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Well, this is an odd one.
Plastic Man has been hanging around in the
JLA for some years now, playing the well-established role of
comic relief. Everyone stands around being alarmed by
the prospect of Earth being eaten by a mutant star goat, and
then Plastic Man lightens the mood by turning into a lampshade
or a spacehopper. The world is saved.
Now Kyle Baker is reviving the Plastic
Man solo title. However, he's taking a very
different approach. This time round, Plastic Man's
entire world is every bit as ridiculous as he is. If
anything, he's fairly normal in comparison. Instead of
bringing chaos into a normal world, Plastic Man has a more
conventional hero role when you put him in the context of a
world full of total idiots.
It doesn't really work. By putting
Plastic Man in a world which is already distorted and nuts to
start with, you remove a large part of the point. He
ends up looking pretty much like everyone else, which surely
shouldn't happen when you're dealing with such a strikingly
visual character.
Baker also seems a little uncertain about
the sort of story he's telling. On the one hand, Plastic
Man appears to occupy a world populated exclusively by the
intellectually retarded. Loveably dimwitted bankrobbers
hatch bizarre schemes where they disguise themselves as babies
for no discernible reason. Sidekick Woozy Winks staggers
around purposelessly, turning up at one scene on the basis
that "I forgot where I live, so I was wandering around."
All of this is meant to be funny and
positions the setting as a fundamentally ludicrous world.
On the other hand, Baker sets up a seemingly straight plot
about Plastic Man's civilian identity being framed for murder,
and has him angsting about his criminal past in a way that's
only partially played for laughs. ("Please don't let me
dream tonight.")
Of course, this is predominantly a comedy
book, and it would get past all of these problems if it were
actually funny. And it's... well, it's mildly amusing.
There are some decent gags - strangely, most of them verbal.
But visually, it falls kind of flat. It wants to be
anarchically over the top, but it never quite gets off the
ground.
A bit of a misfire.
Rating: C-
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