Reclaiming History: Jack Cole's Plastic Man

Welcome to a new installment of Reclaiming History, an ongoing series where the Comics Cube! tries to balance out what the history books say and what actually happened! Click here for the archive!

Today, I talk about Jack Cole and Plastic Man!

So whenever I've written one of these Reclaiming History pieces, it's always been driven by a feeling of need. Whether it's Dave Gibbons' contribution to Watchmen or the careers of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Roger Stern or the greatness that is Carl Barks, they all share one common link: they're all things that I think more people should know about.

Until recently, I never thought I'd feel the need to write this article. An article about Jack Cole, maybe, but of his most famous creation, Plastic Man? I didn't think there'd ever be a need. Plas is a true comics icon, someone who even my non-comics-reading coworkers know about. Or, at least, the ones older than me do. See, one of them recently made a crack about Plastic Man, which sent a younger coworker laughing, because she thought that the older coworker totally made that name up. Intrigued, I asked another coworker, also older than me, if she knew who Plastic Man was, and she talked a bit about how much she loved the old cartoon with Plastic Baby. The age gap between the oldest coworker and the youngest is just about 10 years. That's not a huge gap, all things considered, so it's pretty indicative of how quickly perceptions change.

Comic Book Glossary: Bleed

Welcome to a new installment of Comic Book Glossary! One of the aims of the Comics Cube! has always been to help out the newer readers who may be interested in, but aren't all that knowledgeable in comics, and one thing everyone needs to know if they're interested are the terms. Click here for the index!

Today's word is "bleed," and that's a general term in the print industry. In comics, it basically means when a drawing isn't contained by panel borders and "bleeds" out to the rest of the page. A bleed has several applications. Sometimes it's just used for a splash page.

Sometimes it's used when a sequence is taking place "behind" the panels on the page.

And sometimes it's used just for one panel.

But the effect is almost always the same: it's about involving the reader. Scott McCloud states in Making Comics that bleeds can open up a scene not just because it has more space, but because since we're so conditioned to treat panels as windows, if we can't see the frames, then it means we're through the window and into the world beyond it. In a way, it's kind of like zooming in without actually having to zoom in.

It's particularly effective when used in establishing shots.

All examples for this piece are from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns!