As I am very much a day-tripper in the comics universe, it took me a second to actually appreciate Jack Cole's Plastic Man. At first blink, the story seemed unremarkable, another victim of a tragic coincidence turned science miracle, tirelessly pursuing his moral quest accompanied by his goofy sidekick, Woozy Winks. With his unparalleled stretching abilities, the watchful eye of the FBI and big ol' helping of Deus Ex Machina, Plastic Man tracks down and destroys the bad guys one action packed panel at a time. At least, that's what I thought...
...until I saw this panel. Geez, Plastic Man, is that really necessary?
After viewing this and subsequent, equally violent panels, I was startled into an awareness a potential rift in the perception of justice, between I, the modern reader, and the theoretical audience for whom the work was published. Basically, I'm used to a code of honor, which not only includes defending and protecting those innocents in danger, but also taking the high road when it comes to punishing the wicked. It might be okay to lock the villain up in Arkham, but you wouldn't see Batman pump a guy full of gas, not in 2009 anyways.
My limited exposure to the genre forces me to wonder if the violence displayed and seemingly condoned throughout the series is a product of Plastic Man's atypical arrival to the superhero pantheon (he used to be a hardened criminal, but was reformed by monks, post acid-bath) or a symptom of a society where pacifism is synonymous with weakness, instead of moral fortitude. Perhaps Plastic Man's proclivity for violence, the reason I have trouble identifying with the character as a legitimate superhero, is what made him a capable and admirable protector in 1955.
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