Plastic Man #19

Title: Plastic Man
Issue: #19
Date: September 1977
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: John Albano
Art: Ramona Fradon, Bob Smith
Colorist: Liz Berube

Plastic Man and his buddy Woozy are cleaning up the city streets when they rescue a young "98-pound weakling" from a gang of thugs. But when "Mouse", the local wimp, has a close encounter with a flying saucer (two flying saucers, actually), he ends up with temporary superpowers that could make Plastic Man look and feel like a has-been. This was played mostly for laughs, and it generally worked, particularly in comedic-Shakespearian ending. I also really liked the attention to detail in the artwork. The art team of Fradon and Smith manage to put Woozy into multiple panel backgrounds before he actually gets close enough to the action to get a speaking part, and they even incorporate tiny subplots involving stray dogs and cats for those paying attention. The actions of the aliens make little sense as they zap Mouse with some kind of stun ray that just happens to have a superpower-granting side effect, and the only significant female character in the book is depicted and shallow and treacherous (but lovely, of course), but this story does succeed at being a decent little bit of self-contained comedy.

Rating: 6.5/10