When gangster Eel O'Brien was double-crossed by his partners during a heist, he fell into a vat of chemicals that would forever change his body and life. These are the original stories of a common thief who turned into the world's wackiest super-hero. With the ability to stretch his body into any shape and length, Plastic Man has become one of the most colorful and comical icons of all time. This book collects some of his zaniest earliest adventures as they were first published in the 1940s.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exciting Adventures of the India Rubber Man!!!!,
By
This review is from: The Plastic Man Archives, Vol. 1 (DC Archive Editions) (Hardcover)
Jack Cole's reputation stands primarily on the reputation of his most famous character, Plastic Man, and rightly so. These stories are terrific treats from the Golden Age of comics, and demonstrate why so many people rate Cole as one of the great comic book creators, often naming him in the same sentence with Will Eisner.
Plastic Man first appeared in the anthology series "Police Comics" #1, published in 1941 by Quality Comics (DC obtained Quality's stable after Quality went out of business). In his foreword, Will Eisner recalls that Cole had been hired by Quality to more or less produce a clone to Eisner's own "The Spirit". Instead, Cole took a different route, creating his own distinct Plastic Man. For those not familiar with the character, criminal Eel O'Brien leads a gang of crooks on a robbery in a chemical plant. When the police arrive, Eel is shot. Acid seeps into his wound. Left behind by his men, Eel escapes the police, and is rescued by a kindly monk. The next morning, Eel discovers that the acid has given his body elastic abilities, allowing him to take any shapes. Touched by the monk's kindness, Eel resolves to use his powers for good, and takes on the identity of Plastic Man. Working as Eel, he is able to get inside info on criminal gangs. As Plastic Man, he works in the employ of the police (and later the FBI) to take down criminals. Plastic Man faces a variety of criminals, some fairly conventional (a dope ring, a group of Axis spies) to the bizarre (a brain that won't die, a thug whose lower body has been replaced by a peg, and man-eating trees). He also gets a sidekick, another former criminal, Woozy Winks. After saving a mystic's live, Woozy lives under a spell which protects him from all harm. As the series progresses, his power is a little less constant. Largely, Winks is a terrific running joke. " The Plastic Man Archives Vol. 1" collects the Plastic Man stories from "Police Comics" #s 1-20, which covers a great deal of material. We get to see a variety of changes in Plastic Man's commercial career. In the first issue, Plastic Man was the fourth or fifth story, and the cover belonged to a character called Firebrand. Subsequently, Plastic Man become the star of the covers, sharing only with Eisner's Spirit, whose adventures were being reprinted in "Police". The page count of the stories went up, and Cole began using the Eisnerian technique of a splash page to introduce the story. But Cole never simply aped Eisner, or anyone else. Plastic Man stayed distinct, maintaining a precarious balance between laugh out loud funny, and out-and-out creepy. This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that since Cole's death, Plastic Man has been played mostly for laughs (see, e.g., Kyle Baker's current series published by DC). Cole had no problem with depicting acts of violence juxtaposed with comedy. People unfamiliar with the original work will find this a bit jarring. Nonetheless, Cole could and did make the balance work. DC seems to have fast tracked this particular Archive series. This a good thing. I look forward to picking up the rest of the series.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
before there was The Tick...,
By Liam Kemp (Bowling Green, KY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Plastic Man Archives, Vol. 1 (DC Archive Editions) (Hardcover)
Plastic Man was an odd character for his time. At his conception, the genre of the super hero was still in its infancy, with very few of the super hero icons established. The "big three," Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, were already here. Plastic Man broke strange new ground. He was perhaps the first (and most durable; he's still around in the pages of JLA) parody of the super hero. His powers themselves are a recipe for wackiness. He had and still has one of the strangest costumes in comics. He was, as far as I know, the first comics character to have the overused "fell into a vat of chemicals" origin that has also given us characters such as the Joker and Mr. Freeze. The strangest and most unique part of him in my eyes is his paradoxical beginnings and his resulting secret identity. Eel O'Brien was a ruthless criminal. He had the accident that turned him into Plastic Man. Upon discovering his powers, he immediately reevaluated his station in life and resovled to use his new powers to make ammends for his past wrongdoings. It was that simple. But he has the stranges secret identity in comicdom. In those days, he retained his Eel O'Brien identity and acted as a spy on the mob. So, he's still constantly on the run for police; conversely, Plastic Man is a badge carrying member of the police force. His exploits are surprising for one who knows him in current DC comics continuity. These days, although he has been handled very well, he is mostly used for comic relief (as was probably Jack Cole's intention). But during the Golden Age, he had a much darker side. He is, at times, actually quite violent, and transforms himself into bizarre torutre devices to torment his enemies. This book also sees the introduction of one of the most absurd sidekicks in comics: Woozy Winks, a man who nature will not allow to be harmed. His origin is funny, however. Upon recieving his super powers, he initially decides to use them for evil at the flip of the coin. Overall, this is a very fun book for those who know the Plastic Man of today and want to see more of him.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Plaz-tastic,
By
This review is from: The Plastic Man Archives, Vol. 1 (DC Archive Editions) (Hardcover)
Out of the five archives on Plastic Man to date I like this one the best (but this is not to say the rest are bad 2-5 are mearly terrific while this one is Plaz-tastic).Jack Cole set out to just put some bread on the table but he ended up creating what I consider to be a dream on paper. In later volumes a fleet of ghost artists takes over the adventures of the stretchable sherlock with some pretty good results but this is Cole's finest hour.l
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