Christopher Cantwell vehemently declares 'Plastic Man No More!' • AIPT (2024)

Writing a story about a character isn’t just an act of love and devotion — it’s a great way to work out some complicated feelings.

“I was really freaked out by him because his powers are so…I know they seem very simple, but they’re also quite bizarre,” said Christopher Cantwell, writer of the forthcoming four-issue series Plastic Man No More! “When I was a kid, he was this silly character, right? Like, I remember him in the cartoons and he shows up in Super Friends and he gets a mouse out of a computer terminal by stretching his hand into it and saving the mouse’s life. And he’s always got the wisecracks.”

It’s a relationship made all the intricate and involved because Cantwell already wrote about one stretching hero in Fantastic Four: Road Trip (alongside artist Filipe Andrade). That book, it seems, only brought home the true oddness of Plastic Man.

“There’s something about Plastic Man that freaks me out,” said Cantwell. “I don’t know why him over Mr. Fantastic. And Reed [in Road Trip] was melting and dripping in a similar way, but that was more because…their cells got f*cked up, I’ll put it that way. And that was what I used to imagine as a kid and it freaked me out.”

Luckily, Cantwell said that Road Trip also “cracked open this idea for Plastic Man for me, where it was a guy who has never been taken seriously and we play that out in the world.” What we get, ultimately, is something that takes the silliness inherent to Plastic Man (and maybe those other complex feelings) and tries to lay the jokester totally bare.

“But with Plastic Man, I thought what was interesting was, as opposed to Reed Richards, who has this brilliant genius and the smartest person perhaps in the Marvel universe, Patrick ‘Eel’ O’Brien is this low-life criminal who had this accident and ends up with similar powers,” said Cantwell. “I like characters like that, where you can suddenly take them to a darker, deeper place. I always imagined there’s been some dark stuff with Plastic Man.”

But don’t for one second think that Plastic Man No More! (issue #1 is out September 4) is something of a fairy tale for good ol’ Eel. Rather, after an unspecified accident causes his powers to starting breaking down, Plastic Man is forced to reconcile with the very arc of his life.

“I think that what was interesting to me was what is it like for a guy like that — who is not even really human anymore — what does it mean for them to die,” said Cantwell. “Or, what does it mean to really face their own mortality?”

Cantwell added, “I have these preoccupations with superhero’s powers where, you know, your greatest strength can also be your flaw. Like, what happens when your powers take a wrong turn? And I know I did that somewhat in the Fantastic Four annual, and it was a lot of fun, but that was really an external thing that they could solve. This book, we were allowed to really lean into. No, it’s an irreversible damage, you know, unless we do something drastic. And when you’re forced to do something drastic out of desperation, what does that mean in terms of your bad decisions? And especially if you’re a criminal in the past, are you falling back in terms of your base or impulse? So that was really interesting to me.”

But just because Plastic Man may be dying doesn’t mean that it’s all bad. While he’s very much interested in Plastic Man’s ending, Cantwell said the book also builds on his life and background to flesh the character out in a way that he hasn’t received in the past.

“There are enough elements in what some of the DC writers built…of his modest screw-up past,” said Cantwell. “And so we never really had much to stand on in terms of before he became Plastic Man. So, if anything, Plastic Man is an attempt to be more than what he was. What we get to do is in some of the flashbacks before he was Plastic Man — we get to see through the reader’s eyes and that there’s a lot roiling in this guy to make him a thief and make him a crook and what he’s actually after. Even if in the moment he’s got jokes aplenty and seems to be fine with his actions, we might be looking at it and going, ‘Dang.'”

It’s also very much about his relationships with other people — not just those in the superhero community but his family (ex-wife Angel and son Luke, who has operated as the hero Offspring).

“I think the jury’s out on if he really succeeded as a real hero that can be someone that’s lauded by everyone else,” said Cantwell. “He’s not Batman and he’s not Superman. And so what also has been baked into his backstory, and the huge part of this book, is his broken family life and relationship with Angel and his son.”

And that family stuff is essential — so much of Plastic Man’s story here is the very specific acts that he’s inflicted on his loved ones.

“It’s more that he just wasn’t there for Luke and Angel,” said Cantwell. “He hasn’t really supported them in a way, right? It wasn’t like he ever acted out of malice; he just acted out of neglect. So there are sins at play in the character, but he does have compassion for them and he does have love for them. He just was really bad at expressing it. And he made some really selfish choices in the past, and so now he’s reflecting on that and he’s going, ‘My God.'”

The stuff with Luke, though, may prove especially interesting as a springboard to some larger ideas.

“It’s really the hinge point of his relationship with Luke, where he’s just going about his life and then suddenly there’s this terrible realization that it all might be coming to an end,” said Cantwell. “And it’s forcing this referendum on who he is as a hero, who he is as a person, who he is as a friend, who he is as a father, who he is as a husband, who he is as a team member, all those things are suddenly coming to a head in a guy that never gave much of that a real thought. He just didn’t put a lot of thought into any of those relationships up until now. And now it’s a little too late.”

Yet it goes even deeper still. Plastic Man No More! is also very much about something deeper for our wise-cracking hero: was he actually poisoned goods all along?

“A major thing at play in this book is that, yes, something catalyzes what’s going on with him, but he starts to realize and become afraid of how this may just be an acceleration of an eventuality of what happened to him,” said Cantwell. “Like, this accident gave him these powers for a time, but eventually he was going to break down, right? And so now he’s worried that the same thing is going to happen in Luke and that he passed it on genetically. So in a way it’s like, ‘I don’t want you to be like me. I don’t want you to end up like me.'”

Cantwell added, “And Plastic Man, he has a winsome smile for everything and he’s got the self-defense mechanism joke ready to go. And, yes, he’s actually legitimately very funny, but what is that covering up? What insecurities have always been there since the beginning in him? And what does he worry about in terms of those insecurities that he’s passed on to his son, right? Not just maybe cellular degeneration, but what flaws and weaknesses has he given his kids?”

And in breaking down and dissecting Plastic Man’s life, Cantwell — alongside artists Jacob Edgar and Alex Lins, colorist Marcelo Maiolo, and letter Becca Carey — also gets to play around with genres. But any artistic exploration is ultimately in the name of delving as deep as we can into Plastic Man’s extra bouncy core.

“I will say that in terms of tone…it was funny that DC called it hard-boiled, I guess it is,” said Cantwell. “Some of the structure, in terms of what the characters do, reminds me of the movie Blood Simple, where there’s some of desperate choices, or ‘can we get away with this,’ but then it just snowballs and it grows out of their control. That’s really where this story is headed. So in that way, it is hard-boiled. But it’s very much true to the Plastic Man tone. He still gets to be funny, but I think there are moments in the book that are what happens with Plastic Man when the jokes stop. And what does that look like? And what do you feel? And what is he forced to reckon?”

And you can’t touch on the story of melting plastic human without offering up a little body horror. Again, though, it’s about exploring larger ideas than just watching Plastic Man dissolve in front of our very eyes.

“It’s something that’s really interesting to me as a technique, especially in comics, just because I do feel artists can render something that is horrific and beautiful at the same time where you can’t stop looking at it, even if it’s terrifying,” said Cantwell. “And I think that in the Fantastic Four book, it was like, ‘What if we took these people who are the most celebrated heroes on Earth…and now suddenly they’re freaks?’ Because in a way they look at themselves suddenly in that house over that course of that day and go, ‘We’ve kind of always been freaks.’ Because I think anybody can look at themselves and on a certain day at a certain time go, ‘I am a freak. I feel like I don’t fit in.’ What is actually roiling underneath the surface? Like, ‘I smile and order this coffee and I go over here and I have this business meeting and I check my bank account and I go to bed at a decent hour, but inside I am a freak.’ I feel that way a lot.”

To help balance these multifaceted ideas, Plastic Man No More! sees Lins and Edgar taking two different approaches.

“Alex is doing the more internal story, which is how Plastic Man is falling apart and depolymerizing,” said Cantwell. “But the Justice League pages, which are all through the perspective of the Justice League, Jacob has done those pages. They’re very Darwin Cook-esque.”

Both of those styles help facilitate the very diverse needs of Plastic Man in this book. The body horror, for instance, is about drawing out the raw emotion of it all.

“Alex is able to show the heartbreak and the humanity in the characters just as much as he leans into some of the twisted and warped nature of it,” said Cantwell. “And I think some of the horrific imagery that Alex does is almost more beautiful and emotionally evocative than some of the cleaner lines. I joke with Alex that he’s like if Bill Watterson was possessed by the devil. I feel like that’s how he draws, where there’s like an innocence to his art even if somebody is like coming apart at the seams.”

The “cleaner” stuff from Edgar, meanwhile, still has a surprising bit of heft and a sheen of darkness.

“Jacob is starting from that place of innocence in those images,” said Cantwell. “But then we see the kind of percolating conflict inside Plastic Man as he encounters different people in the Justice League and as he’s ignored. Also, some of the reality of his progressive condition leaks into that. You get the sense that underneath that veneer of, ‘It’s all good, we’re having a good time,’ there’s almost this anger of not being taken seriously. But when people call him out on that, even in those Justice League pages, it can piss him off a little bit.”

Eventually, though, things will begin to merge and coalesce visually, and that will create something especially insightful about Plastic Man and his place in the world.

“We are in the characters’ perspectives in that world, but not with Plastic Man, and starting to see those characters legitimize him and how they make him feel, or how he makes them feel, and having them articulate that to the very clean [looking] Justice League. And that’s what…allows those worlds to blend together and become one, right? Where the outside world’s perspective becomes his perspective as well, right? And it becomes a shared perspective.”

Again, though, none of this should get you expecting happy endings or whatnot. Because if your hero you can transform into a rubber ball and literally bounce away, this level of deep personal exploration isn’t always so easy. That’s why Cantwell wants to ensure a very specific perspective about Plastic Man. It’s not just a mostly good man trying to make amends, but something more elemental still: even at his very end, Plastic Man may not be good enough to make it mean anything.

“With [Plastic Man], he’s been maybe coasting in our book,” said Cantwell. “Like, ‘I was a criminal before and I went to jail and I’m a recidivist, but now I’ve turned a corner and I’m a member of the Justice League.’ And he has helped people and he has done these things. But now he’s really full of self doubt because if his life is coming to an end, and he’s going, ‘What story have I been telling myself? What’s true and what’s not?'”

Because you can be a hero, but you still have to be a g-d human being.

“And then he ends up in the Justice League and he’s like, ‘Cool, I’m good. I’m a hero now. I have my own business card. I’m a Super Friend. I’m in the Justice League,'” said Cantwell. “And so at home, he’s like, ‘I’m tired and I don’t want to take care of the baby.’ He lets the world tell him what he is. He’s also got his own way of looking at things. He’s got those goggles-blinders on, and I don’t know if he’s really been paying attention. And now he really is forced to look at the pieces and go, ‘OK, what have I actually amounted to? Am I a net gain as a human being or a net loss? Have I hurt more people or helped more people in my life, including my family?’ When he’s already at the end of the road, it can make something quite painful.”

Plus, in pretty classic Plastic Man fashion, he thinks he somehow bend and shape his way to an easy win.

“I think he’s even taken that farther where he’s going, ‘OK, maybe I screwed up, but I can fix it all now at once, right at the end, in some big gesture, and then it’s OK.’ And it’s just not that simple,” said Cantwell. “I don’t think he has the emotional awareness to understand that — in terms of what he’s going through. So he’s like, ‘If I can just pull this off, then I’m a good dad. Then I was a hero. Then I was these things and it’s OK.’ And I think that he has to look at a truth that’s a little bit more complex in terms of what his legacy has amounted to.”

It’s because while Plastic Man may be among the most powerful heroes in the DCU, it won’t always serve him so well.

“He’s been reliant on his powers as his identity,” said Cantwell. “And so that power is now betraying him and he’s going, ‘What do I have left? And what else is there? And who am I if not this?’ And I think he is, I don’t want to give anything away, but he’s forced into a place…where he makes peace with what he needs to give others, especially these characters I’ve been talking about. Whereas forcing his will on people — ‘Let me help you. I’m going to help you’ —that is the more mature and harder decision.”

And if you doubt Cantwell’s commitment to dragging Plastic Man through the mud for his betterment, you should read his other works. Like The Blue Flame, where a blue-collar hero has to reconcile with his own past (and also how that may or may not also help save the entirety of Earth).

“In a lot of the superhero books I’ve done, and even some of the Star Trek stuff, you have characters that look at themselves and go, ‘I wasn’t good enough,'” said Cantwell. “I think that’s really at play.”

The same goes for 2019’s Doctor Doom.

“That’s a guy who had all this potential, and he’s seeing a better realized version of that potential and an alternate self that is more renowned and runs the earth and is loved and all of these things and his face isn’t messed up. He’s kind of his worst nightmare, which is a good version of himself.”

And, of course, his run on Iron Man.

‘We did this in Iron Man, where Tony wanted to be everything for everyone in our book and he just pushes himself way past his limits,” said Cantwell. “But then he gets resentful because he’s over accommodating and he ends up hurting other people.”

It’s a larger idea perhaps best represented in Blue Flame.

“Sam wants so much to be more than he is,” said Cantwell. “And is it OK that, if you’re helping people, but there’s an attrition rate that comes with that? As much as you’re helping people, who are you also hurting? Who have you turned your back on? When you choose to be a paragon, it means you have to be perfect, right? I think that there’s really that internal stress at play in all these characters.”

And while he’s not a shape-shifting hero himself, there’s something especially relevant for Cantwell about this specific chapter or iteration of Plastic Man’s life.

“I have three kids, and they’re all pretty young, but when they start to look at themselves and question themselves and wonder who they are or doubt themselves, it’s such a painful thing as a parent,” said Cantwell. “It’s where you go, ‘I remember doing that and I do it now and it’s going to eventually happen to them and they’re going to have to reckon with that, too. ‘ But I think that Plastic Man is really forced into that place, where everything up until now has been kind of glib for him.”

Because this story’s about a lot of things: broken families, half-co*cked legacies, and even what it means to be a hero when you’re clearly not built for it. But it’s also about getting older — Plastic Man’s body basically fails him, after all — and more so what we tell ourselves when we’re looking back at a life that we’re unsure was properly lived.

“We are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves,” said Cantwell. “I think there’s a line in that book that is, ‘We’re all sick with stories.’ And I think Plastic Man is examining those stories and juxtaposing them against other people’s stories about him, specifically his son and what the reality is. Where’s the truth? What is he really?”

So, what’s Plastic Man’s final story going to be? Well, once again, don’t expect Cantwell and company to be overly sentimental. But it will be a wholly honest story, and that is how you truly celebrate and honor a hero like Plastic Man.

“There’s things that I allude to in the book even about how Plastic is not really recyclable, but it’s also pointed out to him by somebody else,” said Cantwell when I asked what Plastic Man’s gravestone might look like. “I think it would probably be, ‘Plastic criminal, plastic hero, plastic husband, plastic father.’ I feel like that really sums up his worries that his whole life has just been this kind of artificial patina.”

Plastic Man No More! #1 is due out September 4 via DC Comics. (FOC is Monday, August 12.)