Paul Gustavson Flits By on Plastic Man

The best place to look in order to identify an artist on a series story is not in the continuing characters, who are expected to be on-model, but with one-time walk-ons. An example is Curt Swan's earliest Superman stories, where Superman himself is comparatively cartoonish in physique to match the contemporary artists' version, but the crowd scene folks are afforded more of Swan's trademark realism.

So here in Plastic Man #41, as Paul Gustavson appears for one issue (except for the Woozy solo story, pencilled by Jack Cole), Plas and Woozy look much as they do every issue, but the gangster that Plas replaces in the page from "Beast," especially in the last panel, and the Rajah in the tier from "Red Wreckers," best show the Gustavson style to me.

It would be a lot easier to tell apart the pencillers if the inking weren't imposing a rather muddy house style on everything. The scripts are by Joe Millard.

Plastic Man Pencilled by Paul Gustavson

May/53	41	The Beast with the Bloody Claws
		The Bounding Bandit
		The Red Wreckers of Rangistan