Ben Schwartz Wants to Play DC’s Plastic Man

Ben Schwartz, best known for his role on series like House of Lies and Parks and Recreation, wants to play Plastic Man — and he’s wondering where to sign up.

In a tweet (embedded below), Schwartz asks if there is “like an application process, or do I just dress up like him and make fun of Stretch Armstrong?”

The latter might actually be a pretty smart way to audition for Plastic Man, a larger-than-life and sometimes obnoxious character who is usually played for laughs.

In the comics, Plastic Man is reformed petty criminal Eel O’Brien, who gets super powers and sets about righting the wrongs he has done in his life. The character, who had been largely absent from DC Comics since the 2011 reboot “The New 52,” recently began appearing regularly in the monthly series The Terrifics, where he stands in for Mister Fantastic (another stretchy hero) in what is effectively DC’s Fantastic Four.

The idea in The Terrifics, carried over from Dark Nights: Metal, is that Plastic Man is actually one of the most potentially powerful and dangerous beings in the DC Universe — although he has little interest in being either.

Plastic Man currently appears on Justice League Action, where he is played by Aqua Teen Hunger Force veteran Dana Snyder.

There are no current plans announced for the character on the small or big screens, and a character with a similar power set — Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man, played by Hartley Sawyer — was just introduced and then killed off on The Flash.

So it’s been said, Netflix currently has an animated series based on Stretch Armstrong, titled Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters.

There are a half-dozen DC TV shows the character could plausibly show up in, although tonally only Shazam! seems like a real fit in DC’s movie universe.

Justice League is now on home video. The DCEU continues with Aquaman on December 21, Shazam! on April 5, 2019, Wonder Woman 2 on November 1, 2019, Cyborg in 2020, and Green Lantern Corps in 2020.