Patrick O'Brian was born in a small, low-rent apartment on the south side of Chicago, back in the days when Al Capone was warring in the streets with Chi-Town's finest. It wasn't the best life, but his father had a steady job. There was food on the table, clothing on his body, shoes on his feet. A lot of kids had it worse than Patrick.

Of course, a lot of kids had it better, too. Patrick's father was a stereotype: a drunken Irishman. And when he got drunk he got mean and took it out on his son. Cigarette burns don't heal so well, but they do teach quickly. Patrick learned to stay out of his father's way when the man was boozing. And the easiest way to do that was to get out of the cramped apartment.

On the streets, of course, there were other challenges to be faced. Young Patrick discovered that gangs of boys ruled the streets below waist height as sure has gangs of adults ruled the streets above it. Invisible to their over-eighteen counterparts, the boys had their own laws, their own territories. And if you were going to survive on the streets for a moment, you had to give yourself over to one of the gangs. So Patrick did.

It wasn't hard to decide which. The apartment building where he lived was hardly contested territory. A gang formed mostly of Irish and Polish boys ruled the neighborhood. The Jets, they called themselves. When Patrick joined their ranks he was only eight years old and beneath the notice of most of the boys, but he was small and slippery and could get into places where they mostly couldn't, so he quickly found himself a place in the gang, and a street name: Eel.

Of course, it was all downhill from there. It wasn't as though Eel got himself into serious mischief. Petty larceny. Vandalism. A few broken windows on 'enemy' turf (the Sharks got what was coming to them). But things built up, and as time went on it became easier and easier to convince himself that sliding just a little farther down the path to being a true baddie wasn't such a bad thing after all.

Which is how it came to pass that at the age of twenty, just before World War II, a twenty-one year old Eel O'Brian broke into the Crawford Chemical Works with a new gang. By this time he was an accomplished safe man, able to work his way through most locks, given time and light and such. As it happened, the CCW safe was right on the floor of the chemical plant. Once the safe was cracked, things turned surprisingly ugly. It seemed that the others didn't want to give Eel his cut of the loot. In fact, they didn't want to take the chance that Eel might squeal, so they shot him. Eel fell backwards into a vat of chemicals. and as he blacked out, the chemicals started to seep into his wounds.

When he came to, he wasn't in the chemical plant anymore. The room was clean, white, bright. A man was nearby. Eel, it turned out, had been dumped into the river and left for dead. The man, a monk, had fished him from the river and brought him back to his monastery to heal.

At first Eel simply couldn't understand why the monk would help him this way. His life wasn't exactly full of kindness and consideration. Slowly, though, the monk won Eel over and Eel started to see that the side of law and good had points as well.

Leaving the monastery, Eel discovered that he had somehow gained the ability to stretch his body into whatever shape he wanted. It wasn't hard to figure out: the chemicals at the factory had changed him into a Plastic Man. Now charged with a willingness to do good, Eel went out to take down the betraying gangsters. He left them for the police, essentially gift wrapped and with a note: 'Best Wishes, Plastic Man.'

Plastic Man went on to join the All Star Squadron during World War II, fighting Axis forces around the world. Toward the end of the war he was recruited by the FBI, and he was an FBI agent as Eel O'Brian for the better part of six decades. He occasionally donned the red leotard during this time, but for the most part he focused on his career and kept his superhero activity to a minimum.

As an FBI agent, Eel encountered a man by the name of Woozy Winks, a communist spy. Though they fought at first, Eel managed to convince Woozy of the positive aspects of democracy and Woozy left the employ of the USSR. Woozy and Eel have been close friends ever since.

His years with the FBI gave Eel access to a great deal of training. He's a crack shot with a service pistol. His detecting skills are among the greatest in the world. And while he's more likely to use his powers to fight in a brawl, he's an accomplished martial artist. Eel owes a lot to his time as an FBI agent, and he still maintains a relationship with the Bureau.

But all things must come to an end. In his mid seventies, and still looking around thirty-five, Eel O'Brian hung up his service pistol and retired from the FBI with a full pension. He used his money to open a private detective agency in Chicago with Woozy Winks as his partner.

Around this time Eel met a lovely young woman named Angel McDunagh. Their affair was intense and, unfortunately, brief. The idea that a rubber man could get somebody pregnant was one that Eel hadn't seriously considered, and when Angel told him she was going to have a baby... well, he reacted badly. He ran. He ran fast and far (at least as far as his PI office) and didn't answer phone calls, didn't respond to messages. He's not proud of it. Later he felt very guilty about the way he treated Angel, and he saw his son, Luke, from afar. It became quickly clear that Luke had inherited his father's powers, and more: Luke can change color.

Nobody was more surprised than Eel when Batman mentioned the name of Plastic Man for inclusion in the recently formed JLA. Sure, he went to the JLA auditions, but everybody who was anybody did, and Eel was mostly doing it for a laugh. Or to try to get Batman to laugh. Or something like that. But Batman -did- finger Plastic Man for JLA membership, and Eel knew he'd hit the big time.

With the JLA, Plastic Man has fought some of the world's greatest threats: Prometheus, Julian September, the En'teran slavers who had enslaved the world of Adam Strange, the Ultramarines. When General Eiling in the body of the Shaggy Man teamed up with Prometheus, Zazzala (the Queen Bee), Lex Luthor and Mageddon, Plastic Man attempted to Zazzala, who was color-blind, by turning himself into a red can of aerosol insecticide. It would have worked, but he was stopped and rendered inable to press the attack before he could finish, so Steel defeated her instead, wrapped in his red cape.

Most recently R'as al Ghul attacked the JLA one at a time, using plans made by Batman to incapacitate them. Plastic Man was frozen and shattered, then placed in suspended animation until he could be rebuilt. After al Ghul's defeat and Plastic Man's reintegration, Plas, feeling betrayed, cast the deciding vote that removed Batman from the JLA.