I’ve commented here that for all the plaudits given to
Jack Cole’s PLASTIC MAN, it’s rarely acknowledged that in a formal sense, many
of the stories are not well-written.
This isn’t entirely a disadvantage from a pluralist
creative vantage point. Some creators are at their best when they’re channeling
the random associations of what Jung termed “fantasy thinking,” rather than
constructing the sort of “well-wrought urns” generally prized by elitist
criticism. Much if not all of Cole’s best work is characterized by a delirious
pleasure in transgressivism, often, as noted here, in a passion for scenarios
of sadism and murder. In the earliest adventures of Cole’s stretchable sleuth,
the hero battles such demented menaces as a gigantic, city-destroying
eight-ball, a cripple-legged giant who walks on his hands, and a mad scientist
named “Hairy Arms,” whose torso is so shriveled that he appears to be all head,
legs, and (of course) arms.
Viewed as mythic texts, most Plastic Man stories are like
free-floating archetypes that have no firm associations linked to them. On
occasion, as with the story I analyzed here, he used his symbolic constructions
to produce a consummate psychological myth. But Cole's PM story for POLICE COMICS#16—incidentally, the fourth story in which Cole partnered Plastic Man with
comedy-relief Woozy Winks—rates as inconsummate for the way it raises symbolic
questions but doesn’t answer them.
The splash page is quite in keeping with my quasi-Sadean
reading of Cole: the reader sees a head-shot of Plastic Man, sweating profusely
as he’s besieged by tiny green devils telling him to “kill” and “murder.” This
is a foregrounding of how the hero will go berserk at the story’s end.
When the story proper opens, Plastic Man is first seen in
disguise, having used his shape-changing power to become the image of a Native
American. Woozy is telling him that it seems “silly” for the hero to
investigate rumors of a modern Indian uprising. Plastic Man demurs, claiming
that he won’t countenance “revolt against the U.S.A.”—though he thinks that he
can break up the possible rebellion if he can undermine the Indians’ chief,
known as “Great Warrior.”
Obviously, even for the time, this is not a particularly
progressive view of White America’s checkered history with the country’s
aboriginal peoples. But I’m not inquiring into Cole’s political mentality,
which I suspect was conservative. Rather, I’m investigating the way his
symbolic discourse slip-slides all over the place.
That night the “powwow” commences, and Chief Great Warrior
is indeed trying to incite the other tribesmen to make war upon “the accursed
whites” at a time when “the nation is busy with foreign wars.” The hero-- sort
of an “Indian Rubber Man” (heh)—shows up to denounce the chief. The chief wants
to know why those assembled should listen to a total stranger. Plastic Man
promptly morphs himself into a totem pole, and almost all of the Indians—except
for Great Warrior—instantly believe that “the Great Spirit” has come into their
midst to denounce their chief. Great Warrior even correctly figures out that
the impostor is really the modern-day crusader Plastic Man, but his people act
as if he’s “mad” to consider the possibility that their talking totem pole is
just a well-documented superhero playing on their superstitions. Because his
own people don’t believe him, Great Warrior jumps into a quicksand bog and dies
while promising to curse his enemies from the grave. Plastic Man, who has
resumed his Indian disguise, lets Great Warrior perish, while marveling that
the dying chief doesn’t cast any reflection in the bog. (Ordinarily one
wouldn’t expect to see a reflection in a bog, though Cole renders the mire as
if it was clear water.)
For the next six pages, the curse takes effect through
Will Hawes, a random white man in Plastic Man’s home city. Cole gives the
reader no clue as to why Great Warrior’s dead spirit—now seeming more like that
of a shaman than of a chief—shows up in Hawes’ mirror and hypnotizes “ordinary,
inconspicuous Will Hawes.” Perhaps the mere fact that he’s an ordinary white
guy makes him the ideal pawn to carry out a reign of terror: setting bombs and
other traps (most sadistically, a box that shoots poison needles into its
victim). Hawes kills two persons in authority—the mayor and the police commissioner—and
tries to blow up Plastic Man and Woozy Winks as well, though they both survive
thanks to their respective powers. Hawes finally confesses to the cops, who
don’t believe his story of an “Indian in the mirror.” However, Great Warrior belatedly decides to
pick on the man who arguably brought about his death. He appears, once more in
reflection-form, to both Woozy and Plastic Man. Great Warrior promptly
hypnotizes Plastic Man into becoming a one-man army, attacking the city (though
unlike Hawes, the hero isn’t seen causing any deaths). The cops don’t believe
Woozy’s story about the ghostly Indian chief, but they do manage to corral
Plastic Man.
Cole left himself less than a full page to return his hero
to his status quo, and he does so with one of the worst “cheats” in the history
of comics. Woozy shows up at the police station with the son of Great Warrior,
who has not been mentioned, any more than there’s any clue about how Woozy
found him. With all the cops watching, the son summons the spirit of Great
Warrior to appear in a mirror, vowing to live “a life of shame” (whatever that
is) if his father does not clear “the innocent name of Plastic Man.” Great
Warrior is so vexed by the threat of shame to his family that he shows up,
makes a verbal confession of all crimes to the dumbfounded cops, and then
disappears forever (presumably exculpating Will Hawes as well, though he isn’t
mentioned).
What we’re left with is a extremely mixed message. On one
hand, the Indians are kept on the reservation, thus keeping them from having an
effect on the American power structure. On the other, though Cole evinces
absolutely no sympathy for the Indians’ complaints, he does show that same
power structure being assailed by the supernatural power of Great Warrior, even
though the ghost chooses to act through white “sleeper agents.” During the U.S.A’s involvement in World War
II, pop fiction often displayed narrative tropes in which foreign agents
successfully masqueraded as “real Americans”—a trope taken to its most demented
limits in the 1942 film BLACK DRAGONS, which involved Japanese spies being
surgically transformed into Caucasians. Unlike many of Cole’s crazy-ass tales,
this story feels as though the author might be trying to work out some personal
demons about American political history—but if so, the story of Great Warrior
fails in that respect.
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