Showcase #37

THE FLAMING DOOM

Millions of years ago, the dinosaurs were killed by radioactive bombardment, except for one curious creature that resembled a huge manta ray and flew in the air. It got lodged in a glacier for eons until shifting ice freed it. It flies to the United States, where it melts a lighthouse with its gaze and destroys a military plane. When it attacks the Chrysler Building, Col. Henry Casper decides to call Dr. Will Magnus for a solution.  He takes a helicopter to Magnus Labs and finds the scientist dancing with his newest robotic creation: Platinum, also known as Tina. To combat the threatening creature, he quickly builds Gold, Iron, Lead, Mercury, and Tin: the Metal Men.  As he deploys the new robots to battle, Platinum objects and demands to be included as well. Magnus speculates that her activator is faulty and provides her too much of a personality but decides to worry about that after the group has dispatched the creature. When the team arrives, it is wrecking a bridge and Tin immediately volunteers to stop it. Magnus disagrees and has Lead mold Iron into a ball to throw at it with Tin acting as a protective shield. It bats the balled heroes back and knocks the rest of the team out of the sky—their Rocket Disc slams onto a rooftop and the monster's heat vision melts Tin into scrap.  Lead shields the others and Gold stretches into a lasso for Lead to grab the monster. It proves too strong and pulls the two robots into the ocean, where Iron immediately begins rusting due to the salt and Gold lies incapacitated on the floor. The military's missiles are a minor nuisance to the beast and the remaining Metal Men fly up to try to defeat it one last time.  Mercury attempts to smother it but it evidently doesn't need oxygen to survive. Platinum weaves her body in to a thin spindle that coats over Mercury and Lead dives onto it to suffocate it further, trapping the radiation that had been emitting from its body and killing it. The remaining heroes dive into the sea encasing the mammoth animal.