Created by Jack Cole
(1914-58)
Okay, okay, okay…
So… he may have possessed plenty of gumshoe spirit, full of world-weary but snappy patter and he may have known plenty of those mean streets, but much beloved felon-turned-superhero PLASTIC MAN was never really a private eye (except for a brief, almost-glorious moment).
Still, you could say this much loved character has a history that stretches all over comic book history.
He made his debut in Police Comics #1, in the summer of 1941, as a six-page back-up feature. The cover star of that issue was Reed Crandall’s “Firebrand” (who?), but that wouldn’t last long.
That first installment was an origin story. Patrick “Eel” O’Brian, orphaned when he was ten or so, grows up rough and as a young man joins Skizzle Shanks and his gang of thieves, where his skills as a safecracker are much appreciated—until one fateful night when a planned robbery at the Crawford Chemical Works goes awry. As the gang try to flee from the police, Eel is shot and stumbles into a vat of acid. Abandoned by the rest of the crew, Eel manages to crawl away, eventually collapsing on a mountainside.
When he awakes, he discovers he’s been he’d been taken in by a kindly old monk at the Rest-Haven Monastery who hides the fugitive from the police and nurses him back to health.
But while recovering, Eel makes a shocking discovery— the acid has somehow imbued him with the incredible ability to stretch and mold his body into any shape. Astonished—and touched by the monk’s generosity—he vows to use his new-found powers for good, not evil.
The rest of the story follows Eel as he brings the gang that abandoned him to justice, dumping them off (literally) at the local precinct. The story introduced his ever-present shades and his infamous red rubber leotard which, using comic book logic, can stretch every which way he can.
It also introduced Plastic Man’s oddball, quirky and irreverent sense of humor, heavy on the wisecracks, and demonstrated some of his amazing abilities, like being able to stretch hundreds of feet and contorting his body, posing as a floor mat, and being able to bounce like a rubber ball.
Plastic Man was the arguably one sane man in a world gone increasingly bonkers, which is saying something, considering that the grinning, bendable doofus in his imminently stretchable red leotard and omnipresent sunglasses was the silliest-looking yahoo of the lot.
A year later, “Plas” acquired a dumb but funny sidekick named Woozy Winks. Perhaps not as annoying as Slam Bradley‘s Shorty Morgan, but close…
But more, much more, was to come. Already a regular back up feature in Police Comics, by the fifth issue (December 1941, for those keeping score), Plastic Man was starring on the cover, where he was billed as the “New Comic Sensation!”
By December 1943, he had his own comic book, Plastic Man, which ran for a respectable 64 issues, and for the rest of his Quality Comics run, he was more or less the same crimefighting super-doofus he’d always been, whether he was a cop or an FBI agent or just a regular, if somewhat peculiar, superhero.
Under creator/writer/artist Jack Cole, the series flourished. Cole’s wacky absurdist humor brought a surreal energy to the proceedings. Other artists and writers took over eventually, though, and the stories just weren’t as funny. The tales were still full of yucks, but decidedly smaller ones.
But far more ominous things were around the corner. The superhero comic boom had started to wane by the late forties, and Quality Comics folded in 1956. DC Comics jumped in and snapped up the rights to most of their characters, including Plastic Man, although apparently DC editor Julius Schwarz didn’t get the memo. Just a few years later, he assigned John Broome and Carmine Infantino to create a comparable new character to be called The Elongated Man, an almost complete rip-off of Plastic Man. Schwarz was apparently completely unaware DC Comics already owned the rights.
D’oh!
And so while The Elongated Man bent and stretched in various DC books, most notably as a supporting character in The Flash series and as the star of a long-running series of backup features in Detective Comics, Plas sat in limbo.
It wasn’t until 1966 that DC finally brought him back, hoping to cash in on a possible television series. The stories lacked Cole’s anything-goes humor, and the comic lasted only a couple of years. Still, DC kept the chaaracter around.
Alas, what with DC’s affection for canon tinkering (Pre-Crisis! Post-Crisis! Earth-One! Earth-Two!, Earth-Three! Old Earth! New Earth! The New 52!, The Newer 52! The Newest 52! Poterzebie 2.0!), Plas was in for a hard go of it.
He flitted in and out of storylines, both solo, in one-shot team-ups with other DC characters (Batman thought highly of him) and as a usually back row member of the Justice League of America, the All-Star Squadron and who the hell knows what else? By the early eighties, Plastic Man was appearing semi-regularly in various DC titles, with writers like Martin Pasko, and artists like Joe Staton and Bob Smith handling the chores, pretty much your standard — if occasionally offbeat —superhero, but amidst all the permutations, he also became, for a brief but glorious time, a private eye.
It took a while, though.
Released in 1988, the four-issue Plastic Man was a welcome return to form, cutting him loose from his spear carrier status in the JLA, reviving Cole’s over-the-top humor with a burst of unexpected exuberance that recalled the antics of early MAD Magazine, Tex Avery and The Marx Brothers. The first issue recounted—and rewrote—Plastic Man’s origins, with his suicide attempt interrupted by recently released (thanks to “something called Reaganomics”) mental patient Woozy. After a few mini-escapades, they decide to flip a coin to decide whether they should criminals or set up a detective agency in New York City. They chose the latter, and ended up with an office where Woozy’s name is misspelled (of course) on the obligatory frosted glass door.
Still, there’s very little actual private-eying going on here—it’s mostly the pair stumbling into more madcap misadventures, tackling the Ooze Brothers (a trio of gelatinous bank robbers), a Messianic cult based in California (where else?) and a gang of aliens intent on stealing New York City. But it was nice while it lasted.
And so it went, Plastic Man’s story proving to be as malleable as his body. Girlfriends came and went. He even marries at one point, and has a kid. He’s in and out of various superhero teams. There were Plastic Man comic series in 2004 and 2018, with Plas back in his superhero-for-the-FBI status, and he had popped up on television in 1979 as a Saturday morning cartoon, where he finally earned some much-deserved popularity.
Even today, he turns up occasionally as a guest star in various DC comics, and is currently serving as comedy relief in the latest incarnation of the Justice League of America. They’re all fun but none have really captured Cole’s completely bonkers mojo.
More recently, and in a private eye vein, even if Plas isn’t a private eye, is 2024’s Plastic Man No More, which was billed as “Hard-boiled Plastic Man Noir.” It was a surprisingly engaging combo of goofiness, black humor and sheer body horror as Plas discovers he’s dying, thanks to “rapid depolymerization.”
Oddly effective, if disturbing, and despite a downer ending, there’s a gotcha! hint that Plas may be back.
And so it goes…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
American comic book artist and writer Jack Cole drew cartoons for The Saturday Evening Post and Playboy, but it was his oddball sense of humor, layout and design that was such a perfect match for his most revered creation: the wisecracking, malleable and eternally elastic Plastic Man. The character was never really a commercial hit, but both Cole and Plastic Man are almost legendary among comic fans, which may explain why, years after he had shuffled off this mortal coil, he was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry’s Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1991, and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999. Although the character has never been a significant commercial success, Plastic Man has been a favorite character of many modern comic book creators, including writer Grant Morrison, Art Spiegelman, Alex Ross, Kyle Baker, and Frank Miller.
HEY, WAIT! WHAT ABOUT THIS ELONGATED MAN?
Ralph Dibny, better known as The Elongated Man, was a Plastic Man knock-off, created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino in 1960. He was also a private eye for a few ticks, and a long-time member of the Justice League of America. But his condition wasn’t permanent—he got his powers from regularly consuming a special potion. Unfortunately, the stories lacked the screwball wackiness and off-the-wall charm of the Plas stories (especially those written and drawn by Jack Cole). Apparently nobody involved, including DC editor Julius Schwarz, was aware that DC already owned the rights to Plastic Man.
COMICS
- POLICE COMICS
(1941-53, Quality Comics)
127 issues
Plastic Man
Writers: Jack Cole, Joe Millard
Art by Jack Cole- “Plastic Man” (August 1941, #1)
- PLASTIC MAN
(1944-56, Quality Comics)
64 issues
Writers:
Artists:
Generally four Plas stories per issue. Issues 53–64 consisted entirely of reprinted stories. The series was acquired by DC comics in 1956.- “The Man Who Can’t Be Harmed” (November 1942; #13)
- “Uno, The Last Man on Earth, “Salteen’s Art Gallery,” “Plastic Man Products” (May 1949; #17)
- “Hoot Mon,” “The Magic Cup, “The Menace of Mr. Aqua” (September 1950; #25)
- “The Second Plastic Man” (November 1950, #26)
- “Rub the Caveman” (November 1950, #26)
- “The Kingdom of Oldstown” (November 1950, #26)
- “The Private Detective” (November 1950, #26)
Woozy, who feels the FBI and Plas don’t appreciate his crimefighting abilities, sets up his own detective agency. With predictably disastrous results. - “Weapon of Evil” (November 1950, #26)
- HOUSE OF MYSTERY
(1951-83)
321 issues
Monthly horror anthology, occasionally running superhero stories under its “Dial H for Hero” banner in the sixties, before returning to horror in the seventies.- “The Wizard of Light” (July 1966, #16)
Plastic Man’s first official DC appearance, introduced on the cover as “An Old New Hero.” Thing is, Plastic Man isn’t even Eel o’Brian here, but simply an aspect of Robby Reed’s”H for Hero” dial.
- “The Wizard of Light” (July 1966, #16)
- PLASTIC MAN
(1966-77, DC COMICS)
20 issues
Writers: Arnold Drake
Artists: Gil Kane, Win Mortimer
Only twenty issues, although an eight-year hiatus between #10 and #11 stretched the series to 1977.- “The Dirty Devices of Dr. Dome!” (November-December 1966: #1)
- “The Three Faces of Plastic Man” (January-February 1967; #2)
- “The Biggest Wheel in Town”(Martch-April 1967; #3)
- “Dr. Dome’s Dame of Doom” (May-June 1967; #4)
- “The 1,001 Plas-sassins” (July-August 1967; #5)
- February-March 1976; #11)
- (October-November 1976; #15)
- (February-March 1977; #16)
- (June-July 1977; #18)
- (August-September 1977; #19)
- (October-November 1977; #20).
- ADVENTURE COMICS
(DC, 1938-2011, DC Comics)
The long-running series spotlighted various DC characters (notably Super Boy) over the years, with Plastic Man enjoying an early eighties run (alongside stories featuring Star Man or Aquaman) from issues #467 through #478.- “Carlton Canary” (January 1980; #467)
- “Whirling Dervish” (February 1980; #468)
- “Codename: Pinkeye” (March 1980; #469)
- “Brickface and the Trowel” (April 1980; #470)
- “Brickface the Wall-to-Wall Killer” (May 1980; #471)
- “It Pays to Be Ignorant” (June 1980; #472)
- “Midway Madness” (July 1980; #473)
- “The 24-Hour Target” (August 1980; #474)
- “Don’t Get Mad; Get Even” (September 1980; #475)
- “The Milk of Human Cruelty” (October 1980; #476)
- “Disco Plas” (November 1980; #477)
- “A Night at the Nuthouse” (December 1980; 478).
- PLASTIC MAN
(1988–89, DC Comics)
4 issues
Writer: Phil Foglio
Artists: Hilary Barta; Kevin Nowlan, John Nyberg, Doug Rice
A new version of Plastic Man, with Eel O’Brian teaming up with escaped mental patient Woozy to Eel and Woozy set up a private detective agency in New York City. See? I told you he was a private eye! - PLASTIC MAN
(2004-06, DC Comics)
20 issues
February 2004 – March 2006
Writer: Kyle Baker
Artist: Kyle Baker - PLASTIC MAN
(2018-19, DC Comics)
6 issues
August 2018 – January 2019
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Adriana Melo - PLASTIC MAN NO MORE | Kindle/ComiXology it!
(2024, DC Black Label)
4 issues
Writer: Christopher Cantell
Artist: Alex Lins
They’re billing it as “hard-boiled Plastic Man noir,” and the combo of goofiness and sheer body horror as he goes through “rapid depolymerization” is oddly effective, if disturbing (Begins September 2024)
OTHER COMIC APPEARANCES
Plas got around. sometimes as a key character, sometimes little more than a cameo.
- THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD
(1955-83, DC Comics)
200 issues
Plas dropped by occasionally to give Batman a hand. Or a headache.- “Doom, What is Thy Shape?” (March 1968; #76)
- “C.O.D. Corpse on Delivery” (May 1971; #95)
- “How to Make a Super-Hero” (December 1975; #123)
- “The Night the Mob Stole Christmas” (March 1979; #148)
- DC SPECIAL
(1968-77, DC Comics)
- “DC Special Presents Plastic Man” (December 1971, #15)
48-page issue of Plastic Man reprints from Quality Comics and DC.
- “DC Special Presents Plastic Man” (December 1971, #15)
- DC SUPER STARS
(1976-78 , DC Comics)
18 issues- “The Great Super-Star Game” (December 1976, #10)
- JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA
- (1956-85, DC Comics)
- “The Origin of the Justice League—Minus One” (July 1977; #144)
- ALL-STAR SQUADRON
(1981-87, DC Comics)
57 issues
DC went retro, with this superhero team created by Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler and Jerry Ordway, set in the 1940s, offering a fictional history of their Golden Age heroes. Plas was in there somewhere.- “The Crisis Comes to 1942!” (February 1986; #54)
- SUPER FRIENDS
(DC, 1976 series, DC Comics)- “Plastic Man: Mouth Trap!” (April 1981; #43)
- “One of Our Barbarians is Missing” (June 1981; #45)
- DC COMICS PRESENTS
(DC, 1978-86, DC Comics)
97 issues- “The Thing That Goes Woof in the Night!” (November 1981; #39)
- “That’s the Way the Heroes Bounce!” (May 1986; #93)
another team up with Superman. wherein Plas joins the Elastic Four (Elastic Lad, The Elongated Man and Malleable Man).
- WORLD’S FINEST COMICS
(DC, 1941 series, DC Comics)
322 issues
Originally an anthology series with multiple stories including Batman and Superman, and later, team ups with the two.- “Design for Dying” (November 1981; #273)
A Plastic Man story. No superman or Batman.
- “Design for Dying” (November 1981; #273)
- CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS
(DC, 1985 series, DC Comics)
12 issues
DC tries to rewrite their characters’ history. Again. and not for the last time.- “Worlds in Limbo” (August 1985; #5)
Plas appears in a cast of thousands.
- “Worlds in Limbo” (August 1985; #5)
COLLECTIONS
- PLASTIC MAN NO MORE | Buy this book
(2025, DC Comics)
Writer: Christopher Cantell
Artist: Alex Lins
Billed as “hard-boiled Plastic Man noir,”the combo of goofiness and sheer body horror as he goes through “rapid depolymerization” is oddly effective, if disturbing. - PLASTIC MAN: THE ORIGIN OF PLASTIC MAN | Buy this book
(2025, DC COMICS)
Writer: Jack Cole
Artist: Jack Cole
Collects the original long-out-of-print Plastic Man stories published between August 1941 and July 1944 in Police Comics #1-36 and Plastic Man #1-2.
TELEVISION
- PLASTIC MAN
(1966, Hal Seeger Productions)
Unproduced pilot
Writer: Arnie Drake
The DC Comic of 1966 was apparently revived with hopes of a TV show. - THE PLASTIC MAN COMEDY/ADVENTURE SHOW | Buy the DVD | Watch it now!
(1979-81, ABC)
A Ruby/Spears Production
112 episodes/2 seasons
Originally 90 minute episodes, later reduced to 30 minutes.
Based on characters created by Jack Cole
Developed by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears
Writers: Mark Jones, Elana Lesser, Cliff Ruby
Directors: Rudy Larriva, Manny Perez, Charles A. Nichols, John Kimball
Starring Mark Taylor as PLASTIC MAN (live-action sequences)
and Michael Bell as PLASTIC MAN (animated)
Also starring the voices of Susan Blu, Bart Braverman, Melendy Britt, Daws Butler, Ruth Buzzi, Ted Cassidy, Johnny Brown, Keye Luke, Peter Cullen, Jerry Dexter, Don Messick, Bobby F. Ellerbee, Casey Kasem, Al Fann, Clare Peck, John Stephenson, Fred Travelena, Dee Timberlake, Frank Welker, Alan Young
Narrator: Michael Rye
DC’s Super Friends was getting great ratings for ABC, so they scheduled The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show to air directly after. Not all the stories featured Plasic Man and his extended family — some segments followed other characters such as Baby Plas, Mighty Man and Yukk, Fangface and Fangpuss, Rickety Rocket, Heathcliff, Dingbat and the Creeps, and Thundarr the Barbarian. The show was later repackaged for syndication, with 130 half-hour episodes, and a DVD set was released, featuring only the Plastic Man stories.- “The Weed” (September 22, 1979)
- “Dr. Irwin and Mr. Meteor” (September 22, 1979)
- “Wham-Bam! Beware of the Clam!” (September 29, 1979)
- “The Day the Ocean Disappeared” (September 29, 1979)
- “The Horrible Half-Ape” (October 6, 1979)
- “Hugefoot” (October 6, 1979)
- “The Minuscule 7” (October 13, 1979)
- “Moonraider” (October 13, 1979)
- “Superstein” (October 20, 1979)
- “Dogmaster” (October 20, 1979)
- “The Diabolical Doctor Dome” (October 27, 1979)
- “Honey Bee” (October 27, 1979)
- “The Dangerous Doctor Dinosaur” (November 3, 1979)
- “The Spider Takes A Bride” (November 3, 1979)
- “Empire of Evil” ((November 10, 1979)
- “The Corruptible Carrot-Man” (November 10, 1979)
- “The Maniacal Computerhead” ((November 17, 1979)
- “The Hippotist” ((November 17, 1979)
- “Badladdin” (November 24, 1979)
- “Toyman” (November 24, 1979)
- “Ghostfinger” (December 1, 1979)
- “Highbrow” (December 1, 1979)
- “The Kitty Katt Caper” (December 8, 1979)
- “The Colossal Crime Of Commodore Peril” (December 8, 1979)
- “The Terrible 5 + 1” (December 15, 1979)
- “Joggernaut” (December 15, 1979)
- “Doctor Duplicator Strikes Again” (December 22, 1979)
- “Thunderman” (December 22, 1979)
- “Count Graffiti Meets Plastic Man” (January 5, 1980)
- “Sale of the Century” (January 5, 1980)
- “Plastic Mummy Meets Disco Mummy” January 12, 1980)
- “City of Ice” (January 19, 1980)
- SEASON TWO
- “Introducing Baby Plas” (September 13, 1980)
- “Plastic Man Meets Plastic Ape” (September 13, 1980)
- “The Crime Costume Caper” (September 27, 1980)
- “The Royal Gargoyle Foil” (October 4, 1980)
-
“Calamity Cruise” (December 6, 1980)
-
“Mummy Madness” (December 6, 1980)
- BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD
(2008-11)
Plas was a recurring character from 2008 to 2011.
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Detectives in DC Comics
A preliminary listing of all the private eyes who have shown up in DC Comics. - My Scrapbook: Stretching a Point
Plastic Man vs. The Elongated Man - Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits | Buy this book
(2001; by Art Spiegelman & Chip Kidd)
A long-overdue and heartfelt, if crazy-pricey, appreciation.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
