The Plastic Man Archives, Vol. 4 by Jack ColeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Plastic Man Archives Volume 4 contains Police Comics 41-49 plus Plastic Man #3, all with art by Jack Cole.
On the heels of my last Plastic Man Archives experience, I snapped this one up on the cheap.
The stories themselves, as with the last volume, are nothing to write home about. Plastic Man continues his FBI career, chasing criminals and keeping Woozy Winks out of trouble. Sure, there are also hypnotists, a wizard, a mad scientist, and 1940s era racial stereotypes, but it's basically light-hearted a crime book.
Speaking of which, how did Plastic Man come to be portrayed as kind of a goofball in most depictions by DC? In his original appearances, he's a fairly straight-laced FBI agent who makes the best of his somewhat ridiculous powers.
Anyway, Jack Cole's art on Plastic Man deserves its revered reputation. Cole's cartoony style, later used in the Saturday Evening Post and Playboy, uses bold colors and clean lines and he's endlessly coming up with new ways to showcase Plastic Man's stretching abilities. It's a style perfectly suited to a time when comics could be pure fun without being self-conscious about it.
Even the backgrounds are well done. I caught myself looking at bookshelves in the background in a few panels. Speaking of panels, Cole usually did six or seven per page. He didn't go crazy with odd perspectives but he didn't have to with all the crazy stuff he had Plas doing.
You can see echoes of Jack Cole's style even in artists today, like Michael Allred, Scott McCloud, and others. Hell, even the Archie digests I have in my basement show some Jack Cole influence.
The Plastic Man Archives Volume 4 is a nice encapsulation of everything good about Golden Age comics. 4 out of 5 stars.
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