‘Plastic Man No More!’ TPB (review)

Written by Christopher Cantwell
Art by Alex Lins with Jacob Edgar
Published by DC Black Label
Issues #1-4 available now.
Collected edition coming 4/8/25

When Plastic Man first appeared at DC as a character young Robby Reed dialed into in Dial “H” for HERO way back in 1966, I remember thinking I knew the character from somewhere but could never figure out where. I was too young to have seen any of the original Quality comics and have no recollection of having ever seen the odd Super Comics reprints of the early ‘60s.

Still, I was happy to see him and even happier when he picked up his own series from DC not long afterwards. I know a lot of folks didn’t like it but I did.

DC’s 1970s revival, drawn by the great Ramona Fradon, was even better.

By that time, I had discovered Jack Cole’s peerless original version, however, and had even begun collecting some of the Golden Age issues of Plastic Man and Police Comics.

When DC began its hardcover collections of classic comics characters, the only ones I bought were Green Lantern, The Spirit, and Plastic Man.

So, yeah, you could say I’m a longtime fan of the character. For all the times he worked, though, there have been just about as many times where he didn’t.

The recent DC Black Label mini-series, Plastic Man No More! manages to veer teeteringly on the edge of both sides of that.

Plastic Man No More! is an odd mixture of black comedy, horror comic, and heavy drama. The writing, by Christopher Cantwell presents the reader with a version of Plastic Man whose powers are starting to break down. He starts to literally decompose. Depressed and already feeling a failure, he becomes more concerned as he comes to realize that his stretchy son might someday have the same issues.

Falling back on his criminal past and teaming up once again with, among others, his old sidekick Woozy Winks, a plan is hatched to potentially save both Plas and his son by setting off a “controlled” nuclear explosion around them.

Because, sure.

There are lots of guest stars herein, including the Justice League, the Metal Men, Robin, and Detective Chimp. The latter two come off best, while the Metal Men, also Silver Age favorites of mine, are wasted here—in more ways than one.

The League members are portrayed as aloof and condescending, with their scenes always drawn in a lean, shiny style by Jacob Edgar, while the rest of the book—and its covers—are handled by Alex Lins and colorist Marcel Maiolo  in a darker, more “realistic” style. As our hero (anti-hero?) deteriorates more and more every issue, he is drawn in increasingly disgusting looking ways.

I feel as though readers who don’t already have a fairly extensive background in DC’s 21^st century version of Plastic Man are likely to be disinterested if not all together lost. This is definitely not a series I would recommend to anyone as their first exposure to the character!

Plas’s creator, Jack Cole, was one of the truly gifted talents of the Golden Age of Comics. He did memorably violent crime comics stories, straight superhero stories such as MLJ’s The Comet (the first comics hero to die!), a cutesy newspaper comic strip (BETSY & ME), and some of the most gorgeous “glamour” panel cartoons PLAYBOY ever ran.

His true legacy, though, was Plastic Man. He didn’t work on the entire original run but with hindsight, he seems the only one to have been able to strike just exactly the right balance between compelling stories, silly transformations, slick art, goofy characters, and just plain ol’ charm.

Plastic Man doesn’t work in the “real” DCU. Bob Haney demonstrated this way back in the ‘60s when he teamed him up with Batman in several weird and less than spectacular issues of The Brave and the Bold.

Corporate DC, however, keeps going back to him, and thus we’ve ended up with the current, once again unsatisfying, version.

And with its ambiguous ending, it won’t be the last.