Briefly on whether post-Crisis Plastic Man was meant to be a Golden Age or Modern Age hero

Okay, I know I've talked a bit about this subject before, but I wanted to devote a whole post to it in light of recent reading. That, and there are few things I enjoy writing about more than Plastic Man and DC continuity.

So, in a recent-ish post I discussed 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society of America Special #1, written by Roy and Dann Thomas and drawn by David Ross and Mike Gustovich. I was particularly intrigued by one line from the splash page above, in which the Golden Age Hawkman Carter Hall discusses what the DC Universe shared setting is like after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, when several previously distinct worlds like Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-S and others have all been combined into a single, new, composite Earth.

As to why I was intrigued, well, it didn't really fit into that particular post, so I thought I would just discuss it in another, shorter post. 

That splash page seems to show a great swathe of the superheroes that apparently occupied the DCU around the time of publication, including the likes of The Outsiders, The (New) Teen Titans, Captain Marvel, Blue Beetle, Blue Devil, Jack Kirby's Sandman and so on. (I recognize everybody on the page except for that all-yellow woman in the lower right corner and the Black guy whose head is overlapping those of Martian Manhunter and Firestorm...unless that's meant to be Green Lantern John Stewart...? That's my best guess, anyway, as it's not like 1980s DC had that maybe Black superheroes. It's hard to know for sure absent any of his costume though, as he doesn't wear a mask.)

The page is part of a long speech that Hawkman is giving to the rest of the Justice Society of America, just as they are about to decide to disband. Here he talks about the heroes of the world, and I'm going to bold the intriguing bit: 

This other Earth has other heroes--younger ones--many of whom bear the same powers, even the same names that we do. 

True, its people remember, even honor the Justice Society...yet it is the more youthful Justice League which has captured their hearts and minds.  

And the Justice Leaguers themselves are but a small fraction of this world's champions now. 

Some of these heroes are our contemporaries...but the vast majority are far younger. 

And their race is for the most part yet to run. 

When Hawkman refers to "our contemporaries", who is he referring to...?

It's hard to tell from the context, as in this comic, Hawkman and his fellow Society members all seem to understand the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths and some of the changes it had on continuity as well as if they had read the series themselves (As was pointed out to me in a comment following my post on the special, that's on account of the characters having been present at a particular scene set at the beginning of time).

So, it's quite possible he's referring here to the likes of Superman, Batman and Robin and Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel, all of whom, like he and his fellow members of the Justice Society, also debuted in the Golden Age of comics, even if these specific versions of the characters are meant to be distinct from the ones that hailed from Earth-Two and Earth-S.

If he's not referring to them, though, who does that leave among the heroes on this page? 

The only ones who might fit the bill would be Uncle Sam, who first appeared in 1940's National Comics #1, and Plastic Man, who debuted in 1941's Police Comics #1. Both of those titles were published by the defunct Quality Comics, whose various characters and trademarks DC had gotten a hold of back when DC was still known National Comics. 

While Plastic Man had appeared off-and-on in various DC Comics prior to COIE, I've never been entirely clear which "Earth" he belonged to, as there would seem to be multiple Plastic Mans on multiple parallel Earths (The one from All-Star Squadron being from Earth-Two, the one from The Brave and the Bold, DC Comics Presents and Justice League of America #144 being from Earth-One, the one from the 1966 revival apparently hailing from and Earth-12, and Plastic Men apparently also lived on Earth-Quality and Earth-X, right?). 

I haven't followed Uncle Sam as closely, obviously, and DC hasn't made as extensive use of that character over the decades, but I know there's a version of him from Earth-X, and there would also be an Earth-Quality version. 

Anyway, however many Plastic Men or Uncle Sams there were, the events of COIE would seem to collapse them all into a single version, either by synthesizing them or erasing duplicate ones, right? 

Now, in the post-Crisis revised timeline of the history of the new DC Universe, when did these characters debut...?

I'm going to ignore Uncle Sam here, as it's been so damn long since I read 1987's Secret Origins #19, which I had found in a back-issue bin some 25 years ago, and I certainly don't want to go searching for it among all my long boxes (Although, if I recall correctly, the story started during the American Revolution, and thus Uncle Sam predates Hawkman and the Justice Society, even if he was also superheroing in the 1940s when they were; I guess it depends on how one understands the word "contemporary" in this context...)

But as for Plastic Man...? 

Well, there seems to have been some initial confusion following COIE as to whether Plastic Man was a Golden Age hero who debuted in the 1940s, or a contemporary hero who debuted in the 1980s. 

In 1986's History of the DC Universe, the first official accounting of the then-new continuity/history, writer Marv Wolfman never mentions Plastic Man by name, but artist George Perez does draw him with the other heroes of the 1940s: 

That certainly seems to suggest that he was a Golden Age character, right? 

In September of 1988, Roy Thomas, Stephen DeStefano and Paul Fricke retold Plastic Man's origin in the pages of Secret Origins #30. Heavily inspired by Plastic Man creator Jack Cole's original origin from Police Comics and informed by Cole's later, more humorous take on the character's adventures (and guest-starring Cole creation Burp the Twerp), there's no date given as to when the story is meant to be taking place.

That said, in terms of costuming and technology, it is definitely the 1940s, and its few pop culture references—Fibber McGee, Edward G. Robinson—don't appear to place it in the 1980s. Still, how definitive is this story supposed to be? Well, on the letters page, Roy Thomas writes that this origin story was plotted before the next Plastic Man comic, which we will get to in the next paragraph, which would offer a new origin set in the present day. Thomas' comedic script also telegraphs that these things are all quite fluid, with Plas' narration stating, "Anyway, here's the way it happened... Or at least the way I remember it. Take your pick."

Then two months later came the first issue of 1988 miniseries Plastic Man by Phil Foglio, Hilary Barta and company. In this book Plastic Man seems to make his post-Crisis debut, as Eel O'Brien and his gang's heist at a chemical plant goes awry and he gets his powers and his costume, he meets escaped mental patient Woozy Winks and together the pair decide to embark on a new career for Eel as a superhero. 

By the end of the 1980s, then, it would seem that DC had decided that Plastic Man was a Golden Age hero. Or maybe a modern day hero. Depending on whether you read Secret Origins #30 or Plastic Man. 

After 1994's Zero Hour, the events of which saw all of existence de-created and then re-created in a new Big Bang, altering certain elements of world history/DC continuity, the publisher seems to have settled on an answer. 

The last issue of the series, Zero Hour #0, contained a timeline, and, according to that, Plast debuted "8 Years Ago", around the same time Dick Grayson became Robin (In this timeline, "The New Heroic Age" began "10 Years Ago", with the debut of Superman, Batman and the Justice League of America; according to the timeline, Elongated Man debuted a year before Plas, which comports with when Plastic Man first appeared in a DC comic, even if, in the real world, Plastic Man predated Elongated Man by a whole generation).

The now 30-year-old Zero Hour was a few continuity rejiggerings ago, of course, but as to when Plastic Man debuted, well, that doesn't seem to have changed. Last year's New History of the DC Universe, written by Mark Waid, has Plastic Man debuting around the same time as Zatanna and Animal Man, that is, the 1960s our time, and shortly after Superman, Batman and the Justice League DC time again (And, once again, Elongated Man debuts previous to Plas).

So, despite some confusion in the first decade or so after Crisis, and for at least 30 years now, Plastic Man has definitely been meant to belong to the current, New Heroic Age, rather than the original, Golden Age of superheroes.

Which do I, as a Plastic Man fan, prefer...? 

Well, I mentioned this very briefly on Bluesky, in response to something posted by the Neil who has been a great source of Plastic Man discussion online, but I'm of two minds on the matter. 

As one of the greatest comic book superheroes ever created, I think Plastic Man deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of DC's greats, like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel and the first generation of Justice Leaguers. In that regard, it makes sense that he be a character who is part of DC's eternal "now", their so-called "New Heroic Age", where he is peers with Superman, Batman and company.

That said, because his best comics remain those that Cole and/or his later ghosts created in the 1940s and early 1950s, there's a temptation to argue that all those stories should "count", and the easiest way to do that would be to have those comics all be officially in continuity, but then, that would mean Plastic Man would have to be a Golden Ager.

Now, I think the fact that he debuted in the 1940s doesn't preclude him still being around and young and vital today, without so much as going gray at his temples. After all, does plastic Age? Joe Kelley's "Obsidian Age" arc in JLA had Plastic Man survive for thousands of years in pieces strewn about the ocean floor, after which time he was reformed back into himself with little trouble (Even if he kind of went a little insane for a while there; of course, since Foglio's Plastic Man mini, the character has usually been portrayed as at least a little bit insane, so who could tell, really...?).

And as for Woozy, well, perhaps the same magic spell that gave him the protection of nature whenever he was in danger—a "super power" that would come and go in the character's early years, and is now mostly forgotten—also made him functionally immortal, so that, like his pal Plas, he could still look and act the same in 2026 as he did in the 1940s. 

I think either approach works. But I do really like the way Grant Morrison handled the character during Morrison's JLA run. When exactly Plastic Man got his powers never comes up in those stories, and there's never any point in which the length of Plastic Man's career comes up. Why would it, really? It was never important to any of the stories Morrison told during that time.

Still, Morrison did seem to hint that Plas could have been around for a very long time indeed, though.

For example, in the four-part "Crisis Times Five Arc," which teamed the JLA with Captain Marvel and a new, emergent version of the Justice Society (one that would soon evolve into the JSA of their own title), Morrison has Golden Age hero Wildcat say that he knew Plastic Man, at least in his Eel O'Brien identity, back in the day:

Plas' weird "joke" here isn't particularly funny, which is par for the course with Plas' JLA era appearances, but the fact that Wildcat and "O'Brien" have history is notable. 

Were they both kids at the same time? Was O'Brien a kid when Wildcat was an adult? Unclear, of course. (In the very next panel, Wildcat grabs Plas by the throat and says, "You were full of it then and you're full of it now...So let's just try to be professional." Plas' response? A "WAARK" followed by "Everyone's a critic" in a much smaller font).

Later, in Morrison's climactic "World War III" arc, Plastic Man is instrumental in formulating a plan to foil the Queen Bee, and, in introducing it, Plas mentions his association with another Golden Age hero, The Red Bee:

Red Bee, by the way, was another Quality Comics hero. 

The lesson, I think, is that it's more important to tell awesome comics than to get hung up on continuity, of course, but Morrison used continuity quite well throughout JLA, and, in these two examples anyway, wrote Plastic Man in such a way that he could either be a long-lived Golden Age hero or a modern day hero who just happened to have had off-panel associations with some Golden Agers. Whatever, I guess, the reader decided to read into those lines of dialogue.