Thursday, September 29, 2011

Super ‘70s and ‘80s: “The Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show”—introduction

Introduction to series “Super ‘70s and ‘80s.”

Back Issue #3 (4/04) included a photo of the first (and still only) live-action Plastic Man, who hosted the syndicated version of the Plastic Man cartoon of the early 1980s.


That caption called him an “unidentified actor.” I wanted to get rid of that “un.”

A simple search revealed that he was Mark Taylor, but that did not automatically make the task easier. There are approximately 700,000 people in America named Mark Taylor (and by “approximately” I mean “random guess”).

Faced with such a generic name, I have found that the best option in minimizing the search time is this: forgo looking
directly for the person in question and rather find someone (with a less generic name) who knew the missing person. That is not always easy either, but in this case, it worked as desired. Easily found online, the producer of the live-action Plastic Man segments was a Steve Whiting—not only is Whiting a less common surname than Taylor, but it turned out that Steve had a site...and was still in touch with Mark.

Mark turned out to be a gem well worth the hunt. He
bravely shared one of the most touching and inspiring stories to come out of this entire series. It was apropos that Mark demonstrated how much some people need to stretch to save a life—including their own.



Images courtesy of Mark Taylor and Steve Whiting.

I got permission to post all images; if you want to repost, please do the same and ask me first.


Interviewed (2 parts):

Steve Whiting, producer/director
Mark Taylor (Plastic Man—live action)

2 comments:

franx lopez said...

Hello Marc.
Here Franx Lopez from Mexico City
I wonder if I could translate your article and interview for my blog: Capital Comic

Keep the good work!

Marc Tyler Nobleman said...

Thanks for asking, Franx. Please email me at mtnobleman at gmail.