Plastic Man's very first appearance in a DC comic book was in a very unusual feature in an unusual book, and it was accomplished by the most unusual of means: He was one of the superheroes that teenager Robby Reed transformed into using his mysterious H-Dial, heroes that, with the exception of Plastic Man himself here, were always original characters.
The "Dial H for Hero" feature was written by Dave Wood and drawn by Jim Mooney and debuted in 1966's
Though quite inspired, the premise was also pretty straightforward. Colorado teenager Robby Reed falls into a cavern, where he discovers a strange artifact. It's a dial akin to that of a rotary phone—which I suppose fewer and fewer readers will have any firsthand experience with as the years tick by—with alien-looking symbols along its outer rim. When Robby dials the letters H-E-R-O on it, he temporarily becomes a brand-new superhero. When dialing the word backwards, O-R-E-H, he becomes himself again.
", Robby goes to stay the weekend with his cousin Ned and engage in such wholesome, mid-60s teenage activities as searching for interesting rocks and going to the fair. As per usual, Robby finds himself facing various dangers and needing to dial himself into various heroes.
Here that means Giantboy, a, um, giant boy who had previously come when dialed in the feature's first installment; the brand-new King Kandy, a peppermint-striped hero who fights crime with various candy gimmicks; and, of course, Plastic Man himself.
As the different heroes, Robby encounters various stages of a villain named The Wizard of Light's attempts at a crimewave, which, in typical Silver Age fashion, means wasting such amazing inventions as a ray gun that cancels out gravity on a simple bank heist.
As Plastic Man, "that famous crime-fighting hero of years ago!", Robby acts and sounds like himself as per usual, but he takes on the appearance of Cole's Golden Age great, and has access to his powers. In the few pages in which he is Plastic Man, Robby turns himself into a giant bouncing ball, grabs onto two trees to fire himself like a slingshot into the Wizard's headquarters, stretches his arms to swat some crooks and ultimately wraps up the villain in one long, coiling arm.
It's definitely the most unusual of superhero crossovers, and it's like is never repeated in the remainder of the original "Dial H" feature's run. I haven't read all of the later revivals (just Sam Humphries and Joe Quinones' excellent 2019 limited series, and the dial's appearances in Superboy and The Ravers and the Silver Age event), but apparently the dialer who stars China Mieville and Mateus Santolouco 2012 series once dialed himself into The Flash.
The Brave and The Bold #76 (1968) If we conclude that the Plastic Man that appeared in that installment of
Dial H For Hero was not the "real" Plastic Man, then I wonder if that makes
this comic the very first acknowledgement that Plastic Man lived in the main DC Universe proper, and that his adventures—or at least his 1960s adventures—were indeed set on what would then have been referred to as Earth-One in the DC cosmology, rather than Earth-Quality, where the Golden Age Quality Comics heroes' Golden Age adventures were said to be set, or Earth-X, established in 1973 as an alternate world inhabited by Quality heroes, or perhaps Earth-2, where
All-Star Squadron would later reveal there to be a Plastic Man as well.
Although there's also Earth-Twelve, home to The Inferior Five that was retroactively named as the home world of various "funny" heroes and comedy stars with their own comic book series, like Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope, listed in the pages of the Crisis On Infinite Earths: The Compendium, which stated that most (but not all!) of Plas' 1960s comics were set there.
And then of course there is also the possibility that this issue of The Brave and The Bold isn't actually set on Earth-One at all, however, but the theoretical "Earth-B", where DC editor Bob Rozakis apparently suggested comics stories that seem off in some way may be set, particularly those like the ones Bob Haney wrote for The Brave and The Bold.
Gee, I can't imagine why DC ever thought to do away with their pre-Crisis multiverse...!
Those unfamiliar with the title will, upon reading this issue, immediately realize that the Batman in it doesn't really act or talk much like the Batmen they are likely most used to. Written by Haney, the Batman of this team-up title was friendly, jocular, quick with a joke and prone to lapsing into slang, sounding an awful lot like Haney's own narration, which had a Stan Lee-esque, trying-to-sound-hip nature that certainly designates it as distinct. (Hard to imagine another writer's Batman urging his vehicle into action with "Go, little Batmobile!" or declaring "Well, I'll be a super-hero's uncle-in-law," for example.)
In this tale, Batman faces off against a green-and-orange clad villain named The Molder, seen on the Neal Adams cover above. The Molder talks to himself incessantly, ranting repeatedly about "The Plastic Age," and he uses a variety of plastic gimmicks to commit unlikely (and, let's face it, unrealistic, crimes), like molding "memory plastic" in the shape of a car used in a bank robbery that soon "remembers" it's original form of a completely different-looking vehicle, or the invention of plastic robots he calls Plastoids or trapping Batman in melted plastic.
It's when Batman is trapped in plastic on a subway track that Plastic Man appears, using his stretching arm to catch the train and bring it to a stop before it can crash into Bats. The two shake hands, and seem to know of one another; Plas said he's in town on the trail of The Molder, perhaps concerned that the villain is giving plastic a bad name.
Before the adventure is over, The Molder will saturate Plastic Man with "a catalytic plastic," affecting his molecules "so that they will reproduce themselves endlessly," thus smothering Gotham City and drowning Batman in the ever-expanding Plastic Man's own body (That's what's going on with Plastic Man on the cover, by the way).
Needless to say, Plastic Man figures a way out of the mess, Batman punches out The Molder and Plas imprisons teh villain between the fingers of a giant hand.
The story ends with another handshake, that seen in the image atop this very post, and Haney extolling the virtues of the Plastic Man ongoing: "The regular adventures of Plastic Man in his own mag will heat up your funny bone, mold your mirth, and generally split your sideburns!"
Haney's collaborators on this issue are penciller Mike Sekowsky and inker Jack Abel. Their Plas isn't exactly inspired, and looks fairly generic when compared to the one I've so recently been reading about in DC Finest: Plastic Man. Their design is notable for giving Plastic Man a full-body red suit, one that covers his legs and feet.
In addition to stretching, bouncing, changing shape and, in one sequence, making like a human slingshot, Plas repeatedly demonstrates the ability to survive being broken into separate pieces ("You're all over the place, Plas!" Batman smiles, while hauling his torso and a couple of limbs to Plastic Man's head and shoulders).
This is the first of a couple of appearances by Plastic Man in the pages of The Brave and The Bold, and I wonder if that was a factor in the producers of the Batman: The Brave and The Bold cartoon featuring him so prominently among Batman's allies in the team-up show.
(Collected in 2007's Showcase Presents: The Brave and The Bold Batman Team-Ups Vol. 1 and 2017's Batman: The Brave and The Bold—The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1)
The Brave and The Bold #95 (1971) Well, I suppose the very inclusion of this issue in this post rather spoils the mystery of the cover, which went to such great lengths to disguise the identity of Batman's guest-star, huh?
This is a weird one—"The Brave and the Bold's most bizarre team-up!", according to that cover—even by the title's standards. While their first meeting was a pretty standard pairing of two superheroes, here writer Bob Haney takes an entirely different tack, with the 22-page adventure reading like a Batman solo story until the last three pages or so.
Batman is "hired" by Ruby Ryder, "the world's richest woman and top female tycoon", to find her lost fiance Kyle Morgan, "the most beautiful, wonderful hunk of man since Adonis," who disappeared in a South American jungle.
After some adventure, Batman succeeds, but when he brings Morgan to Ryder, she shoots him to death and disappears, pinning the crime on Batman!
Now a fugitive from the law, Batman travels the world hunting her, a mysterious guardian angel continually saving him from assassins (A panel in which a pair of inhumanely long arms stretch out of the water to grab a man with a knife stalking Batman would seem to offer a pretty good clue of who that guardian angel is, but not what exactly is going on).
As Ryder is eventually being led to the electric chair to be executed for Morgan's murder, the executioner is revealed to be none other than Plastic Man, who explains the whole crazy story. "Yes, I am Plastic Man," he confesses, sadly removing his goggles. "That clown I'd hoped the world had forgotten...and I'm also...Kyle Morgan!"
Tired of being "that plastic clown," Plas says he "longed to be free...lead a normal life...know a woman's love..." Realizing his powers meant he could be anyone he wanted, he molded his face into the handsome visage of Kyle Morgan, "a man no woman could resist--!" He and Ryder fell in love, but when he realized she was cruel, selfish and power-mad, he fled and faked his own death.
But Batman found him and brought him back to Ryder, who shot him. He merely played dead, a gunshot unable to actually kill him, and then followed Batman on the hunt for Ryder, protecting the Dark Knight in secret. He took the place of the executioner to see Ryder "humbled for once," but he says he never would have pulled the switch.
As our heroes walk sadly into the background, Batman asks, "Well, what does the future hold for... Plastic Man?"
And Plastic Man, still resembling Morgan, responds, "I don't know, Batman! In this wide, wild world of today, is there room for me, or am I really what I feared--and out-of-date freak?" (This issue was published between 1968's #10 and 1975's #11 of DC's Plastic Man series, during a very long gap between issues, so apparently Plas would resume his old characterization as a superhero and/or "clown" within a few years).
It's an oddly emotional, if melodramatic, story for Plastic Man, especially for the time, and I wonder if this is the very first instance of the character grating against his reputation as a "funny" hero, which must have been well-established by this point in order for the story to work at all.
For this outing, Haney was joined by the artist Nick Cardy, who handles the action quite well, and is obviously pretty good at drawing attractive women (There's one particular neat panel where "Morgan" is fighting Batman in the cabin of an airplane and, when the plane briefly goes upside down, the dialogue balloon is similarly upside down, as if the editors had simply turned the whole panel on its head).
Haney's various characters don't speak in very enlightened terms about the Ruby Ryder character throughout ("Witch", "dame" and "boss lady" get used a lot), and the appearance and depiction of South American "head-hunters" and "Indians" is unfortunate.
Overall, it's an interesting comic, in large part because of how weird it is. Not, weird like so many of Haney's comics, because of their general sense of zaniness, but because of its emotional content and down, gloomy tone.
In this adventure, Plas' costume is only seen in a few panels, but in addition to red pantlegs, his suit also differs from its original design by featuring a pair of black briefs over his suit, in the style of Superman and Batman.
The cover is, once again, by Neal Adams, here inked by Dick Giordano.
(Collected in 2007's Showcase Presents: The Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups Vol. 2 and 2017's Batman: The Brave and The Bold—The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1)
The Brave and the Bold #123 (1975) This relatively rare triple team-up from the Batman team-up title is a direct sequel to the Plastic Man story from
#95.
In its first part, Bob Haney, now joined by The Brave and The Bold's then-current regular artist Jim Aparo, presents an unusual state of affairs, with Batman charged with bringing in Bruce Wayne on fraud and murder charges...which he does, catching up with the millionaire in Istanbul, where he's trying to buy a sacred idol to return to its home village in Africa.
But how can Batman arrest Bruce Wayne? What's going on?
Well, apparently Batman ran into Plastic Man on the streets, the one-time superhero having fallen on really hard times after their previous adventure; he's now an unshaven bum panhandling on the streets of Gotham (He briefly refers to an old job in a carnival).
Knowing he's about to leave town as Bruce Wayne, Batman enlisted Plastic Man to stand in for him while he's gone, "Somebody's got to keep the crime lid from boiling over!"
Aware that Plas is standing in for Batman, Ruby Ryder brainwashes Plastic Man-as-Batman with a "polymeric catalyst" to believe he's the real Batman (and, of course, to do her bidding), while also framing Wayne so she can acquire the idol for herself.
Metamorpho comes to the real Batman's aid, breaking him out of jail, and together the pair try to track down Plas, thwart Ruby Ryder and get the idol back to where it belongs.
Another particularly downbeat Plastic Man story, this one does allow Aparo to draw a brief (too brief, really) duel between the two shape-changing heroes (Plastic Man: "See, punk, you're tangling with the original freak of a thousand shapes!" Metamorpho: "Yeah? Well, I'm the improved model, chum...the fantabulous freak of a thousand and one changes..."). The pair of heroes with overlapping powers would, decades later, appear together in the aforementioned The Terrifics, and share a tense scene in 2024 miniseries Plastic Man No More!.
For the first time in the pages of this series, Plastic Man is wearing his original costume. In the story's penultimate panel, he asks aloud what will become of him: "But now what happens to me...going back to be a panhandling bum again?"
Batman replies, "Never! The way you handled those bank-robbers as my stand-in was spectacular! You're a superhero for all seasons!"
(Collected in 2008's Showcase Presents: The Brave and The Bold Batman Team-Ups Vol. 3, 2012's Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo Vol. 2 and 2018's Batman: The Brave and The Bold—The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 2)
The Brave and the Bold #148 (1979) Haney's streak of sad sack Plastic Man stories continues with this Christmas-set issue, wherein Plas is playing a bell-ringing Santa...although he does so without padding or changing into a fatter shape, and without taking his goggles off.
Batman recognizes Plastic Man when he uses a super-stretchy arm to save a little kid from being run over, and the pair shake hands.
"Since then, it's been all downhill," Plastic Man tells Batman, referring to their previous adventure together in the pages of this book. "Cheap carnivals I quit because I hated being a freak! But I guess I'm doomed to play only phony roles...like this!"
"Wish I could help you, Plas--but you have to decide who you want to be first!", Batman says, tossing a coin in Plas' bucket. As Batman walks away, he thinks to himself that Plastic Man seems really depressed and notes how hard it is to be alone for the holidays. After three sad Plas stories in a row, I'm starting to wonder where Woozy Winks was in the 1970s.
The heroes will cross paths again quite soon, however. Gotham has been plagued by vicious gangs smuggling untaxed cigarettes into the city, killing one another's drivers and hijacking their cargo. Commissioner Gordon refers to it as a "Buttlegger war", and both he and Batman do it so often throughout the story that one wonders if Haney just thought the term was funny.
The "buttleggers" commit an even more audacious crime when they steal the massive Christman display from "Lacey's Department Store" and load it onto a convoy of trucks...complete with Plastic Man-as-Santa, who they knock out with a blackjack. As the cover says, "The Mob Stole Xmas."
Following a clue left by Plas, Batman trails the trucks to Florida, where the gangsters are throwing a Christmas party as part of a peace summit...that turns out to be a trap for their rivals. Naturally, our heroes break it up, capture the crooks and get the Christmas display back to Gotham in time for the holiday, Plastic Man's long, stretchy right arm spelling out "Merry Xmas" in cursive in the last panel.
The art in this particular outting, Plas' last appearance in the title, is credited to artists "Joe Staton & Jim Aparo." It's not apparent who did what, but I imagine Staton handled either lay-outs or pencils, and Aparo either finished them or handled the inks. The art looks awfully Aparo-like throughout, and he does a pretty great Plastic Man, giving the hero a very distinct face and clearly conveying some complex emotions.
(Collected in 2013's Legends of The Dark Knight: Jim Aparo Vol. 2 and Batman: The Brave and the Bold—The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 2.)
DC Comics Presents #39 (1981) Plastic Man's revived ongoing series ended in 1977, but he would return to comic racks in fairly short order in the pages of
Adventures Comics, with 1980's #467. As I mentioned earlier, Plastic Man would share the title with the Prince Gavyn version of Starman, with Len Wein, Joe Staton and Bob Smith handling the Plastic Man feature and Paul Levitz, Steve Ditko and Romeo Tanghal the new Starman. This state of affairs would last for 11 issues—although Martin Pasko would take over writing duties on the Plastic Man feature from Wein, and Aquaman would join the title as a third feature—until 1980's
#478, at which point a new iteration of the "Dial H for Hero" feature would take over the title.
So when Pasko, Staton and Smith created a Superman/Plastic Man team-up for
DC Comics Presents, the team was on pretty solid footing, and essentially just had Superman (and his villain Toyman and his pal Jimmy Olsen) visit a quite belated chapter of their
Adventure feature.
No name is given for the city in which most of the story is set, but it is Plastic Man and Woozy Winks' hometown, and it's a very distinct-looking city.
"I don't want to spend one more minute in this town than I have to," Superman thinks to himself as he descends towards the Acme Tilton hotel, where there's a toy convention Clark Kent has been assigned to cover. "I've begun to notice something-- This is a very weird city..."
I want to say the name of the city is Acme City, based on how many businesses are named Acme something-or-other, both in Pasko's dialogue and in Staton's backgrounds. As for how weird it is, well, it seems a lot like any big city, although Staton fills his street scenes and backgrounds with rather cartoonish-looking characters. The most cartoonish of them all is his Woozy Winks, whose big nose, pear-shaped head and overbite make him look like he belongs to an entirely different comic than one starring Superman and Plastic Man, both of whom are drawn completely "straight," as is Olsen (Toyman, on the other hand, has a much bigger and more pronounced nose than I've ever seen him with before).
The plot is about as ridiculous as one might expect, given the story's title: "The Thing That Goes Woof in the Night."
Apparently, a prototype toy dog that the going-straight Toyman is there to demonstrate makes a noise that just so happens to be the exact sonic frequency as "the computer-generated electronic tonality used to lift the tumbler" on a nearby vault door.
That's according to local criminal Dollface, a woman who looks like a doll, and together with Fliptop, whose mop of curly red hair has a hinge which he can open to gain access to a variety of miniature weapons and gadgets, she attempts to steal the toy from Toyman.
The bad guys ultimately end up teaming-up to commit the robbery, just as Plastic Man and Superman team-up to thwart it (And Jimmy and Woozy team-up, the latter ultimately showing off his signal watch-inspired invention meant to summon Plastic Man whenever he's in trouble).
There's really not much to it, although it's interesting to see the contrast between what that era's Plastic Man feature must have been like and the Superman comics of the time, both in their sense of humor and the style in which they are rendered.
(Collected in 2013's Showcase Presents: DC Comics Presents: The Superman Team-Ups Vol. 2 and 2021's Superman's Greatest Team-Ups.)
DC Comics Presents #93 (1986) The idea here is perhaps an obvious one—to get all of DC's stretchy heroes into the same story. And that means not just Plastic Man and The Elongated Man, but also Elastic Lad, the occasional superhero identity of Jimmy Olsen, which he uses when he takes a special serum that gives him temporary stretchy powers.
Though this issue is written by Paul Kupperberg, the idea for it seems to have come from someone else, as the title page contains a little box reading "Team-up suggested by Laney Loftin."
Kupperberg, working with penciller Alex Saviuk and inker Kurt Schaffenberger, opens with a scene that will appear rather cryptic if one isn't already familiar with Plastic Man's origins. A man with the rather unlikely name of Skizzle Shanks has just bought an old chemical factory, the narration tells us, and then we watch as he shoots himself right in front of a big, bubbling vat labeled "acid." In the last panel, he is lying face down in the green goop, which has spilled all over him after he stumbled backwards and upset it.
A turn of the page than brings us to a splash of the Daily Planet newsroom, where masked gunmen are trying to shake Jimmy down for the "secret potion" that makes him stretchy. Jimmy, who here wears a red checked jacket instead of his more customary green, has of course signaled Superman on his watch, but before the Man of Steel can arrive, another Justice Leaguer makes the scene: Elongated Man Ralph Dibny wraps the gunmen up in the fingers of one hand.
Apparently, he and wife Sue are in the building for an interview. Lois immediately whisks Sue off for coffee, leaving the boys to talk superhero shop.
Soon after Superman arrives, he and Ralph, at this point in time wearing the half-white, half-purple version of his costume, follow a shriek to a jewel robbery. Jimmy, having downed his serum to keep it safe, follows along to get the story.
At a nearby jewelry store, where a seemingly impossible robbery has just been committed, they run into Plastic Man, who is just there because...well, he's just there, I guess.
It may have taken nine pages, but Kupperberg finally got all of the heroes together, and rushing off in the same direction: After a criminal with stretchy powers similar to those of most of the assembled heroes, wearing an all-green bodysuit with pupil-less white eyes.
This is, as we will eventually learn, Malleable Man (Mr. Shanks was, it would seem, successful in his efforts to re-create the accident that gave Plastic Man his powers).
The heroes will try and fail to stop the new villain a few times. During their second encounter, Malleable Man will have an accomplice, wearing the same costume and displaying the same powers as him, which the characters will comment on ("There's two of you now?" Ralph will exclaim upon seeing them, as they evade his outstretched arms. "You guys got a franchise on rubber men or...Hey!"), but the second Malleable Man will disappear after the scene and never be mentioned again.
As the page count dwindles, the villain's ultimate plan will be revealed. It turns out Skizzle Shanks was on the chemical plant job with Eel O'Brian on the fateful night of Plastic Man's origin, and he managed to put two and two together regarding the new superhero's secret identity. After he got out of prison, he successfully gave himself the same powers as Plas and, thanks to some "mind-control glop", he's hypnotized Plas, Elongated Man and Jimmy into joining him as "The Elastic Four."
Riding Plas-in-the-shape-of-a-hot-air-balloon, the quartet make their way to the Fortress of Solitude and then stretch through the keyhole. Before they can loot the place of its fantastic treasures, however, Superman arrives, and the other reveal that they were never really under Shanks' control.
As some of the plot holes may have already alerted you, it's not too terribly a great comic; I actually went back through it a couple times, trying to figure out where the second Malleable Man came from, where he went, and why no one mentions him at the conclusion.
It's also somewhat disappointing as the first meeting of Plastic Man and Elongated Man. The creators do manage to compare and contrast their powers—both stretch, but Plas takes various shapes as well—but, well, a more thorough explorations of their differences would have been preferable (Woozy Winks doesn't make an appearance, for example; surely it would have been fun to see he and Sue together). With Jimmy, Superman and a villain to attend to as well, however, there's just not much room to devote to much about any of the characters.
The pair do get along perfectly well here, though, and are just as collegial with one another as they are with Superman (This is opposed to the scene they share in Alex Ross, Jim Krueger and Doug Braithwaite's 2006 Justice #8, wherein Elongated Man starts an argument with Plastic Man and Plas tells him off).
While the script leaves much to be desired, Saviuk and Schaffenberger's art is superior, just realistic enough to really accentuate how strange the various characters' powers are, and if there is no truly memorable scene involving the various stretchy guys—certainly no image within the book has as much impact as Jim Starlin's cover for it—there are several great Superman moments. I was particularly fond of a panel where Malleable Man and his accomplice attempt to escape out a window, and find Superman standing there in mid-air, Saviuk drawing the scene at a low angle so we can see the soles of Superman's feet.
(This issue has never been collected.)
Action Comics #661 (1991) Unless I missed something, this is the first Plastic Man appearance since his 1988 miniseries, which was a new, contemporary origin for the character, following the events of
Crisis on Infinite Earths (A series which was thus the Plastic Man equivalent of "Batman: Year One", or what John Byrne and George Perez were up to with Superman and Wonder Woman a few years earlier).
The character's status quo certainly seems to honor that of Phil Foglio and company's mini. Here Plastic Man and Woozy Winks run a private detective agency in New York City, and there are several indications that Plastic Man...well, that he has his own way of seeing things.
In relating the story of what brought them to Metropolis, the art style dramatically shifts to something far more cartoony (and not unlike the work of Hilary Barta in that Plastic Man mini). Plas looks the same, but Woozy is radically different in appearance, and a man who stumbles into their office shot full of holes has big, Swiss cheese-style holes in his body, as if he were a Looney Tunes character.
Later, after Plastic Man has been blown-up by the issue's exploding villain, Superman asks if he's okay, and Plas responds, "I suppose...I mean, everything looks normal to me." This despite the fact that Superman, as seen through Plas' eyes, is drawn in a different style, with an enormous chin and jawline.
The issue is the work of writer Roger Stern and artists Bob McLeod and Brett Breeding. Entitled "Stretching a Point," it finds Jimmy Olsen running into Plastic Man and Woozy at the airport, specifically at the baggage claim, as they seem to have traveled to Metropolis as baggage. (Woozy climbs out of a suitcase, while Plastic Man was a suitcase.)
They explain to Jimmy that they've come to town following some cryptic clues left by a badly injured colleague, a string of numbers and a set of initials. Woozy and Plas introduce themselves to Jimmy; none of them seem to remember their previous meetings in the pages of DC Comics Presents, so I guess we can assume that Crisis knocked those stories out of continuity. (Later, Superman will mention having met Plastic Man once before: "Very adaptable sort, but he didn't seem all that stable." This is likely a reference to Superman's appearance in the final issue of the 1988 Plastic Man mini.)
With some help for Bibbo, who in this issue has just bought the Ace O' Clubs in Suicide Slum, our heroes eventually meet up at the city docks, and duke it out with a new supervillain named Time Bomb, a big brute whose power is that he can blow up any part of his body, only to have it instantly reform (So, like a flesh-and-blood version of Shrapnel, I guess...?).
Although the book advances several ongoing Superman plotlines, it reads more than satisfyingly enough as a done-in-one story.
It's always interesting to see how artists draw Woozy, given how unnatural his design tends to look outside of a Jack Cole comic (or someone working in an exaggerated style, like, say, Barta or Kyle Baker). McLeod and Breeding draw him very realistic (and with a trench coat over his polka dots, perhaps because he's a private investigator at this point), which only accentuates the gulf in the way Plastic Man seems to see him in this narrative, when the art shifts to show a Plas'-eye-view of things.
Plas himself is also drawn "straight," and the artists do a fine job at depicting his powers (here mostly limited to stretching, outside of that bit as a suitcase). They also, obviously, do a fine Superman. It might have been nice to see the two superheroes spend more time with one another—Plas and Woozy spend most of the issue in Jimmy's company—but then, they would cross paths again in the not too far future.
(This issue has never been collected).
Superman #110 (1996) This issue has an entirely different creative team than the one that produced the last one in which Plastic Man appeared in a Superman comic, although it has the exact same plot beats. Plastic Man and Woozy Winks arrive in Metropolis, run into Jimmy Olsen, there's a brief reference to Jimmy's post-
Crisis version of being "Elastic Lad", the out-of-towners explain that they have come on a case (their story told in a cartoony style to evoke the Plas-sees-things-differently aspect of the 1988 miniseries) and their adventure intersects with Superman at the climax, where there's some brief superhero action.
The story, "The Treasure Hunt Caper", is plotted by Dan Jurgens, scripted by Jerry Ordway and drawn by Ron Frenz and Joe Rubinstein.
Jimmy, then working as a TV reporter for WGBS notices Woozy, again wearing a trench coat over his regular attire, walking down the street holding a red sign in the shape of Superman's S-shield. The sign is actually Plastic Man, and as the pair will soon explain to Jimmy, they are looking for Superman.
Back in their New York City detective agency office, they were approached by a beautiful woman who was literally dripping money. Plastic Man transforms into a chair and offers a seat, his face forming the seat of the chair. (Is this the first instance of a DC shape-changer not-so-subtly asking a character to sit on their face? Notably, in the previous scene, Plas has turned into a chair for Woozy to sit on, and it is his lap that forms the seat of the chair, rather than his face).
She decides to stand. She introduces herself as Treasure Hunt, and says that her brother, Tiger, is in Metropolis, planning to test an experimental new weapon called "a sonic atomizer" against Superman. She wants Plas and Woozy to deliver a "sonic atomizer nullifier" to Superman to save him.
This entire sequence is drawn in a style similar to that which Hilary Barta had deployed in the miniseries. Plas basically looks the same, but Woozy hews to Barta's cartoony design for him, in sharp contrast to how Frenz and Rubinstein draw him in Metropolis, and the other characters and elements of the action are also highly cartoony. There's also an earlier panel where we briefly see Jimmy through Plas' eyes, and he appears a caricature of himself.
Meanwhile, Tiger Hunt has summoned reporter Clark Kent to a parking garage, where he tells a similar story: His sister Treasure plans to test an experimental new weapon against Superman. He wants Kent to get a sonic atomizer nullifier to Superman to save him.
Obviously, something's not quite right about the Hunts' stories. No sooner do Superman, Plastic Man and their respective sidekicks get together and start comparing notes than they are attacked by high-tech but retro-looking robots.
These are no match for Superman, of course. Plastic Man simply holds one off until Superman can punch it to bits, but his shape-changing powers come into play when our heroes deliver a bit of comeuppance to one of the Hunts.
While the team-up fills most of the pages, there is one devoted to Lois Lane hanging out with Clark's old college roommate Lori, in which Lois is pretty catty.
(This issue has never been collected.)
The Power of Shazam! #21 (1996) Just eight months after "The Treasure Hunt Caper", Jerry Ordway would script another meeting between Plastic Man and a caped strongman, in the pages of his
The Power of Shazam!, the Marvel Family title he wrote (and sometimes drew) between 1995 and 1999. Somewhat remarkably, it appears to have been the first time Plastic Man and Captain Marvel had ever met ("
Have we met?" Plastic Man says as he coils around Captain Marvel. "Don't
tell me--during one of those many
crisis thingees?").
Ordway must be a fan.
It's an especially interesting pairing, as the two characters were among the most popular of the 1940s, neither came from Timely or National Comics and each was from, instead, a different publishing house (Captain Marvel from Fawcett, and Plas from Quality, of course).
In this done-in-one issue, both heroes are after the gangster Muscles McGinnis, trying to save his life after the mysterious Lady M puts a million-dollar bounty on his head. Cap wants to protect him, of course, as does Plas, as he was apparently friends with Muscles back when he was still gangster Eel O'Brian.
This initially leads to conflict between our two heroes, as when Plastic Man sees Captain Marvel coming for Muscles, he sheds his disguise and goes on the offense, wrapping Marvel up in his own body, and then suddenly unwinding it, sending Fawcett City's hero spinning like a top and bouncing all over a fancy restaurant before being flung out the revolving door.
They eventually get on the same page, around the time Woozy Winks and a high-priced assassin catch up with them. Working together, they protect Muscles and go after Lady M, but while they manage to bust her henchmen, she manages to slip away...as does Muscles, who falls into the ocean and never resurfaces.
Ordway and artists Peter Krause and Mike Manley continue to honor the Foglio/Barta conceit that Plastic Man sees the world through a sort of cartoon vision, just like the last two Superman team-ups did. Here the few panels devoted to showing readers what Plas sees having red borders around them to distinguish them (The change in styles is particularly notable in this issue, as one page juxtaposes two panels in which Woozy appears, rendered completely realistically in one and then in Barta's cartoony design in the next).
This would appear to be the last time that aspect of the character would be part of a comic featuring him, as the next time Plastic Man would appear would be in 1997's JLA #5, trying out for the team, which he would join a few stories later.
Ordway gives Plas lots to do here, physically. In addition to getting the better of Captain Marvel in their brief fight, he wraps up several opponents, hides Muscles by taking the form of a bright red dumpster and adopts a pair of disguises. There are a couple of panels in which he threatens the assassin, quoting Wolverine and shaping his right hand into a big, pointy-fingered claw, which I didn't find too terribly effective (Barta, in contrast, did a great job of a "scary" Plas in his Plastic Man #1, in which the hero gleefully attacks his own old gang, his head contorting so that he had horn-like points and a big, wicked-looking grin full of pointy teeth).
Krause and Manley's art is pretty far divorced from what people now tend to think of when they think of comic art from the '90s; it's stately, sturdy and classic in feel, and thus quite perfectly suited to a story starring not one, but two characters from the Golden Age who have hardly changed a bit, and are, indeed, still wearing the exact same costumes they were back then.
The story, entitled "The Big Rubout!", reads pretty much perfectly as a standalone one (there's only a single page of the book not devoted to team-up's plot). There's also next to nothing in the book that marks it as having its own particular version of Captain Marvel (maybe just the Fawcett City setting?), or to any wider DC continuity, making it an evergreen story that reads just in well in 2025 as it did in 1996.
(This story has never been collected.)
Green Lantern 80-Page Giant #2 (1999) As the text on artist George Freeman's cover says, this second
Green Lantern 80-Page Giant anthology was devoted to "Team-Ups From A to Z," which here means Aquaman to Zatanna. Among the other five heroes featured is, of course, Plastic Man.
The short 10-page story featuring him is entitled "Anything You Can Do," which echoes the scene where Changeling and Plastic Man faced-off in 1998's
JLA/Titans, and Plas sang "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)" to himself while matching Garfield Logan beast for beast. It's written by a Hank Kanalz (though he's credited as "K.H. Kanalz" in the credit box), penciled by Kevin J. West and inked by Norm Rapmund.
Set on the JLA Watchtower, it opens with Green Lantern Kyle Rayner narrating: "I'm on watch tonight. And for some reason, so is he." The two heroes seem to be occupying each other by playing with their powers. Plas takes the shape of the Titanic, Green Lantern conjures an iceberg construct for him to crash into. Plas turns into a giant set of novelty vampire teeth, GL conjures a big green dog bone to jam into them.
Suddenly, an alarm goes off, warning them that there's an intruder on their lunar base. They split up and go looking for it, encountering a series of big, scary aliens as they do so. When Plastic Man thinks he has one captured by enveloping it in his body, it suddenly disappears.
This leads up to the gag ending, the last panel revealing a smiling Martian Manhunter, thinking to himself: "That should keep them quite for the rest of the day. And it certainly confirms one thing... ...Anything they can do, I can definitely do better!"
The tell was apparently that all of the alien monsters were green-colored, although J'onn, unlike Plastic Man, doesn't really have any color limitations on his transformations.
This is probably one of the odder Plastic Man team-ups DC has published...I would say the oddest, but, well, there's an odder one yet to come. Like that one though, I find myself quite curious about how exactly this story came to be.
It's a two-parter written by Dan Jurgens, who drew the covers with Terry Austin (
did not feature Plastic Man, so I used the second one, which did, above). Mike S. Miller pencilled the first issue and was inked by Saleem Crawford and Keith Champagne. Tom Lyle penciled the second part and was inked by Andrew Pepoy. The story arc was a fill-in, coming fairly late in writer Ron Marz's lengthy, almost 80-issue run on
.
The star is, of course, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, and we catch up with him as he's battling a battalion of soldiers in high-tech armor flying through the skies of New York City. Quite unhelpfully, their armor is colored green, and their dialogue balloons are also green, the same color as the various ring constructs GL uses to fight them, and the color of Kyle's narration boxes.
Why are they fighting? Apparently, Kyle woke up that morning only to find a big red crate had appeared in his apartment, a shipping label attached reading, "Blue and Gold Express...When it absolutely, positively has to be there in ten seconds." Then waves of armored enemies promptly crash through his wall to retrieve it, and thus the fight begins.
It's not until page 16 that the guest-stars arrive. Blue Beetle's Bug rises from the water, being piloted by Booster Gold. "And sitting in for my sidekick," Booster says after announcing himself, "Plastic Man!"
What on Earth is Plastic Man doing with Booster Gold? I have no idea, especially since this is rather clearly a Booster Gold and Blue Beetle story, the "Blue and Gold Express" being a Justice League teleporter-powered shipping company the pair came up with, one of their classic get rich quick schemes that leads to trouble.
"Great," Green Lantern says when they appear. "I need Superman or Wonder Woman, maybe even Damage, and I end up with Abbot and Costello." That sounds like something someone might say about Booster and Beetle too, not Booster and Plas, whom, to my knowledge, have neither even met one another before (They were in the same place at the same time in JLA #27, the issue where Oracle calls in a bunch of Justice League reservists to help the team tackle Amazo, but they didn't speak to one another at all. I may be forgetting some big crossover story where they interacted previously, though).
He's presumably kidding around, of which there is a lot in these two issues.
Even with the reinforcements, Green Lantern finds the odds too great, and then Booster Gold whispers a plan to him. GL creates a blinding light that temporarily paralyzes all of the soldiers, and then our heroes fly away, leaving the big, red crate behind.
This being what they were after in the first place, the armored guys gladly take it and return to their base, where they present it to their leader, a balding man with a fancy cape, a walking stick and rings on all of his fingers.
As you have probably guessed already, there's a reason why the crate was red, instead of a more standard crate color: During the blinding flash, Plas disguised himself as the crate, and rather than the genuine article, the bad guys brought the disguised Plastic Man back to their base.
Meanwhile, Booster and Green Lantern open it up to see what it was—due to privacy concerns, Booster had no idea what his company was being used to ship—and they dramatically react to what's inside, something we're not shown by the end of this first issue.
"Oh, my...!" Booster says.
"Of all the things that could've been inside...I never expected that!"
That next issue starts with an entire page devoted to recapping the previous issue, in which Green Lantern's narration tells us the story thus far. Oddly, he says this of Booster Gold's plus one: "Brought a sidekick, Plastic Man, with him...Don't know much about him either, even though we work the JLA beat together."
Really? They've been on the team together for about a year and half and 17 issues of JLA together and, when you factor in all the many ancillary JLA comics of the time, that's hundreds of pages of adventures. Why, it was just a few months previous that we say Green Lantern and Plastic Man hanging out and playing with their powers together in Green Lantern 80-Page Giant #2! Although, given the lead time necessary, Jurgens almost certainly didn't read that story before writing this one.
Anyway, despite the freaking out about the contents of the crate last issue, here Jurgens rewinds time a bit and has the freaking out about it for another few pages, although it's clear they have no idea what it is. It's just a mysterious glowing ball.
Meanwhile, the villain, whose name is The Supplier, is busy torturing Plastic Man at his secret base...which just so happens to be right across the street from Kyle Rayner's apartment, which is how the crate was accidentally teleported to Kyle in the first place.
The Supplier has Plastic Man stretched out on some kind of off-panel rack, which surely wouldn't hurt him at all, over a bed of spikes. This really shouldn't be able to hurt him either, but, for whatever reason, the spikes are able to puncture him, and he's not stretching of shifting around them. Then the spikes start to burn which, admittedly, should hurt Plastic Man...I think (His Golden Age comics seemed to vary on whether or not heat hurts him).
Plas continues to make jokes throughout the torture, and then Green Lantern and Booster Gold arrive. The Supplier gives a name to the glowing ball—The Ogalict—and tells us a little about himself. Apparently, he distributes "the most unusual items to be found anywhere," and he bought The Ogalict from a Psion to sell to a Khund warrior.
After some negotiation, Kyle agrees to give The Ogalict to The Supplier in exchange for the lives of his soldiers, all of whom were apparently innocent victims kidnapped off the street, brainwashed and implanted little bombs within them.
The Supplier then vanishes, saying something along the lines of how our heroes haven't seen the last of him yet. As it turns out, our heroes didn't really hand over the maguffin; Kyle explains that the orb he handed over was actually just a ring-generated fake, and he had hidden the real orb under a bucket on a rooftop...although when he goes to retrieve that, it's missing.
Whatever. Rather than dealing with that, he turns his attention to Booster, threatening to tell Batman that he and Beetle have used Justice League teleporter tech for one of their schemes. A bemused Plastic Man sits silently by, his bare legs crossed as Booster pleads with Kyle.
And that's that. What was The Ogalict? Where did it go? Will we ever see The Supplier again? And what on Earth was Plastic Man doing in this story in the first place? The issues provide no satisfactory answers and, to my knowledge, none of this ever came up again anywhere else in the next 26 years, but then, I haven't read every DC comic in that time, so perhaps it did.
I like both Miller and Lyle okay as pencil artists, having a bit more affection for the work of the latter, given that he drew some of the first comics I read, including the Robin miniseries starring Tim Drake (and then a Detective Comics arc that was something of a sequel to the first of those).
Other than making funny faces and disguising himself as the crate, Plastic Man doesn't have much to do in Miller's half of the story. He does considerably more in Lyle's half, including lots of dramatic stretching, binding The Supplier in his arms and growing quite large in one panel, although I didn't really care for how Lyle drew his face, as he gave him prominent, monkey-like ears and a notably pointy nose and elongated chin...although, granted, the chin might have been a result of him stretching his face to scream and otherwise react to torture.
Among Plastic Man team-ups, this one isn't too terribly a good one, but it is weird and, rereading it for the first time all these years later, I'm still perplexed as to the hows and whys of Jurgens' story. It seems like the very same story could have been told with Blue Beetle instead of Plastic Man...with the exception of the bit where Plast pretends to be a crate, something that is definitely outside of Beetle's skillset.
