Plastic Man

Small-time crook Patrick 'Eel' O'Brian was shot during a warehouse robbery and doused with an unknown chemical acid. The substance mutated his body, granting him limitless elasticity and shapeshifting ability — a second chance that inspired him to abandon crime and fight for the law instead.

Few characters can claim a Golden Age debut and still be stretching their way through comics more than eight decades later, but Plastic Man is exactly that kind of enduring original — born in the pages of Police Comics #1 in 1941, created by Vern Henkel, and still going strong into the 2020s across 232 catalogued appearances. He's built a home across Police Comics, his own self-titled series, and the prestige pages of JLA, where he shares adventures with the absolute cream of the DC universe — Superman, Batman, The Flash, and the alter egos Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent among them. With seven key issues to his name, collectors have long recognized that this malleable Golden Age original carries real significance in the DC canon, and any fan who hasn't dipped into his remarkable run is in for a treat.