Review: Plastic Man by Gail Simone and Adriana Melo

I'm sorry to say that this turned out to be about as bad as I feared.

Checking Amazon a few weeks ago for the release date of the then still upcoming DC Finest: Plastic Man: The Origin of Plastic Man, I saw the above cover by Aaron Lopresti (who Comicsgate claims as one of its own) and a listing for a 2019 trade paperback by Gail Simone and Adriana Melo, and I tilted my head at the computer screen like a cocker spaniel: How is it there was a Plastic Man comics that I had absolutely no memory of?

Consulting The Grand Comics Database, I recognized a few of the covers from the miniseries, those by Bilquis Evely and Alex Ross, probably from my old close reading of DC's solicits every month. I guess DC had not only published a six-issue Plastic Man miniseries I had decided to pass on in 2018, and again when it was collected in 2019, but I had also apparently completely purged its existence from my memory.

Since my local library system happened to have a volume available for borrowing, I figured it wouldn't hurt to check it out now, when all it would cost me was the time I would spend reading it. 

How bad could it be, after all? I mean, it was written by Gail Simone, whose long runs on Birds of Prey and Secret Six I had enjoyed, and being a writer capable of satisfying straightforward superheroics and a degree of humor, it's not like she was a bad choice for the character, who has mostly been used as a comedy relief character in Justice League comics since the late-90s or so. 

Reading it in 2025 though, between installments of Jack Cole's original Plastic Man stories collected in the aforementioned DC Finest book I was by then in the process of working my way through, it was easy to see why I had probably not read it as it was originally released, and why I had never even thought about it since.

Let's set aside Simone's work on the series, which is far from her best, for a moment.

First, the series was drawn by Adriana Melo, whose name was only familiar to me at this point because Melo had seemingly hurriedly drawn some of the parts in Ed Benes' arc of the 2010-2011 Birds of Prey that Benes himself couldn't get to before deadline. 

She wasn't really of the caliber of some of the book's cover artists, like Amanda Conner, or the previously mentioned Evely and Ross. (The back cover text refers to Melo as Simone's Birds of Prey collaborator, as she had worked on the original iteration of the book as well as the 2010 one, even if I don't remember his contributions to it, and it also cites her credits as Female Furies and Harley & Ivy Meet Betty & Veronica...I've read all of those, so I guess I had read plenty of Melo's work in the past as well, though I didn't recognize her name. I guess it didn't make much of an impression, then). 

Plastic Man is really a character for artists, and his best post-Crisis appearances have all been in stories where the artist is a really, truly great one, adept at staging and rendering as well as able to produce compelling, imaginative work. Melo is fine here, of course. The work is competent and easy to read, but, I don't know, her art just doesn't really sing the way that of, say, Jack Cole or Alex Ross or Frank Quitely or Ty Templeton or Frank Miller or Kyle Baker does, to mention some artists whose work I think of when I think of Plastic Man (And yes, I realize that's some rarified company to be in).

I can't think of a single transformation or use of his powers in this book that is particularly noteworthy, most of them falling along the lines of the visual punchlines and pop culture references the JLA era Plas indulged in so much, nor can I think of a single image of the book that stays with me, even after having so recently set it down.

Second, this was the first comic book the character had headlined since Baker's Plastic Man ongoing ended in 2006 (Unless you count the two-issue 2015 series Convergence: Plastic Man and the Freedom Fighters, in which an Earth-X version of the character shared top billing with a group of other characters formerly owned and published by Quality Comics). 

And that means it was the character's first time in the spotlight after the hard reboot of "the New 52" in 2011, and the somewhat softer, mushier de-reboot of DC's 2016 "Rebirth" initiative, which seems to have restored much of the pre-New 52 continuity...while also allowing writers and artists to keep whatever they might have considered "the good stuff" from the New 52  as canonical (During those five years between the New 52 and Rebirth, the DCU version of Plas was mostly confined to a few cameos as far as the official DC continuity went). 

With this series, then, Melo and Simone would not only be featuring Plastic Man in his own book for the first time in a dozen or so years, they would also be providing him with a new origin story, his first since the post-Crisis Phil Foglio Plastic Man miniseries of 1988. (Although Baker did also adjust the original origin story in his series as well, adding some Fantastic Four references to the episode where the character meets a kindly monk.)

Simone's new origin, like that of Foglio (and that of Baker), is in keeping with the broad outlines of the one that Cole produced for the character upon his first appearance in 1941: During a robbery of a chemical factory gone wrong, hardened criminal Eel O'Brian is exposed to a mysterious chemical that endows him with amazing shape-changing abilities, and he uses them to turn over a new leaf, becoming a costumed crimefighter.

The details differ in each, of course, and this time around it is a lot darker, a lot more violent and a good deal sleazier. The creators also do some serious work embedding the narrative within the greater DC Universe, with a fair amount of guest-starring villains, visual nods and references to popular superheroes and mentions of organizations or alien races from other comics...all without seemingly having anything to do with any previous continuity (This Plastic Man doesn't seem to have ever been on the Justice League, for example, or even to have ever met any other superheroes). 

So it's kind of a standalone Plastic Man story...that is nevertheless laying down continuity markers...without being canonical...?  

It is, therefore, pretty skippable, and I don't think it has any bearing on any comics that have been published since (The last panel ends with a box that reads, "PLASTIC MAN WILL RETURN!", and then refers to a villain-in-the-making who is introduced in the series, but never actually confronts Plas in the proceedings).  

Simone and Melo's series is set in Cole City, which is a nice enough nod to Plas' creator, and it was nice to see the credits page explicitly state "Plastic Man created by Jack Cole." 

In the opening pages, Eel O'Brian, who here looks just like Plastic Man sans goggles, is being beaten in an alley by the former friends he had pulled the chemical factory job with. They are apparently mad that he seemingly came from back from the dead and/or want him to keep his mouth shut about their activities. It's not entirely clear, actually.

"You breathe a word about that factory heist?" their boss Sammy "The Suitcase" Mizzola says after breaking Eel's leg with a baseball bat, "We come back and break what's left." Then, in the next panel, Sammy tells the other goons, "Man comes back from the dead, he deserves a hidin'."

Left injured and shaking on the pavement, Eel meets an 11-year-old street urchin who introduces himself as "Suave Pado Swakatoon, Prince of Pine Street" (What, you thought the name Woozy Winks was over-the-top...?). This character was apparently born a girl named Margaret but is now leaning towards maybe being a boy (Plas is very supportive of the kid making their own choices throughout but does refer to him as a girl in the last issue). 

Pado will end up figuring throughout the series, eventually being kinda sorta adopted by Plastic Man, who DC seems intent to play as a father figure in their comics (Even if different iterations seem to have different kids). Pado also introduces the word "wang" into the book, and Simone will have Plas use it throughout the series...a lot. 

Anyway, as soon as he's alone, Eel's broken leg fixes itself with a "Pop" and he assumes the familiar form of Plastic Man, albeit with one alteration to his costume: Rather than the red one-piece bodysuit he has primarily worn throughout his long history, the character here has a pair of black biker shorts on. 

The story seems to suggest, then, that Plas can turn his powers off and on...? How else does one actually manage to break one of his bones, after all? (Later, Man-Bat, who Plas mistakes for Batman, scratches the hero's back, and he'll narrate "I didn't even know I could bleed anymore!" This, despite the fact that during the savage beating he takes in the opening scene, black-colored blood pours liberally from his nose and mouth.)

Plas pursues one of his former associates, one of the guys who was holding him down while his old boss was hitting him with the baseball bat, and he tries to scare some information out of him: Who shot and killed the security guard the night of chemical plant robbery? 

Plas is shocked to find out it was he himself who did so (The incident plays out in a dream of Plas'; here he's in the getaway car with his fellow criminals after he is splashed with the chemical, but they throw him out the car door when it looks like he's starting to melt. No monk is mentioned.)

After that, Eel returns to his new day job...which takes place at night. He is the night manager (later he will say bouncer) at Superiors Gentlemans' Club, a superhero-themed strip club (I feel like I've seen Simone characters visit this place in other comics, though this is the first I've heard of Cole City; maybe it's a franchise?). He's greeted at the door by a blonde woman named Doris, who is dressed as Bombshell Supergirl.

The next morning, he's recruited by a mysterious woman in a black bodysuit. She introduces herself as Obscura, an agent of Spyral. She says a powerful group of supervillains have formed a team known as The Cabal, and they have tentacles everywhere, including on super-teams like The Justice League (This is apparently where the collection's cover tag "A Traitor in the Justice League?" comes from).

Oh, and then the former friend Plas had interrogated is brutally murdered, witnesses seeing Plastic Man do it, and the victim scrawling the letters "JLA" in his own blood on the wall (Wait, if Plast isn't a member of the League, why would the victim point to them?)

Throughout the rest of the series, Plastic Man will investigate The Cabal, try to solve the murder being pinned on him (with help from Doris and another woman who works at the club with him) and first find, then rescue and ultimately try to raise Pado Swakatoon.

By the fourth issue, we'll see Plas tangle with a couple of super-villains, three members of Simone's old Secret Six (with Catman wearing the lamer costume from the pages of the shorter-lived 2015 reboot of the series), and learn of The Cabal's actual line-up: Per Degaton, Queen Bee, Amazo, Hugo Strange, Dr. Psycho...and a mind-controlled Durlan the last of these was using to pose as Plas (And, admittedly, Plastic Man vs. a Durlan is a pretty good idea on Simone's part!).

Not all of the dangling plotlines will be resolved here. Gangster Sammy "The Suitcase" has a girlfriend he tries to give Plastic Man powers by exposing her to the same chemical, but who ends up getting different powers and blaming Plastic Man for her disfigurement, though she never actually crosses paths with him by the last issue, for example. 

But our hero does defeat The Cabal in hand-to-hand combat and strike some sort of weird deal with Strange that involves several seemingly contradictory threats, one of which is that he will make the villains look foolish...presumably by telling people he beat them...I guess..? 

Also, he seems to form some sort of family unit with Pado Swakatoon.

I'm not sure if any of this is ever mentioned anywhere again. Plas would next show up in the pages of the Fantastic Four-inspired 2018-2020 series The Terriffics, which I also never read (An appearance by Alan "Please Stop Using My Characters, DC" Moore and Chris Sprouse's Tom Strong in the first issue turning me off immediately), but I understand his son Luke appeared in that title, so I am assuming his other son Pado Swakatoon did not. 

So I guess I didn't miss much my skipping this in 2018 or 2019, nor do I now regret not having read it previously. I assume I will rather shortly re-forget its very existence.

If you, like me, are also a Plastic Man fan, but, like the Caleb of a few days ago, had never read this particular outing of the pliable hero, I'd recommend skipping it and instead buying or borrowing The Origin of Plastic Man, which collects the first 575 pages worth of Jack Cole's Plastic Man comics. More than eighty years later, they are still the best Plastic Man comics.