In late 1966, DC Comics editors must have thought that reviving Plastic Man would be a sure bet.
After all, Jack Cole’s iconic, comic superhero — who hadn’t been seen in 10 years — must have seemed perfectly positioned to echo the camp attitude of the Batman TV show, which had debuted to surprise hit ratings that January.
But that overlooked the fact that while the arch tone of the TV show may have appealed to some critics, most actual readers of superhero comics didn’t care to see their champions parodied. Camp would prove to be a blind alley in the comic books.
And much as I love Gil Kane’s art, I recall thinking at the time that the title was straining for humor. That’s never a way to get laughs.
“They took their cue from Cole’s version, but it wasn't as funny as Cole had made it, and disappeared in less than two years,” comics historian Don Markstein observed.
It didn’t help that a knock-off villain version of Plastic Man appeared with M.F. Enterprises knock-off version of Captain Marvel in Captain Marvel 1 (April 1966). Some sensible lawyer must have intervened, because his name was changed to Elasticman in issue 2 (June 1966).
Nor was Plastic Man the only superhero parody DC published that month. The Inferior Five were having their tryout run in Showcase, and Batman and Robin guest-starred in Jerry Lewis. And what, after all, could Wonder Woman’s villain Egg Fu be but the most leaden kind of parody?
The era was dominated by TV star Batman, who appeared on six of the 28 covers DC published that month — seven if you want to count Catwoman and the Penguin showing up on the cover of Lois Lane. And comics were evolving, symbolized by the fact that the character who had kick-started the Silver Age, the Flash, finally married his long-time fiancé Iris West that same month.
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