CBR Plastic Man: RUBBER BANDITS

Hey gang! Remember Plastic Man's previous review?
Well, here's the follow-up~

Comic title: Plastic Man vol. 2: Rubber Bandits
Art and writing by Kyle Baker

Published by DC Comics
From 2006
Lineup Plastic Man
Format: Trade paperback containing Plastic Man Vol. 4 issues #8-11 and #13-14

This here's the second and last Plastic Man collected TPB containing most of the rest of Kyle Baker's Plastic Man 2000s on-going series.

The Plas-gang is all back and ready for some more Plastic-action!

Still written and drawn by Kyle Baker, this second collection doesn't contain a big on-going larger overall plot. Instead Kyle Baker, after havin' redone and told Plastic Man's origins and motivations, moved on simpler fun.
His characters were all defined in the earlier part of the series, now it's time to have fun with this little family!

The book is mainly composed of two smaller arcs and some one shots, which ran the rest of the issues before the book was sadly canceled...

Plastic Man lives now with his little family, Woozy Winks, his trusty sidekick, and Agent Morgan, his gal-pal/ex-love.

The book is, like Vol. 1, drawn in Kyle Baker's very unique cartoony artstyle, which really works well with Plastic Man's powers anyway!
The dialogues and rythme, in one word, perfect~

Kyle Baker's all new improved Plastic-kids!

The main so called "plot" is this new book main's arc.
This time Plas' plays around with DC continuity - yep. Time travels, wreckin' havoc into the timeline, etc...
Plastic Man finds out he's got a son he never heard off...
(no, it's not Plastic's current son, Offspring, but another other different kid...but I can't tell you more if you don't wanna be spoiled, there's a little twist ending~)

Then some investigation/homeland security hijinks, where in one of those tales Plastic Man and Agent Morgan find vampires...and end up with adopting a new character/sidekick, a Goth teenage daughter, Edwina.

And after that, battling crimes, mice, illegal music download... It's just one shots and random little fun stories for the gang~

Where else would you see Abraham Lincoln kickin' so much ass?!? 

And superheroes tryin' to kill the guy?!? (you know, to correct the timeline, or somethin')

Kyle Baker really loves these characters, be it Plastic Man and Woozy, or his all original cast. And it shows!

He's really having fun in the little short stories. Though it's kinda sad there isn't a big epic storyline as in issues #1 to 6!
Anyway, it's great, it's fun, it's quite gorgeous to look at.... The "story" itself may appear as a simplistic random cartoon...but it's so much fun!!
Baker won an Eisner Award for this series afterall!

Plastic Man is such an entertaining character to explore, be it character-wise or just artistically.

Overall, a pretty fun book!
If you picked up Vol. 1, chance is you'll love this as well!
Check it out!

But I do have some problems, not with the issues themselves but with the 'trade.

The filler issues done by artist/cartoonist Scott Morse, Plastic Man #7 and 12, weren't included in the TPB...
Nor were all the final issues, Plastic Man #15 to 20. Considered "one shots" madness, just before the drastic cancellation. (my hypothesis? bad marketing. not enough people knew about this book!!)
This includes a quite epic story from Plastic Man that made fun about DC's universe... oh well...

As far as the story goes, it's a great compilation! The follow-up to vol. 1 "On the Lam!" and some one-shots (some issues not included sadly...) but not as epic and clever as the previous story.

Take this as a little "supplement" to an already great Plastic Man series!

I give it:

  2 / 3 Plastic-trophies!