Police Comics #72

Police Comics #72 (November 1947) poses a deliciously absurd question right on the cover: "Is Plastic Man Prey for Mr. Cat?" Jack Cole's cover art answers with pure comic chaos — a hapless patient (Plastic Man himself, stretched flat on an operating table) is being "treated" by a masked doctor wielding a bottle of tire cement and a pump, a red-haired nurse standing nearby with a blowout patch kit at the ready, while a rotund, polka-dotted villain gleefully looks on. It's a wonderfully inventive gag that turns a villain's scheme into a rubber-patching nightmare, and it captures exactly the kind of playful, anything-goes energy that made Quality Comics' flagship anthology such a delight in the Golden Age.