Plastic Man's Failed Pilot

Animated Discussions
by Rudy Panucci and Melanie Larch

You may remember Plastic Man from the wretched Ruby-Spears animated cartoon of the 1980s, but the character is actually one of the greatest comic-book creations of all time. Created by the genius, Jack Cole, Plastic Man has been celebrated in a book by Pulitzer-prize winner Art Speigelman, and stars in a series of DC Comics Archives which sell quite well despite their fiffty-dollar price tag.

Heidi MacD0nald has an embedded movie clip in her blog, The Beat, so you can see how close we came to getting a top-notch Plastic Man cartoon that was worthy of the history of the comic book. You can see it here. Heidi's blog is one of our everyday stops, and is an invaluable source of comics industry information.

Cartoon Network passed on this show, another in a long line of moronic decisions that CN has made concerning cartoons based on properties owned by their sister company, DC Comics. The show was developed by Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob Squarepants, and was designed and storyboarded by Stephen DeStefano, who drew Popeye on the Spinach package that Rudy wrote about here.