to assault Lois and steal a kiss, the sheer blank expression he has when he realizes that he can't feel anything, ever, is heartbreaking that I totally buy him just zoning there while Lois and Superman make a speedy getaway.

Now, to get it out of the way, Metallo is still a monster of a human being. His forced kiss on Lois has a crap-ton of rapey vibes, he's a foul-mouthed rampaging thug throughout the episode, but you can also feel for him when he just looks on, horrified, and describes how his new body is like him 'controlling my own body from the outside'. He's also easily one of the most powerful enemies Superman has faced this time around, with the dual threat of having a Kryptonite core he can shoot beams out of, and possessing an indestructible superpowerful metal body that was able to go toe-to-toe with Superman even before the Kryptonite comes into play, and our brief meeting with him at the end of the pilot showed that he's at the very least not just a dumb thug. 

And then we add the extra tragedy from the Lois and Clark reporter subplot, that Corben could've lived out his life sentence in prison without going through this huge trauma conga of losing a huge chunk of what makes you human in the first place... and we learn that Luthor deliberately infected Corben just to have an excuse to swoop in as a saviour and give him the Metallo process.

And this revelation, after a montage of Metallo rampaging -- understandably -- as he hunts down Luthor for turning him into an unfeeling freak, breaks Metallo for a second time and he goes on a warpath against Luthor. It's a way to paint Luthor as the biggest bad while still making the focus of the episode on other lesser villains like Metallo, although I could definitely do without the Luthor-swims-away-from-a-shark scene, which was just a corny, weird scene in what's otherwise a pretty serious episode.

So yeah, this episode quickly solidifies Metallo as one of my favourite villains so far in the series. And while he sinks to the bottom of the ocean, the final shot of the episode shows Metallo, unkillable, indestructible, unfeeling, uncaring, just walking down the ocean floor towards Metropolis, illuminated by the eerie green of his kryptonite heart. It may take him months, or years (or a season, really) but he's going to be back.

Also, to add to Luthor's menace, the line "what makes you think there's any of him left to find" also implies that dr. Vale has followed poor Peterson to ambiguous death-unless-proven-otherwise. Lex Luthor, king of offscreen deaths since 1996.

Overall, it's, I think, the strongest episode so far in Superman: The Animated Series.

DC Comics Easter Eggs:

• Metallo is one of Superman's older enemies, appearing since the 1950's and is a human who has his mind transferred into a super-advanced robot body powered by a kryptonite heart. He generally looks like a completely robotic humanoid in the comics, though, as opposed to the DCAU version which opted for him having half his human skin hanging off. Also unique to DCAU is the fact that Luthor was behind Corben's transformation into Metallo, and has since been one of the most common enemies to be included in adaptations of Superman. Corben's attempts to woo Lois is also a part of his characterization early on.  
• Dr. Vale, who operated on Metallo, is likely named after Emmett Vale, the mad scientist who created Metallo in the comics.