Thursday, February 29, 2024

RAPT IN PLASTIC PT. 6



A Carmine Infantino cover, the first of four, enlivens issue #4, which is the next to the last hurrah of Dull Doctor Dome.



This time Doctor Dome enlists one-shot villainess Madame Merciless, who promises that she can brainwash the Playful Play-dough Man so that he will serve Dome's evil purposes.



All unsuspecting, Plas attends a gala costume party with his girlfriend Micheline. Madame Merciless, never seen without her domino mask, uses the occasion as a pretext to get close to the hero.



Plas leaves the party with the Madame, but the truth is that he's able to resist the scheming woman's hypnotic control, but fakes subservience to suss out what she's doing. But little does Merciless know that she has competition in the hero-domination game: whip-happy Lynx, who has a nice line, "That nasty witch isn't going to get her dirty hands on him-- not before I get my dirty hands on him." So Lynx cons her daddy into letting her test Plastic Man's loyalty on a criminal enterprise.




Plas fakes going along with a theft, but Micheline and Gordon are searching for the hero since his disappearance, and they chance across the crime in progress. When the rich girl messes with the bitch girl, Lynx belts Micheline into the path of an oncoming car. Plas is forced to show his true colors, but Merciless is watching nearby, and after some complications, she manages to enslave her quarry for real.



Plas begins obeying Dome's criminal commands. But then Merciless fails to pay her hoodoo-henchmen properly, and they remotely cancel the spell on the crusader.



Recovering his senses, Plas finds himself stuck atop a high telephone wire, so of course he simply makes himself into a spring and bounces down. Ah, no, Drake kind of forgets that this stretchy fellow can't possibly be injured in a simple fall, so that he can have all three females vie for the honor of "saving" him. Doctor Dome is arrested, though apparently Lynx gets away-- which is only fair, since of the two she was a slightly better breed of malcontent. 

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