Plastic Man: Rubber Bandits
Comically shape-shifting Plastic Man is one of the most fondly remembered 1940s comic-book creations, and his creator, Jack Cole, one of the superhero genre's most highly regarded artists. So any contemporary revival of the character has some mighty big spandex tights to fill. Baker succeeds by recasting Plas in his own idiosyncratic, animation-derived style. His broadly cartoonish drawings well suit the nonstop zaniness of his stories. In his hands, Plas morphs from mock-heroic to buffoonish in the space of a single panel, and in this book Baker extends the same treatment to Superman, Batman, and other straight-laced superheroes. He has Plas face perils that even the wildly imaginative Cole could not conceive as the pliable crimefighter confronts Homeland Security, tackles illegal music downloading, adopts a surly goth adolescent daughter, and--most perilous of all--faces a librarian who refuses to hand over records ("Your scare tactics won't work on me! I'm too well-read!"). Cole's version remains definitive, but it's no stretch to say that Baker's validly reinvents Plas for a new, freer-wheeling era.Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved