Plastic Man #2
Plastic Man #2 (1944) is the second solo outing for one of the Golden Age's most inventively comic superheroes — a character that, in Jack Cole's hands, was genuinely unlike anything else on newsstands: a genre-bending mix of slapstick, absurdist villainy, and elastic visual invention that predated the humor-superhero formula by decades. As only the second issue of Plastic Man's own title, it helped establish that the character's appeal could sustain a dedicated series beyond his Police Comics home, directly contributing to the long run that followed. Plastic Man's cultural reach was such that he was among a tiny handful of Quality Comics characters substantial enough to be parodied in EC's Mad magazine, placing him alongside Superman and Batman in the pop-culture firmament of the era. The issue's stories have been reprinted across multiple archival editions spanning five decades, confirming their enduring place in Golden Age scholarship.
In "The Gay Nineties Nightmare," Plastic Man faces off against a bizarre new foe when Fargo Freddie, after a volcanic mishap, is transformed into Lava Man by a mysterious 500-year-old wanderer. With Jack Cole’s dynamic art and storytelling on full display, this 1944 classic blends surreal humor and inventive action in a tale where shape-shifting meets molten mayhem. Cover by Jack Cole.
Plastic Man and Woozy Winks track the dangerous Slade brothers to their hideout in No Place, a lost city frozen in the Gay Nineties that vanished from all maps fifty years ago when a census-taker misplaced its records. When the crooks slip away to the forgotten town, Plastic Man must infiltrate a community that despises outsiders and is completely unprepared for modern crime—with the Slade brothers already working to exploit them from within.
In "The Lava Man," Fargo Freddie's ill-fated plunge into a volcano leads to an unexpected transformation when he encounters a 500-year-old man who teaches him to become living lava. As Lava Man, he escapes Plastic Man’s grasp, but his fiery form proves vulnerable when it cools and hardens.
Plastic Man is summoned to the mysterious village of Coroner's Corners, where an entire town has gone berserk—and every F.B.I. agent sent to investigate has been driven insane. Accompanied by his hapless partner Woozy Winks, Plastic Man must track down the one sane person left in this cockamamie community and uncover what force is behind the madness before he and Woozy fall victim to it themselves.
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Like the preceding issue, Plastic Man #2 was not printed in-house by Quality Comics but was instead subcontracted to Vital Publications, Inc. (a division of book publisher Wm. C. Popper & Co.), almost certainly because WWII paper rationing made it more cost-efficient for Quality to use a sub-contractor's paper allocation rather than sacrifice pages from its regular monthly periodicals. The issue's indicia credits the copyright to Vital Publications and even notes manufacture 'under wartime conditions in full compliance with all orders and regulations of the War Production Board.' All scripts and art are by Jack Cole, with George Brenner listed tentatively by the Grand Comics Database as associate editor for the Plastic Man title during 1944. Neither issue carries a printed issue number on its cover or indicia — they are designated #1 and #2 retroactively by collectors and databases.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published August 1944 by Vital Publications, Inc. (subcontractor for Quality Comics / Comic Magazines); cover-dated and on-sale August 1, 1944.
- All interior scripts and art by Jack Cole — every story in the 60-page issue is a Cole solo production.
- Contains four stories: 'The Gay Nineties Nightmare,' 'Who's Who' (a.k.a. 'The Man Who Could Switch Bodies'), 'The Lava Man,' and 'Welcome to Coroner's Corners!'
- First appearances of several Cole-created villains: Elmer Body (body-switching villain), the Lava Man (Fargo Freddie), Slimy/Slippery/Slinky Slade, and Dr. Dewey Ditt.
- The issue carries no printed issue number; it is designated '#2' retroactively, as both early solo issues were originally conceived and copyrighted as stand-alone publications rather than a numbered periodical series.
- The book explicitly bears a War Production Board compliance notice on its inside back cover, a rare surviving document of wartime publishing constraints.
- Reprinted in: Flashback #33 (DynaPubs Enterprises, 1970s); Comic Reprints (Nostalgia, Inc., c. 1975); DC Archive Editions: Plastic Man Archives Vol. 3 (2001); Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits (Chronicle Books, 2001); DC Finest: Plastic Man — The Origin of Plastic Man (DC, May 2025).
- George Brenner is listed tentatively by the Grand Comics Database as associate editor for the Plastic Man title at Quality Comics in 1944, though the GCD notation carries a question mark indicating uncertainty.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Comic Reprints #[11] (1975), Flashback #33 (1976), The Comics Journal #191 (1996), Great American Comic Books #[nn] (2001), Jack Cole and Plastic Man Forms Stretched to Their Limits #[nn] (2001), Plastic Man Archives #3 (2002), PS Artbooks Softee: Plastic Man #1 (2022), DC Finest: Plastic Man: The Origin of Plastic Man #[nn] (2025)
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