Just how far will Plastic Man go to save his son’s life? Find out in this review of Plastic Man No More! #3
Plastic Man No More! #3
Writer: Christopher Cantwell
Art: Alex Lins and Jacob Edgar
Main Cover: Alex Lins
Variant Covers: Martin Morazzo
Release Date: November 6, 2024
Plastic Man No More! #3 kicks off as Plastic Man has made his bed and must now lay in it! When interrogated about his role in the botched rescue of the Metal Men’s Uranium (a dirtbag with all the best laugh lines), Patrick O’Brian finally pushes back against the Justice League’s impudence and quits the team. The last issue–the midpoint of the four-part DC Black Label limited series–saw Plastic Man enter new, uncharted territory. Now, at his darkest hour, Plastic Man must cope with the consequences of the path he’s chosen.
To save himself and his son, Plastic Man goes from bad to worse. At the end of the last issue, a morally grey plan to incapacitate the Metal Men goes south, leading to their untimely demise. Although it was an accident, and one that weighed heavily on Patrick, it hasn’t stopped him from continuing with his plan of action: nuke Mammoth City and get his powers back. But as he gets closer to his goal, the line between moral and necessary becomes blurred. Working with the evil Dr. No-Face, kidnapping Uranium, lying and drugging his son – these actions hardly represent a so-called reformed career criminal. Ultimately, the path narrows, and an ally is caught in the crossfire. How many will die so that he may live?
Series writer Christopher Cantwell pens Plastic Man No More! #3 with painstaking tension, pulling the rubber as far as it will stretch, and then some. Reading consecutive issues feels like walking the plank of a pirate ship – each wobbly step closer and closer to an inevitable plummet into the depths below. Plastic Man’s drastic actions, arguably justified by such high stakes, still feel akin to an indebted gambler seeking one good hand to get even.
Artist Alex Lins’ portrayal of the dark, grody setting carries that tension, instigating a fight-or-flight reaction. With Plastic Man’s quickly deteriorating condition, his limbs and skin are drawn with more grotesquerie. As the ensemble builds in size, Lins employs a clever technique to control audience attention and streamline his own workflow: leaving the “camera” angle as is and only changing the position of the characters within that frame means fewer panels to map out a scene, and fewer backdrops to draw.
As mentioned in our previous review, Plastic Man No More! #3 utilizes the work of two artists, cleverly dividing the yin and yang worlds of Patrick O’Brian. Jacob Edgar’s old-school, cartoony depictions of the unreliable Justice League offer a reprieve from the main plotline – a welcome breath as Patrick digs himself deeper into trouble. Subtle characterizations (eg. Flash chowing down on fast food at an important league meeting) are cute distractions that remind us of the tone of ordinary Plastic Man comics.
Sometimes Plastic Man No More! can verge on redundancy; there’s a delicate balance between fixating on character relationships and retreading the same emotional ground. The saving grace is that this flaw only means getting more of what we already know we like: the troubled dynamic between Patrick and his son, Luke. Perhaps this series is no more guilty of repetition than any other, but with such a short run, readers are likely to have déjà vu.
All the same, Plastic Man No More! #3 is a fun, grungy, low-issue investment addition to your pull list. Catch up on the limited series now before its climactic finale this December!
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