Eel O'Brian
Few names in the Golden Age carry quite the crackle of Eel O'Brian — a character who made his debut in the landmark Police Comics #1 back in 1941, brought to life by Vern Henkel at what would become DC Comics. Over an extraordinary span stretching across 85 years of publishing history, Eel has proven himself one of the medium's most enduring figures, racking up 220 catalog appearances and seven collector-significant key issues that any serious Golden Age enthusiast will want on their shelf. His most frequent stomping grounds include Plastic Man, JLA, and Detective Comics, where he shares pages with the absolute cream of the DC universe — Superman, Batman, The Flash, Clark Kent, and Bruce Wayne among them. That's rare, storied company for a character born in the earliest days of superhero comics, and it speaks to just how deeply woven into DC's fabric Eel O'Brian truly is.
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Trivia
- Plastic Man's original Golden Age run was one of the earliest mainstream superhero books to lean heavily into comedy, which later made the character unusually adaptable for radio, animation, and TV compared with more solemn DC heroes.dc.fandom.com
- Plastic Man became a notable benchmark for comic-book elasticity and visual gag storytelling, with later retrospectives treating him as a major precursor to the modern stretchy hero archetype rather than just another Golden Age obscurity.dc.fandom.com