00x01 - Plas-tastic A Brief History of Plastic Man

[bunniefuu]

Hi. No. Go away. Hey. Get the crap. I

beat a thousand

years

old. This is too easy.

Here's a guy who became a superhero and

was given these fantastic powers, and he

actually liked being a superhero.

I wonder if he knows who I am.

Plastic Man gives you lots of

opportunities to do silly, fun,

broad humor that's not painful.

He can spring, he can stretch, and he

can even dance.

Plastic Man kind of was Bugs Bunny in

a red leotard. Well, I

wasn't sure about the color anyway. If

Looney Tunes had a superhero, it would be

Plastic Man. It wasn't even just tongue

in cheek. It was like tongue lodged down

the throat. Now, could you get some ice

cubes to harden me up?Sure, class. What I

liked about Classic Man was his

versatility.

He didn't punch people out. He was funny.

He was clever. He popped up in unusual

places. Hi

there. I'm very low in calories. The

story starts off with Patrick E. O'Brien.

And he's a thief, and he's pretty good at

it. And he's also a bit of a con artist,

and he's trying to rob a chemical plant

and he was shot and the fat of acid fell

on his wound. I don't know what kind of

acid it was, but apparently it's the kind

that turned you into rubber. He escapes,

winds up in a monastery. The entire story

was kind of all about redemption and

pulling yourself up and. And kind of

getting a second shot at life. He has

this moment where he just decides that

he's been on the wrong side, that he he's

going to not be a bad guy anymore.

Plastic Man was the only one that that

started out bad and decided to change and

become good. This is really part of the

uniqueness of this strip because usually

a hero starts out something, someone does

something wrong to them and then they get

their powers and then that's what

motivates them to fight for justice.

But when Plastic Man came out, I mean, it

kind of like it turned the notion of the

square jawed stoic superhero, kind of

turned it on its side. But Plastic Man

was this unique invention because he

could do anything and change shape. And

it was something that could only exist on

a comic book page at the time. The other

guys just seemed to use their powers to

stretch and turn into a barrier for

criminals and or to reach something

high. Plastic Man turned into things.

That was really the big difference.

Plastic Man was created by a man named

Jack Cole, who. was a true original in

comics. Jack Cole was very much a

self-made man. When he was 15, he

learned about an art teaching course, and

he wanted to take it. His parents didn't

know they didn't have the money. So he

just saved up his allowance and lunch

money, sent out and took it

correspondence over the mail, learning

how to become a cartoonist. Plastic Man

first appeared on the scene. I mean, he

he literally was a circus freak turned

superhero.

Police Comics One introduced Plastic Man

along with the Human b*mb and Phantom

Lady, and it just immediately was a

strip that showed a sort of wacky,

cartoony feel that usually you only saw

in the funnies. What Jack Cole was able

to do is he had a way of laying out a

page with this kind of kinetic energy,

and he actually used Plastic Man himself

with his bright red leotards to kind of.

Direct the eye from panel to panel. I

mean, he was definitely not only

stretching the character, but he was

stretching really the boundaries of what

you can do in a comic book.

I think the main difference with Jack

Cole is I think he was a humorous first.

Even though he dealt with the superhero

genre, a lot of the fun in reading his

comic books was finding out where where

is Plastic Man hidden in the panel?It was

really kind of limitless. It's kind of

like a genie. He could do anything. The

only limitations he had were to extreme

heat and cold. And Jack Cole himself

said, you know, if you can dream it, you

can draw it. Of course he would be drawn.

With the colors of his costume, the red

and the stripes, the yellow and black

stripes. And so we knew when we'd watch

the strip or see the cartoons that if

there was something in the room that was

colored that way, that was really plastic

man in disguise. This predates Mad

Magazine, where you could kind of follow

each panel and you'd pick out like, oh,

there he is. The tone of the Plastic Man

comic book back in the '40s was-- it was

kind of different than the other comic

books of its ilk. Nobody had really

successfully combined the humor

and superhero genres. But

Plastic Man was unique in that it was

basically a superhero humor slash

crime book.

Around 1956, a lot of comic book

companies were going out of business. It

was a horror comic scare. Newsstands were

not carrying comic books. A lot of

publishers went under, including a

company called Quality Comics, which had

been publishing Plastic Man since its

inception. DC Comics, which had been

distributing Quality Comics, acquired the

rights to three of their titles, Black

Hawk, GI Combat and Plastic Man. After

the character was acquired by DC

Comics, he wasn't used for a while. Part

of that was that Julius Schwartz didn't

realize that they'd acquired the

copyright to Plastic Man. Plastic

Man's transition from quality comics into

DC Comics. It was rough. I mean, by that

time Jack Cole left right after like



Plastic Man stories, which in my opinion

were, you know, were the best. They had a

series called Dial H for Hero.

It's about a little boy who finds this

telephone dial and whenever he would.

make a little dial, he would turn into a

superhero. In this one particular issue

in '66, he does the dial, and he actually

turns into Plastic Man. And that was the

first use of Plastic Man by DC Comics.

Thanks. I needed that.

You can't really hurt him. He can get hit

really hard by whatever, an anvil,

and it will just bounce back like a

trampoline. He could turn into

anything. He was perfect for animation. I

was first introduced to Plastic Man when

I went over to Ruby Spears as an

animator. We started working on the

Plastic Man series. The Plastic Man

cartoon show basically had the premise of

Plastic Man working for work. The

government. He was a fully deputized

official. This is kind of like the comic

books where he'd worked with the FBI, but

here that he was almost like a superhero

with James Bond. They had gave him a

plane. He was in constant video contact

with the chief. He was sent on missions

all around the world. They gave Plastic

Man a entourage of people. Penny and

the sidekick Hula Hula, who was very much

like Luke Costello in personality and

voice. Falling coconuts we're going to

hit any second. They had a list at the

time of ethnicities that were not yet

represented on Saturday morning, and they

said pick one and incorporate it into the

show. Originally they named him Coconut.

And then someone pointed out that this is

a pattern of ethnic slur in some circles.

So he changed to Hula Hula and they gave

him the gimmick of always having bad

luck. What I remember the show that was

really the coolest thing for me that I'd

never seen in a show before was that it

began with a comic book. From the pages

of DC Comics comes the world's newest and

greatest superhero, Plastic Man.

The show was really just a fresh take on

Plastic Man. The cartoon had these weird.

Villains such as the weed who was just a

walking plant. It was troubling for some

of us who had background in comic books

that Plastic Man was in a new context. We

heard about Plastic Man and we wanted to

do Jack Cole style stories. The

network didn't want that. The network

wanted a new format. They wanted him to

have a sidekick. They wanted him to have

a female, strong female character in the

strip. Penny was probably there just to

let everyone know that this guy who's in

a red leotard is actually likes girls,

so. At least that's my thinking on that

one. Plast, I know you can handle your

villains, but how are you at

handling a woman?Oh, I can handle a

woman. Currently, I think Plastic Man is

being treated semi-straight, but also

still for humor. They're making him a lot

more complicated as far as backstory

and making a more

textured character to kind of fit in with

what's going on in comics currently.

Everybody loves the character so much and

they kind of want to take their own take

on it and play with it.

Tom Kenny and myself, who's the

voice of SpongeBob.

We came about wanting to do a Plastic Man

pilot. Whenever you do a pilot episode,

it's it's really with the intent of

creating, hopefully, a series, or a

movie, or a direct-a-video, or something.

What you want to do is is develop a style

for it. Artistically, you want to

develop a voice for it. And then you

hopefully can build something from that.

We were very keen on

Concentrating on that thing that set

Plastic Man apart from all the other

heroes, he used to be on the other

side. He's a bad guy. He had a near-death

experience and they came up with a really

cool thing, Warner Brothers said. OK,

but if he's going to be a former

criminal, you have to show him atoning

for his past. He's

basically on parole. We took the

FBI chief from the Jack Cole comics and

kind of morphed him into this character,

Archie Bronson, that's a tough

parole officer. He's basically fulfilling

his duties to society. And so his

missions are based on on

stuff that he had been involved with as a

criminal. I don't know why it didn't get

picked up. I actually thought it was

pretty good. And the few people that we

did screen it for actually liked it quite

a lot. And so sometimes there's financial

decisions that are made. Sometimes it's

really about the timing.

When Kyle Baker tackled the character

recently, he also tried to go back to a

more Jack Cole thing. Woozy Wings came

back as this, like, bizarrely

humored character with just his own

strange logic.

Kyle's a brilliant cartoonist, and one of

the few guys who's gotten his hands on

the character who could match Jack Cole

for just being bizarre and thinking

strange.

For the new show, Batman, the Brave and

the Bold, we wanted to dig deeper

for characters who Batman hasn't been

with. You've got not only a guy who's

extremely serious versus a

guy who's just a whack job. I think if

you could eavesdrop on Batman and Plastic

Man, you know, Brave and Bold style,

their conversation would be Plastic Man

telling Batman, dude, you've got to

lighten up. I know Gotham City's got a

lot of crime. I know Arkham Asylum is

full of psychos. I know about the parent

thing when you were coming home from the

movies. But you know, you got

to have some fun. You only go around

once. I worked on one sequence where he's

he's stealing stuff while he's while he's

moving along, you know?And

Batman keeps catching him. He's like,

well, what's the problem?I mean, I'm just

chipping a little bit. Plastic Man in our

show is having a hard time staying on the

straight and narrow. He's still a crooked

heart. And basically, his journey in the

show is to to watch him fully

evolve into a hero.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Most of the superheroes that that were

spawned in the first years of comic books

in the in the wake of Superman and Batman

didn't make it through the decade of the



Plastic Man over the years is he's

unapologetically silly. He's

unapologetically fun. That's music. It

must be hypnotic. It's forcing me to

dance and not very well. His

personality forces you not to take him

seriously, makes him timeless. For me

personally, the reason the characters

endured is because of those stories that

Jack Cole had produced. Those are the

things that'll kind of live on. The

character is amorphous enough, both

physically and character wise, that

people want to take a crack at it. He's

got such a strong, quirky visual that,

you know, you just look at it and it puts

a smile on your face. So you're already

on board with that character. There's

something very compelling about Plastic

Man. You just look at him and you like

him. I don't know what it is about him.

The minute I first saw him, I thought,

what a neat. character. Just something

about the the ability to be

anything, to be the ultimate shape

shifter, trickster. Also the

shades. The shades are just cool.