Plastic Man gets hard-boiled

DC Comics announced a new Plastic Man series is coming our way from Christopher Cantwell and Alex Lins.

This time, Plastic Man is getting the hard-boiled noir treatment in Plastic Man No More, a four-issue mini-series, launching in September 2024.

“I don’t know about you, but when I think about Plastic Man, I immediately think of David Cronenberg,” said writer Christopher Cantwell in a press release from DC Comics. “There is an element of body horror to his story that I have always found fascinating. And I also found myself wondering recently—How would Plastic Man actually die? What would that look like? Is he immortal? And then I thought of the long and particularly nasty way real plastics and petroleum products break down when and if they finally do. That’s how I learned about depolymerization and the chemical process of ‘unzipping,’—from a particularly morose afternoon on the ol’ Internet, picturing what might happen to Eel if his entire cellular structure started to give way.

“There are many superhero stories that play with the metaphor of our own inability to control our physical bodies,” continued Cantwell. “Plastic Man provided a way to take that allegory even deeper. How we look in the mirror and see one thing, then see a photo of ourselves and don’t recognize the person at all. How we all break down over time. What’s this strange itch? Why is this sagging? Why does this hurt now? Is my face permanently going to look like this? Or get even worse? With all these questions in the story comes a real and profound fear of aging, and yes, what lies beyond that—dying. And when someone like Plastic Man is suddenly looking at the end of the road, and now reflecting on his legacy, he begins to wonder: was he ever taken seriously by anyone? Did he even take himself seriously? The character also has a history of neglect and failure when it comes to personal relationships. So quite catastrophically, Patrick O’Brien suddenly finds himself desperate, asking WHAT NOW? HOW DO I FIX THIS? “THIS” being his very body, his very cells, as well his connections to the people he loves. And just WAIT until you see how horrifically and hilariously Alex Lins and Jacob Edgar have rendered this referendum on our vanguard ultra-bendable former-criminal-turned-hero-guy.”

Here is how DC Comics describes the mini-series:

Eel O’Brian might be a superhero now—but before he was anything else, he was a crook. Until the accident that turned him into the pliable Plastic Man, Eel was bad to the bone…and just because he no longer has bones doesn’t mean that’s not still true. When an incident on a Justice League mission leads to catastrophic cellular damage, Plastic Man discovers he just might be out of time to make amends for the past he’s tried hard to outrun—or to save the soul of his son, who (unfortunately for him) might have inherited more from dear old Dad than just his superpowers…