Plastic Man

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plastic Man is the title of a series of comic publications that have been published by the US publishers Quality Comics (1941-1956) and DC Comics (since 1966) since 1941 , as well as a television animated series from the 1980s based on these Comics based.

The "Plastic Man" comics are about the adventures of a character of the same name - Plastic Man or "Plas" for short - who has had the ability ("super power") to deform her body at will and almost any shape since an accident to imitate. His body is as elastic as rubber as well as tough and fluid like modeling clay . Plastic Man, who uses his talents to impress as a detective and self-promoter, was originally developed in 1940/1941 by the American Jack Cole as a parody of the so-called " superheroes " - such as Superman , Batman or Aquaman  - who were at the time were extremely popular. In terms of character, Plastic Man is quite a daredevil , who makes big speeches and tries to collect points with the female gender, but mostly looks ridiculous to intrusive.

The formula on which Cole based his stories - “a superhero comic with a self or parody trait” - has been used in practically all Plastic Man stories up to the present day. In the comics of the series traditionally elements of the "witty" fun comics and the "exciting" - filled with "action", "adventure" and "suspense" - go hand in hand with superhero comics. Accordingly, the characteristic elements of the series are on the one hand the ingredients typical of the superhero genre from the areas of science fiction / fantasy on the one hand and action on the other, as well as the humorous traits typical of a parody. In addition - due to Plastic Man's profession - there are borrowings from the genre of crime, especially detective history .

Release dates

The first Plastic Man story was published in issue # 1 of the Police Comics series in August 1941 . The Police Comics , which appeared in the program of the Quality Comics publisher, contained several stories in each issue that had the adventures of various characters as content: Since the stories about Plastic Man became by far the most popular "feature" of Police Comics with readers within a few months the series was eventually made the main series of the series with issue # 5. Accordingly, not only was most of the space devoted to the Plastic Man stories, but also most of the title pages, which from then on almost always featured scenes from Plastic Man stories.

In parallel to the Plastic Man stories in Police Comics , Quality Comics published an independent Plastic Man series that exclusively contained stories about the weird superhero: The series ran from 1943 to November 1956 and reached a total of sixty-four editions. Plastic Man was removed from Police Comics in the meantime, after he had played the "leading role" in them for almost ten years, with issue # 102 in October 1950, after Quality Comics had decided in the course of a general overhaul, henceforth no superheroes -Features to print more in the series, but to bring only "lifelike" crime stories in it.

Already in the first Plastic Man stories, Cole established the typical ingredients for the character or the series: The sometimes extremely quirky plot of the stories about the “crumple man”, even for comic standards, and an occasional slapstick humor that extends into the surreal. In addition, there was a narrative technique which, both visually and in terms of content, almost went beyond the norms of American comics - especially comics of the 1940s: Instead of allowing the plot to take place exclusively within the fixed "framework" of the individual panels typical for the time , Cole let it take place his protagonist likes to and often wind his elastic body back and forth through different images. In keeping with the theme, the drawings themselves did not - as in the case of Superman - try to depict characters and backgrounds that at least visually came as close as possible to reality, but rather indulged in a deliberately cartoon-like look. There were also frequent artistic experiments.

After Quality Comics went bankrupt, DC-Comics acquired the rights to Plastic Man in 1957. After a single Plastic Man story that appeared in House of Mystery # 160, DC launched a new Plastic Man series in December 1966 after a break of almost ten years. This series continued until June 1968, appeared bimonthly and reached a total of ten issues. The artistic design of the booklet was done by the author Arnold Drake and, one after the other, the illustrators Gil Kane (# 1), Win Mortimer (# 2–7) and Jack Sparling (# 8–10).

In the 1970s, several issues followed as the guest main character of the dark superhero Batman in issues # 76, 95, 123 and 148 of the series The Brave and the Bold , as well as the DC Special # 15 from December 1971, the old stories from the 1940s -Years reprinted ( Police Comics # 1 and 13, and Plastic Man # 17, 25 and 26).

From March 1976 to November 1977 ten more booklets, titled Plastic Man , followed a second ongoing series, which were numbered as # 11-20 following on from the series of the 1960s. These booklets were designed by the author Steve Skeates and John Albano, as well as the illustrator Ramona Fradon. There were also stories in the anthology series Adventure Comics in which from January to December 1980 in issues # 467 to 478 - alongside stories about Starman and Aquaman  - stories about the plastic man appeared, most of which were drawn by Joe Staton .

From November 1988 to February 1989 a four-part Plastic Man miniseries by author Phil Foglio and illustrator Hilary Barta was published, which once again told the story of the hilarious superhero's origins. In 1999 DC published a Plastic Man Special which was implemented by the Canadian Ty Templeton , who performed both the duties of the author and the draftsman.

Between February 2004 and January 2006, DC brought an ongoing "Plastic Man" series onto the market again after a long break. This reached a total of twenty editions designed by the artist Kyle Baker . In addition to the traditional humor areas for the character, media and content stereotypes of modern superhero comics and the American comic market became the target of benevolent ridicule. This series has received several awards.

A single Plastic Man album was published in German translation in the 1980s by Ehapa Verlag in Stuttgart. In 2016, the DC Comics Graphic Novel Collection published by Eaglemoss published an anthology containing the first six issues of the series by Kyle Baker and the Plastic Man story from Police Comics # 1.

Plastic Man continued to be a recurring character in the animated series Batman: The Brave And The Bold .

Plot and main character

At the heart of Plastic Man is the former petty crook and now private detective Eel O'Brian, who since an accident (he falls into a vat filled with an experimental substance while breaking into a chemical plant) has the ability to put his body into anyone at will to be able to transform an object that suits him. Due to the extremely elastic, rubber-like, stretchable and compressible nature of his body, O'Brian is also resistant to external violence and therefore almost invulnerable.

In order to make amends for his spoiled former way of life as a criminal, and to amass a fortune on the side, O'Brian (occasionally under the pseudonym Ralph Jones) uses his newly acquired skills to start a law firm together with his partner, the somewhat small, plump Woozy Winks as " alternative “private investigators to operate.

Later, the character also got a ten-year-old son (Luke McDunnagh), who came from an extramarital relationship with a stripper, and had his memory temporarily erased in order to - free from the memory of his crazy superhero life - a better and to be able to be a more responsible father. He also discovered his ability to change not only his shape but also his body color, adopted a gothic teenager named Edwina, and began a relationship with FBI agent Morgan.

Minor characters

Woozy winks

Wolfgang “Woozy” Winks is Plastic Man's best friend and partner in his detective office. The character, who first appeared in Police Comics # 13 from November 1942, serves in most of the Plastic Man stories as a conversation partner and interaction partner for the title character and is also used primarily as a narrative tool: he sometimes describes the "speaker" Action (of which he is also a part) and, through his conversations with Plastic Man, provides the reader with information that explains the opening situation of a story in terms of expositions or makes Plastic Man's further actions and steps logical. In addition, Winks is often used for comic relief purposes, i.e. H. for humorous loosening up of the plot through witty or absurd comments, “throwaway jokes” on the edge, minor mishaps or harmless accidents.

Winks is a short, plump man with a bulbous nose and a pancake face. Typical for a "superhero assistant" figure of the 1940s, he is clumsy, clumsy, overweight and a little sloppy. Wink's personality is modeled on the comedian Lou Costello . In the early Plastic Man stories, Winks has the passive superpower, "to be protected by fate through ever new fortunes" when he gets into trouble. He owes this ability to the spell of a gypsy whose life he saved. While most Plastic Man stories describe Winks as “a naturally stupid man”, the 1999 Plastic Man Special offers an alternative explanation for his “wooziness” (“numbness”). As a result, Winks was originally a highly intelligent agent named "Green Kobra" who was locked in a closet with Plastic Man while he was on a joint mission. Since Plastic Man was wounded at the time, Winks was forced to inhale the "fumes" emanating from Plastic Man's wound. Since these were roughly the consistency of glue due to O'Brian's changed organism, they damaged Wink's brain and made him the somewhat clumsy and boring man he is today.

reception

Andreas C. Knigge described Jack Cole's Plastic Man comics as the "most imaginative superhero series of the Golden Age, primarily because of the sometimes shrill and comical slapstick interludes [...]."

The first volume of the reprints of Jack Cole's original series as Plastic Man Archives received the Eisner Award in 1999 for Best Archival Collection and the Harvey Award for Best Domestic New Edition . Likewise, in 2002 the Harvey Award for "Best Biographical, Historical or Journalistic Presentation to Jack Cole and Plastic Man .

The Plastic Man series, written by Kyle Baker, won both the Harvey Award and the Eisner Award in 2004 in the Best New Series category. In 2005 the series also received an Eisner Award in the Best Publication for Young Readers category . Baker himself received 2004, 2005 and 2006 a. a. for this series the Eisner Award in the category Best Author / Draftsman: Humor as well as the special award for humor of the Harvey Awards in 2004 and 2005.

Remarks

  1. The first name "Eel" (English "eel") is a speaking name , which alludes to the eel-like "floundering" and intangibility of the fidgety and, due to his plastic-like body structure, very smooth O'Brian.
  2. Andreas C. Knigge: Comics: from mass paper to multimedia adventure . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , p. 128 .
  3. 1990s. Retrieved April 8, 2017 .
  4. 1999 Harvey Awards. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015 ; Retrieved April 8, 2017 .
  5. 2002 Harvey Awards. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015 ; Retrieved April 8, 2017 .
  6. a b 2004 Harvey Awards. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015 ; Retrieved April 8, 2017 .
  7. a b c 2000s. Retrieved April 8, 2017 .
  8. 2005 Harvey Awards. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015 ; Retrieved April 8, 2017 .