Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #503: Morph

Here’s a character I probably should have covered a long time ago.  One of the earliest X-Men, and a character that was pretty much forgotten until a certain animated series came along, Morph was a shapeshifting guy whose best known incarnations come from other realities in the Marvel Multiverse.

Watson will probably hate that that sentence exists.

Morph, AKA Kevin Sydney, first appeared under the codename Changeling in The X-Men (later Uncanny I suspect) #35 in August of 1967 by writer Roy Thomas and artist Werner Roth.  Wearing a goofy helmet, the shapeshifting mutant worked with the Mutant Master as a bad guy, working with other mutants to defeat the original X-Men, only the Mutant Master turned out to be an alien invader, and all of the mutants, including Changeling/Morph attacked and defeated that guy since alien invaders are the one thing all mutants can apparently agree on.  Later one, Changeling learned he has a terminal illness and appealed to Professor X, looking to make up for past misdeeds as one of the heroes before he died.  Xavier agreed and sent Changeling off as his stand-in during fights, such that when he was killed, people didn’t know right away it wasn’t the Professor.

Oops.

Now, that would be the end of the story since, unlike a lot of X-Men characters, Changeling never came back from the dead aside from a ghost story or two.  But then X-Men: The Animated Series came along, and while the original plan was to use Thunderbird as the mutant who was going to die in the two-part premier, someone realized killing off the only Native American on the team was probably a bad idea.  A bit of scouring of old X-Men comics turned up Changeling, and since the Changeling name was then-trademarked by DC Comics for the Teen Titan currently known as Beast Boy, the character’s name was changed to Morph, to be voiced by actor Ron Rubin.  That Morph was seemingly killed in the two-part premier only to come back later as a brainwashed pawn of Mr. Sinister before being fixed by the X-Men.  This Morph was popular enough to be part of the X-Men ’97 revival where he was voiced by actor J. P. Karliak.  This Morph was said by the X-Men ’97 producers for be a non-binary character since he shapeshifted into people of both genders routinely, his powers were amped to allow him to copy the physical abilities of anyone whose appearance he borrowed, and his appearance looked more like the one from other Marvel alternate realities.

Yeah, that’s right!  Morph returned to the comics too…sort of.  First there was the alternate time-line known as the Age of Apocalypse, a fractured world where Professor X was killed by his time traveling son Legion and Magneto formed a more vigilant version of the X-Men to stand against the forces of Apocalypse.  This Morph was basically the comic relief character for his particular team and was the first to spout the nondescript bald head look.  An identical-looking Morph from Earth-1081 (as opposed to the regular 616 universe) was part of the multiversal hero team of the Exiles, mistaken for her own Morph by an Age of Apocalypse-refugee teammate Blink before learning he’s not the Morph she knew.  This Morph would also be the comic relief for his team that, like something out of Quantum Leap, involved characters from different realities who were zapped from universe to universe at the behest of the mysterious Timebroker to fix broken universes.  Do enough missions, and they can go home.  Get killed along the way?  Well, then you don’t go home.  That Morph would become something of the heart and soul of the team as a major mainstay.

But which Morph am I writing about anyway?  Eh, probably the dead one I covered first.  It’s just that Morph, he’s better know when he comes from anywhere except the main Marvel Universe, and that’s just kinda weird.