Plastic Man No More! #2
Chad Burdette
Recap
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.
Comic Watch Review: Plastic Man No More #1: It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
The Justice League won’t listen to him, his wife and kid want nothing to do with him… but Plastic Man doesn’t need a single one of them to pull off his grand plan to cheat death. And it all starts with, uh… kidnapping the Metal Men.
It’s for a good cause! He swears!
Review
Plastic Man No More! #2 begins on a lighter note as Plas meets Metamorpho, who like Eel can manipulate his body but in a different manner. The scene turns awkward quickly as Rex is written as his usual no-nonsense self and not much in to Eel’s attempts at comic relief, which effect how Plas feels about his place in the League.
Back in the present, Eel and Woozy are working on how they can cause the explosion that Wayne Foundation chemist believes could save Eel and more importantly to Plas, prevent something similar from happening to his son.
The plan is to “rescue” the Metal Man Uranium who has already been kidnapped. Plas justifies using the Metal Man saying that he can’t really die since Magnus can just reconstruct him setting up a Does The End Justify The Means scenario.
Cantwell also gives some heartfelt moments as the chemist tells Eel how she lost her daughter and asking if she did everything she could to save her, then in the next pages saying that she won’t actually go through with the nuclear blast that could save Eel and his son. Plas calls her out saying it’s about saving his son not him which seems to change her mind. The second instance is when Tim Drake finds Eel’s boy who is trying to come to terms with the encounter he had with his dad last issue. The moment between the two felt genuine, not forced
As Plas, Woozy,and the Metal Men arrive to rescue Uranium things go horribly wrong, the ramifications of which will probably be revealed next issue.
The artwork by Lins & Edgar’s continues to be stellar especially the sequence with Edgar’s clean-lined panels of the Justice League and Lin’s splash page of O’Brian all melted and struggling to keep himself together as he sneezes then cutting back to Edgar’s clean art without missing a beat.
The only thing that didn’t work was the repeated disembodied heads in conversation, once would have been okay but multiple times doing it breaks the flow of the story and became distracting.
Final Thoughts
The second installment of Plastic Man No More! Continues to show the lengths Eel is willing to go to in an effort to save his son.
The story continues to get darker, which for the most part works in favor of the issue, but it is odd and unsettling to see Eel in this frame of mind and seems a happy conclusion a far off thing.
Plastic Man No More! #2
- Writing - 9/109/10
- Storyline - 9/109/10
- Art - 9/109/10
- Color - 10/1010/10
- Cover Art - 10/1010/10
