Written by: Doug Wagner
Art by: Daniel Hillyard
Publisher: Image
I hate to say it, but there’s a reason Plastic is a miniseries and not an ongoing epic. Well, okay there are probably a few reasons, but the big one is this thing is a one-trick pony. I like the trick, and the pony is pretty adorable as far as ponies go, but now that we’re on issue #4, I’m kind of growing tired of it.
And truth be told, it’s starting to feel gratuitous.
It isn’t that I don’t like watching Edwyn kill people in brutal, visceral ways—I do—but I guess I’m no longer afraid of him. What made the first three issues so great was I never knew when this guy was going to snap. He felt dangerous. He felt unpredictable. Now he doesn’t.
Issue #4 gives him a bit more heart, and while that goes a long way to making him likeable, it’s to his detriment. I don’t want to like the crazy sociopath who gets off on plastic and is married to a sex doll. I want him to feel like an alien, like a guy operating under orange-and-blue morality. That in itself might be a cheap joke, another one-trick pony, but at least there’s tension to it. Now he’s just a bad guy killing worse bad guys.
Now, that’s not to say issue #4 is bad. It’s not. It’s still a grossout gorefest, and Edwyn is still charming/funny in his own strange way. The art’s solid too. There’s some nice movement, and the violence is top notch.
However, I’m used to more than that from this comic. It’s Edwyn killing bad guys that are way worse than him (and the author goes out of his way to make the bad guys really unlikable). It’s nothing new. I feel like with only five issues to tell a story, each one should really strive to do something different, to make each chapter in the short journey memorable. This one doesn’t do that.
