RAPT IN PLASTIC PT. 3

So when I started collecting comics in the mid-sixties, I knew nothing about Plastic Man's history. Aside from the old comics, which I did not encounter, the only other item I might have seen would have Mad Magazine's parody, "Plastic Sam," but I probably did not see the paperback reprint of that tale until I'd already become acquainted with DC Comics first Silver Age adaptation of the former Quality property. There were references to the Golden Age version in DC's title. But even when Woozy Winks made a guest appearance, that didn't really give me a sense of what made Golden Age readers respond to the concept. Only the scattered reprints of the seventies gave me a degree of insight.

So, in a sense, the PLASTIC MAN written by Arnold Drake and drawn by three different DC regulars was "my" Plastic Man. I knew it wasn't anything great, but it was mildly entertaining, so I liked it. So, even though I know that the Drake PLAS is not excellent in any department, I'm devoting a post to each of its ten issues.

Issue #1 is the only one to be drawn by Gil Kane, who seemed to be emulating Will Elder's MAD contributions more than the example of Jack Cole. The three individuals with whom he shares space on the cover are, from right to left, (1) a one-shot foe named Professor X, (2) the manic Doctor Dome, whose name spoofs you-know-who, and (3) Lynx, the Doctor's curvaceous daughter.

After Drake's script devotes a couple of pages to Plas doing something heroic, the readers meet his associate, Gordon Trueblood. Whereas Cole partnered his straight-arrow shapeshifter with the reprobate Woozy Winks, Drake makes the straight-arrow the sidekick and the hero a guy whose heroic qualities are leavened by a goofy sense of humor.

Meanwhile Plas's recurring foe (appearing here for the first time) enlists his associate Professor X to make a major assault on Plastic Man with a series of super weapons.

Plas repels X's first attack, but the villain escapes. Then the reader learns that unlike the Cole Plas, who lived a nearly monastic existence (strange, given his creator's penchant for girlie cartoons), this ductile do-gooder has a regular girlfriend, jet-setting Micheline DeLute III. Their discussion of the word "gauche" is one of Drake's cuter bits of verbal humor.

After assorted hijinks, Professor X makes a second assault with a second super weapon. However, Dome's daughter deals herself in, and she actually comes closer to knocking off the hero than the main villains.

Plas survives and again faces off against Professor X. The evil scientist unleashes his third super-weapon, but of course the hero defeats his foe, and the adventure ends with Plas jauntily referring to all of the people who'd like to destroy him, both villains and simple dipsticks. 

In the first RAPT IN PLASTIC essay, I called Cole's hero "Sadean," albeit with some qualifications. Drake's Plastic Man has no real grotesquerie in his background, but Lynx's last line merits some attention. At first glance, one might assume she's one among hundreds of similar temptresses, always attracted to the manly hero even when she's forced to plot his death. Yet, while most shady ladies become too besotted with the hero's charms to really turn the hero into worm food, Lynx's dialogue establishes that (a) she's genuinely turned on by Plas, and (b) she takes an erotic pleasure at the prospect of killing him. Hence Lynx's final line "I'll beat him to death with my eyelashes" is really quite good in capturing the Sadean equivalence of love and death. (And that's without my even referencing the villainess's penchant for cracking a whip every once in a while.) The line, though, is just another vaudeville-style joke, so its Sadean potential is pretty much wasted.