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| | The Popular Imagination -- Jack Cole and Plastic Man |
 | | From all reasonable accounts, Cole was good-humored, and possessed the wherewithal to endure the long hours and short respect of the early comic book industry, perhaps evident by his ingenious creation Plastic Man, a criminal who reforms when a chemical spill makes his body rubber. |
 | | However, Spiegelman also demonstrates Cole was a man at odds with himself, brewing an internal conflict that would eventually prove too much a burden to live with. |
 | | Two of the most welcome pieces in the book are written by Cole: the first, an essay published in Boy's Life detailing his coast to coast bike ride as a teenager, and the second, a brief letter to Hefner, where Cole tells the publisher he's going to commit suicide. |
| www.onceuponadime.com /reviews/plasticmanbook.htm (538 words) |
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