Thursday, February 29, 2024

RAPT IN PLASTIC PT. 11

 


Here's the weakest of the three Sparling covers.






It's also another weak Drake plot. Plastic Man prevents an assassination, and that honks off Thisbey, head of a cartel that arranges professional killings. Thisbey summons Killer Joe, the world's most artistic assassin, and Joe accepts the contract, under certain stipulations. Sparling not only manages to insert a "Mutt and Jeff" pair of identical molls, but a secretary named "Miss Zeftig." Such a in-joke, veiled by a foreign-language expression, is probably the only way the editors at Sixties DC would let even an indirect reference to female boobs be printed.



Joe traps Plas with ridiculous ease. But while setting the hero up for a murder-- so that the state will execute the innocent crusader-- Plas cleverly escapes imprisonment and finds a way to prove he was nowhere near the murder scene. 





Joe then sets a minor trap to lull the hero's suspicions, and then hypnotizes Gordon into becoming a super-strong murder-machine. The spell wears off, and this forces Joe to make a frontal assault. Ironically, Plas easily defeats Joe but is almost cancelled by Thisbey. But inevitably both malefactors end up in jail, while the reader ends up with a story with a shortage of clever gags.

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