Inker: Joe Prado
Colorist: Marcelo Maiolo
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
Review: Will Dubbeld
My tempestuous, on-again, off-again comic book lover: unnecessarily complex and infuriating yet always drawing me back into a torrid affair.
Once again, DC swings for the fences with their Metal event and follows up with several spinoff books.
Most of them look like post-Image/Wildstorm derivative drek but a couple titles caught my eye, chiefly The Terrifics.
Throwing Plastic Man into a funnybook is nearly a guaranteed purchase on my part...
In the interest of full transparency I haven’t finished reading Metal, the lead-in series, so I’ve had to fill in some blanks with the power of imagination and some web sources.
And to be perfectly fair, as Scott Snyder is wont to do, Metal was a fantastic idea that got stretched really thin and probably ended much worse than it started.
Regardless, there was no way I was turning down a Plastic Man comic.
Especially one featuring Metamorpho.
I know the book’s angle presents Mr. Terrific as the focal character, but my power of belief can skew that focus towards Plas.
And Metamorpho.
Golden Age Plastic Man stories via Jack Cole sparked my love for Eel O’Brian and Aparo & Barr introduced me to Metamorpho via the beloved Batman & the Outsiders book. I’m fine with DC’s storied tradition of legacy characters, but I never really warmed up to Mr. Terrific.
His lackluster, throwaway role in the OMAC Project was my first introduction to the character and may have done him a disservice but, nevertheless, here we are.
Hey, Metamorpho, though...
Heads up, spoiler territory looms ahead...
Metal introduces the concept of the Dark Multiverse to the DC cosmology, a sort of evil flipside to the regular DCU. Between Challenger Mountain plopping down in the middle of Gotham City, an evil demon bat-god named Barbatos, and the reintroduction of Hawkman (whose origin, I’m sure, won’t be convoluted in the least...), Metal featured Plastic Man locked in an egg-shaped mass like so much Silly Putty.
Secret weapon Silly Putty.
Out of the gate, we’re treated to some classic DC faces as Mr. Terrific shows up at Stagg Industries to pick a bone or two with the businessman.
Terrific has a verbal row with Java, Stagg’s manservant/unfrozen caveman, before discovering Simon has plunged Metamorpho into the Dark Multiverse.
Sapphire Stagg, Simon’s lovely daughter and Metamorpho love interest, does some pearl-clutching, and we’re soon off to the Dark Multiverse.
This is an incredibly fun book, ladies and gentlemen. Upon reaching the Dark Multiverse, Plas swallows the rest of the team and serves as a vessel before the team discovers what appears to be a giant, dead god floating in the æther.
I expect Githyanki pirates will soon attack...
The final team member is picked up on this floating corpse, and it’s revealed to be Phantom Girl.
Normally I cannot stand the Legion of Superheroes, but I’ll let ‘em slide here and there...
Phantom Girl is not named as such in this issue, but she’s from the same planet as the original and shares a surname.
Perhaps she’s the great, great, great, etc grandmother of the 30th Century Phantom Girl.
Unanswered questions abound, and I’ve seen some amazingly unkind reviews about this book because of said questions.
Evidently readers are extraordinarily entitled these days and want every bit neatly answered with exposition in the first issue.
To this I say, “Fuck ‘em.”
It rather seems like this spoiled class of reader doesn’t understand the concept of graphic sequential storytelling.
Wait for the story to unfold, you brats. The writer will answer questions and explain everything eventually.
It’s how storytelling works.
It probably will not all happen in the first 22 pages of the series.
Aaaaaanyway...
A hologram of Tom Strong appears in the last bit, and here’s where I made my, “poo poo”, face.
Tom Strong, for the unawares, is an Alan Moore creation first appearing in his own comic from the Wildstorm line. The ABC imprint, for the persnickety detail-purists. Tom is a super-scientist on a parallel earth and is part tribute/part send-up to the Pulps of yore. He’s a Doc Savage-style super scientist with a checklist of Pulp tropes and cliches worth reading.
Worth reading in his own goddamn self-contained world.
I know DC has allllllllll of these proprietary characters but that doesn’t mean they have to cram all of them into a single narrative. Lookin’ at you, Watchmen...
That foible aside, this book is outstanding from top to bottom. The characters are a good mélange and it doesn’t hurt matters that two of my favorites are in the lineup. Reis, as always, absolutely slays on art detail and the rest of the rendering crew is on-point as well.
This is the DC I love. This b-grade roster of losers romping around the DCU, exploring and kicking open the door, lookin’ for trouble.
And, yes, they appear to have beat Marvel to the punch and dropped a Fantastic Four book before the House of Ideas could get one out.
1 point awarded to Distinguished Competition...
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