DC Forum Appreciation Thread rules:
1) No negative comments about the honoree of this thread. It's an appreciation thread, not a non-appreciation one.
2) No negative discussion about any competitors of the honoree of this thread (i.e. John Stewart in the Hal Jordan thread). No ifs, ands, or buts. Find another non-appreciation thread to do that, just not here.
3) No negative comments about other versions of the character. For example, if you like the DCU version of Cyborg, but hate the DCnU version (or visa versa), just appreciate the earlier version and keep your comments about the latter to yourself.
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"Eyow! It's Plastic Man"
All appreciation for the India Rubber Man is welcome here! In the '40s cartoonist Jack Cole was tasked to create a new costumed crime fighter, since they'd become insanely popular (still pretty popular, really). Like most of the heroes back them, Jack was expected to churn out a low-grade ripoff of one of the medium's already popular initial heroes. In this case, he was supposed to create something a bit like Will Eisner's The Spirit. Cole retained the colorful superheroics and the grittiness of the then popular gangster genre, but added something of his own - an absolutely insane comic sensibility best represented by the limitless shape-shifting forms of the pliable title character, who stretched (ha!) the boundaries of comic art!