The criminal known as Eel O'Brian, along with his gang of underlings, broke into and attempted to rob Cole Chemical, but the police arrived on the scene. While Eel and the others fled, he was shot by a cop and exposed to an unknown acid. He managed to make it outside but collapsed, unconscious from the pain. When he awoke, Eel found that his flesh was elastic, and he had no control over it, morphing into strange and frightful forms. He scared everyone in his path: cops, drunks, and even his own gang, who thought him already dead, and shot him upon seeing his new form. Eel went to a bridge to commit suicide, but he is stopped by Woozy Winks, a former Arkham Asylum inmate. Together, they decided to use O'Brian's new-found powers to fight crime. After exposing a circus outfit to the same acid which gave him powers, O'Brian and Woozy thwarted an attempted robbery by his former gang. When the press interviewed him, Eel said he intends to call himself Elastic Man, which a reporter misheard as Plastic Man.
