Cole's Comics

An Unpublished 1940 Sub-Zero Cover by Jack Cole

2013-03-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a super-cool rare piece of previously unpublished early superhero art by Jack Cole that provides a small revelation about his early career. It's a cover rough featuring Sub-Zero Man, a character that Jack Cole is not known to have ever drawn.

"What's a cover rough?" You may be asking.

In the cartoon and comics biz, a "rough" is simply a preliminary version of a finished piece of art. It's done to give the publisher an idea of where the artist is headed with the piece, and allows for adjustments to be made. This is a common practice, even today. It saves the artist time, and it makes sure the publisher gets what they want.

The files and archives of old comics publishers are probably filled with unpublished cover roughs. At some point in the past, the comics historian and writer Ron Goulart appears to have gotten access to the files for a 1940s comics packager called Funnies, Inc., and he photocopied from these files a rare, previously unknown cover rough by Jack Cole. As you may know, Ron wrote Focus on Jack Cole (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 1986)

Decades later, Ron Goulart put the photocopy (which was never published) up for sale on ebay, and I bought it to share with the world's Jack Cole fans. Feel free to thank me. :) Here's the art:

Jack Cole's unpublished cover rough for Sub-Zero Man. January 1940
(From the collection of Paul Tumey)

Ah, that beautiful pointed exclamation mark!

Information on the art identifies it as a cover rough and tells us it was drawn by Jack Cole for Novelty Press. The art has a date stamp of January 15, 1940. We know that Jack Cole wrote and drew a few comic book stories for Novelty Press that were published in the early 1940s. These stories appeared in Target Comics Volume 1, Number 1 through Volume 1, Number 4 (the January, 1940 through May, 1940 issues). The stories were "bigfoot" style humor features called The Higrass Twins.

The splash page of Jack Cole's HiGrass Twins story from Target Comics Volume 1, Number 1 (January, 1940)

It's interesting to know that Cole was also developing a superhero feature for packager Funnies, Inc. (who sold to Novelty Press -- confusing, isn't it?). Also in early 1940, he created a superhero for MLJ called The Comet. Note how similar the pose is in this splash panel below to the Sub-Zero Man's pose above.

Jack Cole's second Comet story, from Pep Comics #2, MLJ - February, 1940)

Clearly, around this time, Cole was developing his own approach to an exciting visual depiction of a superhero in flight. His early solutions are almost pornographic, with his characters wearing skin-tight suits that reveal every curve and muscle of their taut buttocks. Despite his name, Jack Cole's Sub-Zero Man is well, kinda hot.

It's also interesting to compare the Sub-Zero art with the black and white ink wash cartoons Cole published in Boy's Life magazine in early 1940:

In 1939 and 1940, Cole had developed a commercially viable black and white ink wash technique, that included using white paint on top of the black ink to indicate sound and motion. Both his superhero and his humor cartoon work of this period vividly depict bodies flying through the air. His work of this period was an important stepping stone to his creation of Plastic Man, his masterpiece.

However, the newly surfaced 1940 Sub-Zero cover art raises as many unanswered questions as it answers. The biggest question is: did Jack Cole create the character of Sub-Zero Man? Did he also create a Sub-Zero story to accompany this cover?

Even though no Cole-drawn Sub-Zero stories exist, the character was indeed published in Novelty Press comics, a few months after the date of this art. The first appearance was in Blue Bolt Volume 1, Number 1 (June, 1940), which featured work by Joe Simon (of Simon and Kirby). Here's the first Sub-Zero story, signed by a "Larry Antonette." Even though the finished art is not by Cole, it does have the feel of his early superhero work, with manic energy, huge natural disasters, vindictive heroes, and bizarre fates for wrong-doers. See what you think:

I'm sure that Mr. Mason Moray, the eminent panelologist, could shed some light on aritst Antonette's life and career -- he seems to know reams of information about the obscure creative talents that worked in 1940s American comics. But, the really interesting artist to work on Sub-Zero is Golden Age great Bill Everett.

Bill Everett's first Sub-Zero story from Blue Bolt Vol. 1, Number 5 (October, 1940)

Did you catch the similarity between the names of Sub-Zero and Everett's most famous creation: The Sub-mariner (first published in October, 1939 -- eight months prior to Sub-Zero's first appearance). And how about this: another feature in Blue Bolt was called Dick Cole -- and Jack Cole's brother was named Dick. Is any of this connected? Was it an in-joke? Did Cole write some early superhero material for Funnies, Inc. that was later developed by others?

We know Jack Cole was prolific, ambitious, and hard-working -- so could there be yet more unpublished early Jack Cole art out there, somewhere?

At this point, these questions must go unanswered.

But, we can certainly appreciate the raw, primal ZOOM power of Cole's lost Golden Age superhero comic book cover!

'Till Next Time,

Paul Tumey

Go see this

So where did Jack Cole get his screwball sensibility from? Be sure to check out my other blog, The Masters of Screwball Comics, where you can read the very Cole-like Dinky Dinkerton comic strip by the forgotten Art Huhta!

12 New Jack Cole Cartoon Finds!

2012-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 12

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Well, fellow denizens of the dank, dusty, delirious world of old comics, it's been a fun 12 days. Every day, I've shared with you some Jack Cole cartoons and comics that are new to Cole's Comics -- and, in some cases -- pretty much new to the world. As a grande finale, here's a big pile o' Cole for your enjoyment, with notes and the usual kerfuffle.

Here's a set of Cole gems from a 1955 H-K Publications Digest. The fellows who ran H-K turn out to be same guys who published Centaur comics, where Cole started his comics career 16 years earlier. Was there a connection? Did Cole look up his old associates and sell them some cartoons? Possibly.

First up is yet another of Cole's "searchlight" cartoons. We published one yesterday, as well.

SMILES - March, 1955 (collection Paul Tumey)

In case the joke eludes you, it's a reference to a standard song called Chlo-e (Song of the Swamp). Debuting in 1927, the song describes a lonely fellow searching for his Chloe in "the dismal swampland." Click here to hear Eva Taylor's 1928 recording of the song. And, for a piece of sublime surreal screwballism, check here's Spike Jones' deconstructed version from the 1945 film Bring On The Girls featuring the brilliant Red Ingle:

If you happen to be a fan of novelty songs, I recommend checking out Red Ingle (there's a bunch of his songs on Spotify). His recording, Serutan Yob is one of my favorite things, although it appears to be mostly the brainchild of comic genius Jim Hawthorne. But, I digress...

Getting back to Cole, the March, 1955 issue of Smiles featured nine Jack Cole cartoons! Here's another from the same issue, a comic reversal with a strong composition:

SMILES - March, 1955 (collection Paul Tumey)

Among the Cole cartoons in this issue is this "go peel a watermelon" two-page gag that ran underneath some text jokes and another gag. Many of the H-K digests of this period had 2-page spreads like this, created by various artists. I dunno about you, but I could stare at that graceful peeling for quite awhile.

SMILES - March, 1955 (collection Paul Tumey)

Ger Apeldoorn (see his great blog) has suggested that the H-K Cole cartoons might actually have been done to order, from presentation sketches Cole submitted in person. This was a common practice, and many publishers had an open house one day to the week where they would see cartoonists in person, review sketches, and (if the cartoonist was lucky) select some for finishing and purchase. I've been thinking that perhaps the piles of Cole cartoons in H-K were rejects from other mags, but perhaps not. The above cartoon, which is obviously tailored to the magazine's format and needs, suggests Ger is right.

Here's another from the same issue:

SMILES - March, 1955 (collection Paul Tumey)

And, another -- a beautifully composed and rendered gag that, in lesser hands might not be as funny:

SMILES - March, 1955 (collection Paul Tumey)

The last cartoon found in this issue is a goodie, with a a great gag and a Plastic Man style face distortion:

SMILES - March, 1955 (collection Paul Tumey)

Just in the last few days, I discovered scans (sadly low-res) of two 1960s Humorama magazines that sport Jack Cole cartoons on the covers:

September, 1963

August, 1964

Before we sign off the 2012 12 Days of Cole-Miss Event, here's a few more colored Cole Humorama cartoons, recycle as covers of early 1960s issues of Popular Jokes. These came to me as a wonderful holiday gift, from our friend Ger Apeldoorn, who received them from comics researcher Banks S. Robinson. Thanks, Ger and Banks!

Popular Jokes 5 - August 1962

Popular Jokes 11 - November, 1963

Popular Jokes 12 - February, 1964

And lastly, here's one I found on the Web:

Popular Jokes 21

That's 12 new Jack Cole finds for today -- Happy Hogandays!

And that wraps up the 12 Days of Cole-Miss! Over the last 12 days, with the kind help of some friends, I've shared 15 new pages of Cole comics and 24 rare Jack Cole cartoons. I hope you've enjoyed it all as much as I have -- or, if you are coming to these posts post-holidaze 2012, I hope you'll click on the links below and check out some of these swell cartoons.

Yours,

Paul Hogan Tumey

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings:

Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers (1950-60s)

Day3: A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cutie Pie Cover (1956)

Day 4: Teasing Blonde Triplets and Mad Japanese Spies (Private Dogtag 1944)

Day 5: Stretching to Playboy: Two Rare Jack Cole Judge Cartoons (1936, 1946)

Day 6: Jack Cole Sells Silk to the Burlap Market (1955 gag cartoon)

Day 7: Two More "Lost" Jack Cole Cartoons (1955)

Day 8: More 1955 Jack Cole Cartoons

Day 9: The Second Death Patrol story in a new paper scan!

Day 10: Two 1939 Jack Cole Cartoons in Colliers

Day 11: 3 New 1954 Cole Cartoons

Stretching Toward Playboy: Jack Cole Cartoons Grace a 1954 H-K Pulp

2012-12-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 11

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Recently, my pal the graphic novel author and comics historian Frank Young paid me a visit. I was showing him some of my latest finds and dug out the recent pile of 1950s humor digest magazines I bought from a collector. Many of these issues are marked up and have bits cut out. Some of the captions are rewritten. I suspect the collection once belonged to an aspiring cartoonist -- or even a pro who was ripping off old material.

The Paul Tumey pile of old humor mags , which includes some rare Jack Cole cartoons

I had gone through this pulpy pile earlier to sift out 11 "new" Jack Cole finds. I had a hunch that a second perusal might yield another Cole cartoon or two. Frank and I spontaneously sifted the pile, carefully reading each awful gag cartoon. Frank discovered some amazing early cartoons by Mel Lazurus, of Miss Peach fame. He also delighted in several early Thaves (Frank and Ernest) cartoons. After a dizzy hour or so, I lamented that there just wasn't any more Cole to mine from this vein. Just as I picked up an issue of Smiles and said this, I opened it at random and there, in front of me was Cole cartoon I had previously missed! I quickly sifted through the book and found two more! Score!

The cover to Smiles, Sept 1954 (Not by Cole)

I'm pleased to share with you today the three "new" Jack Cole cartoons found in the September 1954 H-K publication, Smiles. The date is interesting, because it's by far the earliest H-K Jack Cole publication date we've found, so far, about six months prior to the fabulous Cole bonanza of 23 cartoons published in March, 1955.

The first Cole cartoon in the book is unsigned, but undeniably Cole:

by Jack Cole, from Smiles, September 1954 (Collection Paul Tumey)

This sequential light beam cartoon is a concept we find in 3 other published Cole cartoons of the time., including one published in the January 1954 issue of The Saturday Evening Post (see here for that cartoon). It's a unique concept, and Cole spent some time and energy playing with it. He seemed to enjoy drawing beams of light. Many of his comic book covers and stories have light beams and pools of light used as strong design elements.

The second Cole cartoon in the book is one that cracked me up. The drawing is amusing, but the power of the gag is really in the caption.

by Jack Cole, from Smiles, September 1954 (Collection Paul Tumey)

I've read in a few interviews with Cole's colleagues that he imbibed himself. There's a letter from Cole (published in Steranko's History of Comics), written to his folks back home in which he assures them he is living clean and not touching a drop. This letter comes from early in his career, so perhaps Cole changed his ways in the years to come. he was, after all, hanging out with cartoonist Bob Wood, who was living high those daze. It's possible this cartoon is slightly autobiographical. In any case, it's a funny gag and I love the art.

The third and last Cole cartoon we find in this issue presents a performing duo and a typical Jack Cole gag drawn from a small detail of life. Fingernails, house lights, toasters and TVs -- all the common, everyday details of ordinary life were fodder for Jack's cartoon factory in the 1950s. The visual design of the cartoon, with a bold T shape and an artful line, foreshadows his Playboy cartoons.

by Jack Cole, from Smiles, September 1954 (Collection Paul Tumey)

Here's the full spread to help you appreciate how much better Cole's cartoons are than the rest of the material in these magazines:

That's all for today. Tomorrow, the last day of my 12 Days of Cole-Miss publishing event, will pull out all the stops and present a big pile of goodies. I hope everyone has a safe, sane, and enjoyable holiday season.

Cole-crazy,

Paul Tumey

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings to Date:

Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers (1950-60s)

Day3: A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cutie Pie Cover (1956)

Day 4: Teasing Blonde Triplets and Mad Japanese Spies (Private Dogtag 1944)

Day 5: Stretching to Playboy: Two Rare Jack Cole Judge Cartoons (1936, 1946)

Day 6: Jack Cole Sells Silk to the Burlap Market (1955 gag cartoon)

Day 7: Two More "Lost" Jack Cole Cartoons (1955)

Day 8: More 1955 Jack Cole Cartoons

Day 9: The Second Death Patrol story in a new paper scan!

Day 10: Two 1939 Jack Cole Cartoons in Colliers

Jack Cole Places TWO Cartoons in a Single Issue of Collier's! (1939)

2012-12-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 10

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Today's Cole in your stocking consists of two rare "lost" Jack Cole cartoons from Collier's Weekly. Both cartoons are paper scans from my own copy of the September 2, 1939 issue which I acquired through several misadventures involving a verbose fat man, a fey killer, and a sexy but deceitful woman named Bridget O'Shaughnessy.

It must have been exciting for Jack and Dorothy (Dot) Cole, a struggling young married couple relocated to New York City from New Castle, Pennsylvania to have two cartoons appear in one issue of a major national magazine. By the time these sales saw print, though, Cole was already working at the Harry Chesler shop. For some examples of Jack Cole's 1939 comics, mostly published in Centaur titles, see this article.

Just by way of an interesting "bonus" tidbit, here's a record of Jack and Dot's marriage that appeared in a Greenville newspaper on July 21, 1939:

This is a bit of a mystery because, by all accounts, Jack and Dot were married years earlier. In fact, they kept it secret from their parents, at first, continuing to live at home. I wonder if they were getting married a second time, to allow the families to be involved. Or perhaps the stories about their earlier marriage are not quite right. I truly wish I knew. If I ever come into a windfall, I'd love to go to New Castle and talk to some folks there to find out the story behind this news item and flesh out the story of Jack Cole's early years.

In any case, in my imagination I can see Cole riding the subway in Manhattan, watching someone read a magazine with this cover:

Or maybe he walked by newstands on busy New York streets in September 1939 that sported copies of the issue in which he had not one, but two cartoons. Newstands that looked something like this:

Looking at this photo, it's easy to imagine that maybe there was a comic on the stands as well that featured work by Jack Cole.

As previously documented in this blog, Cole had some earlier sales to Collier's in 1938.

The first cartoon of Cole's in the September 2, 1939 issue of Collier's appears on page 31, next to a bizarre Fisk tire ad that, for some reason, shows a man wrestling an alligator.

Collier's Weekly, September 2, 1939 - page 31 (Collection Paul Tumey)

The cartoon makes a reference to the famous baseball star, Joe DiMaggio... a rare topical reference in Cole's work. Here's the cartoon itself, in a larger size:

Collier's Weekly, September 2, 1939 (Collection Paul Tumey)

I like how Jack's signature appears to be a part of the floor under DiMaggio's feet. We also see in this cartoon Jack's interest in showing agitated human movement -- not quite successful here, but still a good effort. By keeping Joe's back to the reader, Jack spares himself from having to draw a caricature of the celebrity, but also keeps us from tipping to the gag until we read the caption.

The second Cole cartoon, which features an even higher level of physical chaos, appears on page 50:

Collier's Weekly, September 2, 1939 - page 50 (Collection Paul Tumey)

It's worthwhile to show you the entire page, as well as the individual cartoon, so you can get a sense of how much space the editors gave Cole's cartoon, and also to see how boldly his wash cartoons stand off the page. Part of Cole's greatness lies in his thoughtful design. We can see, just by looking at these two full pages, that his designs, with their strong lines and rich washes were very effective for catching the eye and adding visual appeal to the magazine's pages.

Here's a 1940 Boy's Life page in which Cole's plush, bold cartoon is a visual delight:

Boy's Life, October 1940

Cole would return to this lush visual formula in his Playboy and Jake cartoons of 1955-58, with great success. His 1955 cartoons benefit from the thousands of drawings he had made in the intervening years between 1939 and 1955, and therefore are considerably more successful and accomplished. However, the same basic design approach applies to both eras in Cole's career as a magazine cartoonist.

Here's the cartoon, in a larger size:

Collier's Weekly, September 2, 1939 (Collection Paul Tumey)

It's a great gag, and it lets Cole do what he does best -- show screwball energy on paper. There's something about the leaping-off-the-page energy of this page that reminds of this classic page from a 1942 Midnight story (shown here as a retouched page from my ebook, The Complete Jack Cole Midnight, Volume 2 -- available for purchase at the right-hand side of this blog):

Even though he had a very promising start as a nationally published magazine cartoonist with top late 1930s markets like Judge and Collier's, Cole needed to make more money -- and that's why he veered into comic books, and began to devote himself to creating longer, sustained sequential graphic stories. At Chesler's walk-up studio, housed in a dank lower Manhattan warehouse, Cole at least drew a regular paycheck. In short order, Cole began to master this burgeoning new form. Just as his magazine cartoons show smart design, so do his comic book stories -- but that's a story for another day!

Check back tomorrow and the next day for the last two postings of my 12 Days of Cole-Miss event -- lotsa good stuff to come!

In the meanwhile, here's what we've done, so far:

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings to Date:

Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers (1950-60s)

Day3: A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cutie Pie Cover (1956)

Day 4: Teasing Blonde Triplets and Mad Japanese Spies (Private Dogtag 1944)

Day 5: Stretching to Playboy: Two Rare Jack Cole Judge Cartoons (1936, 1946)

Day 6: Jack Cole Sells Silk to the Burlap Market (1955 gag cartoon)

Day 7: Two More "Lost" Jack Cole Cartoons (1955)

Day 8: More 1955 Jack Cole Cartoons

Day 9: The Second Death Patrol story in a new paper scan!

Jack Cole's Second DEATH PATROL From Military Comics 2 (1941): A New Paper Scan!

2012-12-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 9

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Earlier this year, in a moment of temporary insanity, I bought a low-grade copy of Military Comics #2, which features the second Jack Cole Death Patrol story. Currently, there's no good scan of this issue in circulation. I've written about this morbid, screwball back-up feature of Cole's in previous postings. Overall, the Cole Death Patrols rank among the most accelerated and nutty comics he ever did -- perhaps because he was cramming 15 page stories into 6 pages.

As a special holiday treat, here's a nice paper scan of Jack Cole's Death Patrol story from Military Comics #2 (September, 1941). Enjoy!

Check back tomorrow for more rare Cole finds!

Season's Bleatings,
Paul Tumey

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings to Date:

Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers (1950-60s)

Day3: A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cutie Pie Cover (1956)

Day 4: Teasing Blonde Triplets and Mad Japanese Spies (Private Dogtag 1944)

Day 5: Stretching to Playboy: Two Rare Jack Cole Judge Cartoons (1936, 1946)

Day 6: Jack Cole Sells Silk to the Burlap Market (1955 gag cartoon)

Day 7: Two More "Lost" Jack Cole Cartoons (1955)

Day 8: More 1955 Jack Cole Cartoons

More New Jack Cole Gems From 1955

2012-12-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 8

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Presenting two more dusty gems from Jack Cole's 1955 appearances in H-K Publications. For the dope on H-K, and more of these great cartoons, check out my previous COLE-MISS postings from the last few days here and here.

One thing that I appreciate so much about these cartoons is the delicate line work. Comics master Alex Toth visted Jack Cole at Quality Comics. Just a youngster, Toth was allowed to sit with Cole as he inked a Plastic Man cover. Toth remembered that Cole used a very thin brush, and had a remarkable facility with it. You can see Cole's skill with a brush in these cartoons.

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Appeal: If there's anyone out there who would like to plug this 12 Days of Cole event, please feel free! Currently, there's been a low number of hits per post and only one comment (which I appreciate) -- so I think these new finds are remaining largely undiscovered.

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Aside from the high quality of the line work, Cole's cartoons are delightfully offbeat in their choice of subject matter.

The first of today's offerings deals with the see-saw nature of life as it pertains to parenthood. One moment, a child is being annoying -- the next, you want him to tug on your shirt! One of 100 or so cartoons in the March, 1955 issue of Smiles, Cole's cartoon is the only one to present a child.

From Smiles - March, 1955 (Collection Paul Tumey)

Our second lump o' Cole for your Xmas stocking deals with the fantasy/reality dichotomy of the television experience -- something that was evident to Jack Cole, even in the early days of television.

From Smiles - March, 1955 (Collection Paul Tumey)

Tomorrow - a change of pace as I share a BRAND NEW paper scan of a classic Jack Cole story from a comic book that sells for over $3,000 in near mint condition.

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings to Date:

Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers (1950-60s)

Day3: A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cutie Pie Cover (1956)

Day 4: Teasing Blonde Triplets and Mad Japanese Spies (Private Dogtag 1944)

Day 5: Stretching to Playboy: Two Rare Jack Cole Judge Cartoons (1936, 1946)

Day 6: Jack Cole Sells Silk to the Burlap Market (1955 gag cartoon)

Day 7: Two More "Lost" Jack Cole Cartoons (1955)

Season's Greetings,
Paul Tumey

Two More "Lost " 1955 Jack Cole Cartoons

2012-12-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 7

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Here's two more previously unknown Jack Cole gems! These both appeared in the pages of 1955 cartoon and joke digests published by H-K Publications. These digests are filled with sub-par cartoons. Cole's elegant, offbeat cartoons stand out from the pages of these bottom-tier pulps like M&Ms in trail mix. It seems that H-K bought a lot of material from Bill Wenzel in 1954-55, including painted cartoons for their covers. Wenzel's work is competent, and times has a certain something. Aside from Wenzel, the remainder of the H-K stable of girlie gag cartoonists have little to offer. Here's a cover by Wenzel:

A typical Bill Wenzel cartoon for the 1950s H-K humor digests

Behind this cover, from March, 1955, we find this Jack Cole beauty -- a paper scan from my own collection:

A Jack Cole cartoon from Smiles - March, 1955
(Collection Paul Tumey)

This is hardly the subject matter Wenzel cover leads you to expect to find inside. In fact, one of the delights of Cole's H-K cartoons is how a great number of them have diverse subjects and situations -- almost like they were done for other others and then -- after rejection -- sold here, to an editor who knew quality when she or he saw it.

It bears noting that the above cartoon is yet another example of Jack Cole depicting suicide in his work. It's also worth noting that the layout is similar to the cartoon I shared yesterday. Here it is again, for a quick comparison:

Both cartoons are caption-less and show tiny people facing something large and daunting, perhaps the way Cole felt at shifting gears in his career. In both cases, you first see the huge object -- a house, or a charging elephant -- and then you peer at the diminutive figures and see the jokes. This creates a clever, delayed-effect reaction that stretches the gag out, and encourages you to look closer and perhaps reflect for a moment.

The elephant cartoon from the March, 1955 issue of Smiles is one of an incredible nine cartoons in that issue by Cole. I'll be sharing the rest of this lot over the next few days. It is interesting to observe that the March, 1955 issue of Smiles sister publication, Mirth, featured 12 Jack Cole cartoons (see them here) -- both issues presenting 21 Cole gems in one month!

Here's a second H-K 1955 Jack Cole cartoon. This cartoon appeared two months earlier, in the January, 1955 issue of Smiles. It is the only Jack Cole cartoon in this issue.

A Jack Cole cartoon from Smiles, January 1955
(Collection Paul Tumey)

I must confess that the joke is lost on me. The only sense I can make of it is that the woman in the balcony seat is pleased that she has drawn attention from the performance to herself. The name, "Dagsted," is confusing, too... being a mysterious compression of Dagwood Bumstead's name. Perhaps there's a cultural reference to the name that would explain the gag. The cartoon looks a little naughty at first, before you read the caption, since it looks as if the people in the upper seats are peeing on the folks below!

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings So Far:

Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers (1950-60s)

Day3: A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cutie Pie Cover (1956)

Day 4: Teasing Blonde Triplets and Mad Japanese Spies (Private Dogtag 1944)

Day 5: Stretching to Playboy: Two Rare Jack Cole Judge Cartoons (1936, 1946)

Day 6: Jack Cole Sells Silk to the Burlap Market (1955 gag cartoon)

Only 1,099 more shopping days until Xmas 2015,
Paul Tumey

Jack Cole Sells Silk to the Burlap Market: A Stunning 1955 Gag Cartoon

2012-12-19T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 6

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Mirth was a digest-sized monthly offering a musky sheaf of mostly sexy girl cartoons of widely varying quality. This cheapo magazine was part of a line of similar joke books and digests on cars and watersports (not what you may be thinking -- water skiing and boating), including titles like Smiles and A Pocketful of Pepper. We are slowly discovering that Jack Cole sold a pile of great gag cartoons to the publisher, H-K Publications, Inc. in late 1954 and possibly also at various times in 1955. This would be the period when Cole left comic books and applied himself fully to a career as a magazine cartoonist.

In his 1956 Freelancer article about his cartooning career (reprinted in this blog here), Jack Cole wrote of having limited success in 1954-55 with the higher paying markets and having to lower his sites:

"After a few pointed hints from editors, it finally dawned on me. You CAN'T sell burlap in a nylon market, so I retreated to the minor class magazines (bless them all) where I should have $TARTED in the first place..."

H-K publications appears to have been a publishing company of Joseph Hardie and Raymond Kelly, who also co-founded the Centaur line of comics in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Cole's first comic book work appeared in various Centaur comics (supplied by the Harry Chesler shop, where Cole started out when he moved to New York in 1937). It's possible that Cole had a connection with H-K Publications, although it would have been more than 15 years since his work graced the pages of Hardie and Kelly's books.

H-K also published Comet -- an amalgamation of comics and prose -- in the early 1940s. In the mid forties, they appear to have inaugurated Mirth. In the 1950s, H-K published such illustrious titles as Boat Sport, Auto Craftsman, and Outboard Dealer News. It's possible that a Cole cartoon or two might be found in the pages of the non-girlie H-K magazines. After all, Cole did cartoons for a Stamp collecting magazine during this time, so why not for Speed Mechanics or Water Ski?

Last Christmas, my stocking overflowed with Cole when I discovered a scan on the Web of an issue of Mirth (March, 1955) that contained a whopping 12 Jack Cole cartoons (click here to see those great cartoons). This Christmas, I have discovered an additional 14 previously forgotten Jack Cole cartoons published in various H-K publications from 1955. I'll be sharing that lot over the next few days, as well as a few other gems from the Cole-mine.

Today's Cole in your stocking comes from the pages of the October, 1955 issue of Mirth, the only Cole cartoon found in that issue. This is a paper scan from my own collection. Although the cartoon is unsigned, there can be no doubt this is the work of Jack Cole. The beautifully stylized Laurel and Hardy Music Box staircase winding the up the side of the cliff, and the modernistic home embedded into the edifice are drawn with the typical mix of precision and abstraction that characterizes the work of Jack Cole in the mid 1950s. The entire cartoon is a tour de force layout of positive and negative space. Surely this ambitious cartoon was originally meant for a higher market, which is perhaps a clue as to why it is unsigned.

See also this post at M.O.D.M. blog on H-K magazines.

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings:
Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers (1950-60s)
Day 3: A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cutie Pie Cover (1956)
Day 4: Teasing Blonde Triplets and Mad Japanese Spies (Private Dogtag 1944)
Day 5: Stretching to Playboy: Two Rare Jack Cole Judge Cartoons (1936 & 1946)

Wishing You the Best,
Paul Tumey

Stretching to Playboy: Two Rare Jack Cole Judge Cartoons (1936 and 1946)

2012-12-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 5

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

A special holiday CHEER to our friend, writer, editor, and comics historian GER APELDOORN, for supplying today's Jack Cole finds. Be sure to visit Ger's Fabulous Fifties blog to see amazing comics and cartoons from the 50s.

One of the most significant discoveries to emerge from the multi-year research project this blog represents is that Jack Cole -- widely known as one of the masters of comic book stories in the 1940s -- had a lesser-known parallel career as a magazine gag cartoonist. When Cole left comic books in 1954 and found great commercial success as Playboy's signature cartoonist, it seemed like a miraculous re-invention of himself. In reality, what actually happened was more logically the fruition of years of hard work on Cole's part to develop himself into a valuable magazine cartoonist (and the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time). In fact, his first publications are not sequential graphic narratives in comic books, but rather one-panel gag cartoons that appeared in the pages of such nationally distributed magazines as Boy's Life (see here) and Judge.

The cover (not by Cole) of the December, 1936 issue
of Judge that ran a Jack Cole cartoon.

It was something of a revelation to get the following 1936 cartoon from Ger Apeldoorn. All I previously had for Cole's published pre-1938 comic book work was the dozen or so cartoons he sold to Boy's Life, and the mysterious illustrated article on his cross-country bike trip (the original publication of this early article, possibly Cole's first publication, remains unknown -- see here for the article and here for details on the mystery). The following new Cole find originally appeared in the pages of the December, 1936 issue of Judge magazine. Check out that pig!

A rare early Jack Cole magazine cartoon from Judge - December, 1936

Once again, we see Cole working with hillbilly humor -- a favorite subject in his early work (check out these 1940s HiGrass Twins comic stories and his Slap Happy Pappy one-pagers). Note also that the signature Cole uses in this cartoon is different from any other signature he used in any of the known cartoons we have.

Most importantly, the discovery of this cartoon reveals how ambitiously and hard Jack Cole pursued selling his gag cartoons to the major markets. It was the very same ambition that drove Cole to relocate from his hometown of New Castle, Pennsylvania to New York City in the hopes that it would spur his cartooning career. And, so it did.

Even after Jack Cole became an established success in comic books with Plastic Man, he continued to write, draw, and submit cartoons to to the major markets. I suspect there are many more Jack Cole cartoons to be found in the pages of American magazines published in the 1940s and 1950s. Another wonderful cartoon from Ger is this pneumatic 1946 beauty, also from the pages of Judge. Here, we see Jack Cole developing his sexy girl cartoon chops, some 8 years before his Playboy success.

Jack Cole sculpts a full page statute-esque sex bomb for Judge - January, 1946
(from the collection of Ger Apeldoorn)

Where Cole's Playboy cartoons are more accomplished, with artful washes and graceful brushwork, this image is more controlled and rough-hewn. It appears that Cole may have used an airbrush for this work. If not, he is working hard to use washes to delineate light and form. This image (which also appears in Art Spiegelman and Chip Kidd’s top-notch book, Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits) -- created at the height of Cole's Plastic Man success, foreshadows the direction his career would take in a few years.

This 1946 Judge cartoon also harkens back to Cole's earlier work, as we can see in this panel featuring a similar image in stipple, from "Midnight Goes Hollywood" (Smash Comics #34, July 1942 -- available in my ebook, The Complete Jack Cole Midnight Volume Two, for sale at the right side of this blog).

In 1944, we find the sex-laden Pvt Dogtag stories. Yesterday, I shared a new Dogtag story, which features the following panels of feminine pulchritude:

It seems that drawing cutie-pies was a prime interest for Jack Cole -- and who could blame him?

Check back tomorrow as we post another rare Jack Cole find!

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings:
Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers (1950-60s)
Day 2: A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cutie Pie Cover (1956)
Day 3: Teasing Blonde Triplets and Mad Japanese Spies (Private Dogtag 1944)

Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Cartooned,
Eel O'Brian

Teasing Blonde Triplets and Mad Japanese Spies in Jack Cole's Private Dogatag (1944)

2012-12-17T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 4

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Today's lump of Cole in your stocking is a whopping 9-page story from Military Comics (May, 1944). Here is another one of the extremely weird Private Dogtag stories that Jack Cole wrote and drew.

Sex had a wholesome flavor for Americans in WWII -- a healthy, robust style that seemed to go into darker areas after the war, leading to Bettie Page style BDSM. Jack Cole followed this trend, and -- to a certain extent -- fueled it. In the early 1940s, American GIs loved sexy American women (not to mention sexy European gals -- at least in the mainstream). They oogled them at moviehouses, drooled at them on calendars, and even painted them on their bomber planes. All of this was socially acceptable and a point of pride. The iconic American photograph celebrating the end of WWII shows a soldier passionately kissing a prime example of American womanhood. Given this, it's no surprise that Jack Cole's Private Dogtag stories mostly revolve around worshiping the sex appeal of American women and dissing Japanese with racist caricatures. This story of three dizzy blondes is no exception.

This is another classic identity-shifting story by Cole -- a common theme found in his work.

Check back tomorrow as we post another rare Jack Cole find!

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings:
Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers
Day 2: A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cartoon Cover (1956)

A Rare Jack Cole Playboy Style Cutie Pie Cartoon (1956)

2012-12-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAY 3

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Today's Cole in your stocking offering is another resplendent Jack Cole cover. Supplied by a fellow Jack Cole fan, this cover is from an unknown issue of The Freelancer. It seems a safe bet that this is the back cover art to issue number 2 (1956), which featured the very informative and cool spread on Jack Cole. I've published this Freelancer article earlier in the blog,. For your convenience and continued amusement, here 'tis again:

In 1956, Jack Cole was very likely the most-admired freelancer in the American cartoon world. His breakthrough success in Hugh Hefner's Playboy was the dream of every freelance cartoonist - although few had the talent and drive of a Jack Cole.

At the bottom of the second page of the article above, we see a note to check out the back cover to see a "typical Jack Cole cutie-pie drawn in his popular 'PLAYBOY' magazine technique."

For the first time on this blog, I'm pleased to present that back cover:

This art appears to have a faint Christmas holiday feel to it -- with the "jingle cowbell" necklace and Xmas green coloring. Alas, we have no month listed on any of these pages. In any case, although the art is done in Cole's Playboy style, there can be little doubt that he did this cartoon especially for The Freelancer, since the lovely "belle" is reading an issue of said magazine!

Many thanks to the kind reader who shared this image for us all to enjoy.

Check back tomorrow as we post another rare Jack Cole find!

The 12 Days of Cole-Miss Postings:
Days 1 and 2: Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy Style Humorama Cartoon Covers

Jack Cole's Sexy Playboy-Style Humorama Cartoon Magazine Covers

2012-12-15T12:18:00.001-08:00

THE 12 DAYS of COLE-MISS:
DAYS 1 and 2

12 days of NEW Jack Cole finds!
Posted every day until Dec. 25th

Friends, it's been a heckuva year, this so-called 2012. I dunno about you, but I'm a bit WOOZY and my brain's sorta WINKIN' on and off from the MIDNIGHT qualities of our times. What's it all about? I haven't got WUN CLOO. But, I do know this:

We could use a bit of cheer these dark daze.

My own esoteric brand of love and largess is to reach into my archives and share with you from the small treasure trove of new Jack Cole finds that I have accumulated over the last year. It's been a little quiet here at Cole's Comics this year, as I've been focusing on my Masters of Screwball Comics blog, and then jumped on board to co-edit an exciting new book on the great Rube Goldberg forthcoming from a major publisher. I miss posting here at Cole's Comics, so we'll call this celebration the 12 Days of Cole-Miss. I'll post every day from now until December 25th, offering Jack Cole delights that have never been published on this blog, and in many cases are virtually unknown to the world.

Since I had this furshlugginer idea last night, and we're getting started with 11 days left 'till Xmas, I'll start out with an extry-large helpin' of Cole for your stocking today. Hoo hah!

"On the First Day of Xmas, my own true blogger gave me... a collection of rare JACK COLE covers."

A Klassic Kole Kartoon Kover - date unknown, circa mid 1950s

Jack Cole worked in comics from 1938-1954. He had a longer parallel career as a magazine gag cartoonist that spanned 1936-1958. With the success of Plastic Man in the 1940s, Cole was mostly dormant as a magazine cartoonist. In the mid-50s, when Cole left comics, he returned to his magazine cartooning career with renewed vigor.

Usually working with the pen name of "Jake," Jack Cole sold a small pile of beautifully drawn, sex-drenched cartoons to the bottom-of-the bucket rags of the day, including the Martin Goodman organization that published the Humorama line of magazines (and also the Timely/Atlas comics). These were mostly digest-sized pulpy collections of badly drawn cartoons and fuzzy black and white photos of women posing in lingerie. Scrambling for work, a few good cartoonists sold to the Goodman books, including Archie's Dan DeCarlo, Bill Wenzell, and Cole's Quality Comics stable-mate, Bill Ward. Many of the Jack Cole Humorama cartoons have been published in The Classic Pin-Up Art of Jack Cole by Alex Chun.

Occasionally, Cole's cartoons ran as color front and back covers on these publications, which usually featured the star models, including Bettie Page. The editors of these pheromone flip-books must have known a good thing when they saw it, realizing --as Playboy's High Hefner did around the same time -- that Cole's fantastic renderings of the female form were as powerful -- if not more so -- than actual photographic image - and that translated into higher sales.

Cole's cartoons in the Humorama publications appear to have been recycled several times, in some cases. Here's a 1955 Humorama digest cover that features a "Jake" cartoon on the cover.

This same cartoon ran several times in the interior pages of the various Humorama mags. Here, it's been given a "star" position as the first interior page of a 1962 issue of Romp. This was four years after Cole's death. The recycling of Cole's cartoons speaks both to the cheapness of the publisher, and also to the high quality of Cole's work.

A recycled Jack Cole cartoon, four years after his death.

Here's another 1955 Humorama magazine with a Jack "Jake" Cole cartoon on the cover, very likely only one of many times it was published. As a side-note, Jack Cole himself as a tall man.

Here's yet another Jake cartoon on the cover of a 1955 Humorama magazine. Heh, heh... darn those low, slinky cars!

Ah, if only the interior contents of the magazines lived up to the promise of the covers. Sadly, most of the pages inside are covered with poorly drawn, badly written, and utterly forgettable cartoons. Most of the cartoons look like they were drawn in about five minutes with no goal except to score a few bucks. In contrast, many of Cole's expertly composed, effort-filled "Jake" cartoons had a good point to make. Two good points, actually. These points were usually located on the chest of a woman, as in the case of this next cover cartoon:

When icons collide - Jack Cole meet Bettie Page.
Publication date unknown, circa 1950s

Culturally, this is an extraordinary cover. In this cover, we have an explosion of 1950's underground sex icons: the work of the premier sexy girl cartoonist of the 1950s is displayed with the most celebrated girl model of the day, the incomparable Bettie Page (here spelled "Betty"). Although I haven't been able to identify the actual date of publication, it's a safe bet this cover appeared somewhere between 1955-1960.

In 1961, this cartoon ran as the cover of a November, 1961 issue of Popular Jokes. The publisher is listed as Timely Publications, which was no doubt one of the myriad publishing names used in Martin Goodman's empire of low-rent publications. This magazine was large than the digest books, measuring 8 inches wide and 10.75 inches tall. I was lucky enough to recently acquire a copy of this magazine and can now present it to you as a large high-quality paper scan from my own collection:

A rare case where politics and sex don't mix: A recycled Jack Cole "Jake"cartoon.
(from the collection of Paul Tumey)

We'll close, appropriately enough, with a colorized Cole cartoon that ran on the back cover of the December, 1961 cover of the Humorama digest Gee Whiz! Here, we see Cole returning to the hillbilly theme, which he worked with from the earliest stages of his career.

That's it for today, friends. Be sure to check back tomorrow, and every day up until December 25, as I share some of my new Jack Cole finds.

Laffin to keep from cryin,
Eel O'Brian

Beautiful Sexy Witch Melts Plastic Man in a Superb Jack Cole Horror Story

2012-10-31T17:01:00.000-07:00

In his work, Jack Cole certainly appears to have had certain unconscious dark obsessions. It's these very obsessions, combined with a wildly inventive mind, and a stunning talent for creating visual images that are the foundation of Cole's greatness, both as the creator of Plastic Man stories and as the signature Playboy cartoonist. We see evidence of all these elements, perhaps in their most potent form, in today's "Dark Plas" Halloween post, " The Witch of Wailing Woods," a little-known, mostly overlooked story from Plastic Man #42 (July, 1953).

The story, like many of Cole's later Plastic Man adventures, is built around a beautiful evil woman. In this case, Cole offers us a gorgeous raven-haired witch named Zelda, clad in a fetching dress that splays the black strands of a spider and its web across her perfectly-formed breasts.

The more I look at this story, the more impressed I am with it. Jack Cole's last comic book is among his best, in my opinion -- although it is a far cry from the zany screwball antics for which Cole is best-known. It may be this puzzling and extreme shift in tone that accounts for why these Cole stories remain largely undiscovered and certainly unappreciated by his fans.

From Plastic Man 43

Admittedly, Cole's last comic book stories, from 1952-54 are dark, twisted, and disturbing -- put simply, they are not nearly as much fun to read as his humor-based work. Why did Jack Cole, a guy who did humor comics so well and so successfully, step into the dark world of monsters, death, dismemberment, and pure evil?

Perhaps Cole and his editors at Quality Comics were attempting to keep pace with the breaking trend of horror comics, led by E.C. with titles like Haunt of Fear and Tales From the Crypt. It's one way to explain why Cole and Quality took a character deeply rooted in humor and slapstick and recast him into one supernatural horror story after another. In the issue that comes after the one in which this witch story appears, Plastic Man and Woozy battle a vampire.

At the same time Plas and Woozy fought witches, werewolves, and vampires in the pages of the last Plastic Man comics Cole drew, Quality also brought out a new horror title, the sinister-sounding Web of Evil. The star artist at Web of Evil... Jack Cole.

It seems to me that the real story here is not that Cole made such a surprising left-turn from humor to horror in his work, but rather that he did it so well. It's easy to become preoccupied (and repulsed) with the darkness of his last dark comic book stories and miss the extraordinary level of accomplishment in creating sequential graphic narratives that Jack Cole achieved in this work.

Here's a video presentation I've made to analyze and appreciate the splash page of today's story. In looking at this one page alone, we find a high level of design, great inventiveness and craft, and -- of course -- a weirdness and particular shadowy tone unique to Cole's work.

And, without further ado, here's the story. Some notes and observations follow.

Whew! Pretty grim stuff! However, remember, it was in Police Comics 22 that Cole dispenses with a villain by snapping his head in a bear trap.

Upon closer examination, one can find traces of Jack Cole's shadow-side in his earlier work. Given this, it seems to make sense that Cole -- tasked with a new direction from humor to horror -- would be able to embrace it with gusto, as he does in this story, much in the same way Plas embraces the sexy witch.

"The Witch of Wailing Woods" features a woman who is both deeply desirable and extremely deadly. Plastic Man seems drawn to her as a man. He curls around her, extends and grows his body to encircle and embrace her. In one panel, Cole delivers a somewhat tender, sexually charged portrait of Plastic Man and Zelda that resonates with similar panels in his other stories of this period.

Woozy, an incorrigible womanizer, is the very portrait of a man bewitched when he gets close to Zelda. Cole plays it up with a dash of humor and a couple of cartoon sweat drops, but compared to the Tex Avery style wolf takes Cole was drawing just 3 years earlier, this is pretty restrained.

A real witch (and talented), Zelda seems to be able to use a mixture of spells and voodoo to acquire a certain power to control and destroy both people and inanimate objects. She seems motivated to establish a new business model, by selling her services at a premium, as opposed to simply using her powers to get money. She appears to have no empathy at all, and kills two of her henchmen after making them suffer in agony. In others, Zelda, the beautiful sorceress, is as crazy as a bedbug.

Cole -- in his comic book stories, at least -- appears to be both drawn to and oppressed by beautiful women. In one panel, a man writhes on the ground in torture and gasps, "I can't stand it! She's killing me!"

Throughout the story, Cole uses the bright red body of Plastic Man (is that costume his skin, or actual clothes he's wearing?) to direct the eye through his shadow-drenched, inky-black tableaux.

In my video above, I spoke of how Cole created different visual planes and then broke them with vigorous movement through them in the splash page. Consider the smoke and Plas' left arm, which move away from the planes nearest the reader towards the rear planes.

And then the thug-monster's two arms move him the opposite direction, from the rear, to the front. When we step back and look at this composition, we see that all the elements swirl around the central figure of the luscious wicked witch. the smoke curls around her, as does Plastic Man's arm. She is the catalyst of this composition, as she is the catalyst of this story. So, the splash page is symbolic and perfectly in resonance with the story the will follow. This strikes me as pretty sophisticated and accomplished art, in any medium. Cole uses this multi-dimensional, depth-of-field technique in several standout panels within the story itself:

As the story reaches climax (cough cough) Cole makes his panels more dense.

While the story may be somewhat hackneyed and cliche-ridden, and the horrific nature of the visuals may be something of a turn off when one expects to see Cole's funny stuff, I maintain that his last comic books have great merit and encourage all readers to seek them out. I leave you with one of my favorite panels in the story. After drawing Plastic Man in exceptional volume and intensity for over decade, Cole had a unique feel for what a man who had a rubber body would actually look like in our reality, and in this panel, he delivers a beautiful and surprising image, that is both funny and challenging.

This was one of Jack Cole's last Plastic Man stories. It's a shame that, having achieved this high level of expertise, and being so talented, he didn't stay in the field and make more comic book stories.

Somewhat like Plastic Man in this panel, Cole's soul and emotional health may not have been up to its normal resiliency. The field he had worked so hard in for 15 years was rapidly changing and edging him out. Even though he was artistically successful (perhaps more than anyone realized until recently), his shift from humor to horror wasn't doing the trick. Like Plas, he knew he had to do something fast. A few months later, he submitted some gag cartoons to a new men's magazine, called Playboy, and made another virtuoso shift in artistic approach, from horror comics to sexy cartoons. This time, his work was noticed and celebrated -- but sadly, it seemed to make little difference to a man who must have still had the darkness we see in his last comic book stories locked up inside.

Happy Halloween 2012,

Paul Tumey

WANT MORE DARK PLAS? SEE MY 2011 HALLOWEEN POST HERE!

Three Strange Early Jack Cole Cartoons - 15 Years before Playboy!

2012-10-16T12:51:00.001-07:00

Here's a NEW Jack Cole find -- three very early bizarre, death-crime-and-punishment oriented gag cartoons from the pages of Lev Gleason's Picture Scoop Volume 1, #4 (April, 1943).

The magazine was one of several mainstream "slick" style publications published by Lev Gleason, the publisher of Charles' Biro's comic book Crime Does Not Pay. Gleason also hired Jack Cole in late 1939 to edit his comic book,Silver Streak (named after his new car), where Cole created The Claw, Sliver Streak, Daredevil, The Pirate Prince, and Dickie Dean - Boy Inventor.

By the time of Picture Scoop's publication, Jack Cole had left Lev Gleason, worked briefly for MLJ (Archie) and then moved over to Quality Comics in 1941. In an earlier article (which you can read here), we looked at some original anti-Hitler cartoons from issue one of Picture Scoop.

The cover of Picture Scoop #4 (April, 1943)

Many thanks to Darwination please be sure to visit his Darwination Scans Blog for many scans of amazing old magazines and ephemera) for scanning this magazine and making finds such as this possible.

The Cole cartoons all bear his late 30's magazine gag cartoon signature that we see in the 1936-40 Boy's Life cartoons (you can read over 20 of the cartoons and my article here -- check it out folks, this is one of the best achievements of this blog!)

The subject matter of these is too grim for the Boy's Life scouting market, so they must have been done for some other market. I'm thinking Cole may have targeted a crime or police stories magazine, since these feature cops, albeit doing pretty morbid acts!

By 1943, Cole's style was very different, and it had been three long years since he had worked for Gleason... so I am thinking he pulled these out of a drawer of his rejects and sold them to his former boss. I suspect these cartoons were done in the late 1930's, probably 1937 or 1938.

In any event, here's the cartoons, in order from strange...

... stranger... (note: colored blue to make it more readable):

... and downright dark!

It seems that even in the first years of his career, Cole was fascinated with death. It's this mordant, elemental bent that raises Cole's cartoons up as noteworthy.

The cartoons appear in a spread in the magazine, and one wonders if the red tinting of the two "off-color" gags is to decrease their impact:

Three early Jack Cole cartoons share space with others in Picture Scoop #4

I don't know who the other cartoonists are in this spread, but this gives you a good look at how distinctively screwball Cole's style was, even in the early years.

And speaking of Screwball Comics, here's a FREE SNEAK PREVIEW of the latest exciting development at my other blog, The Masters of Screwball Comics. This is the stuff that influenced Jack Cole, Harvey Kurtzman, and other major American cartoonists.

Here's page one of the special "GONE TO THE DOGS" issue of my faux newspaper Screwball Sunday Comics Supplement. If you like what you see there's lots more -- just click here and get ready to guffaw!

Screwily Yours,

Paul Tumey

Two Rare Jack Cole Cartoons for Stamp Wholesaler Mag (circa 1954)

2012-09-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

In the mid-1950s, Jack Cole was starting over, at the bottom. After 16 years of hard work and success, creating comics such as Plastic Man that were read by millions, he changed careers. As the comic industry collapsed, Cole -- like several other comic book guys -- decided to see if a living could be made selling gag cartoons to magazines.

As we've seen in earlier postings, Cole was no stranger to the magazine market. His first professional sales were to a national magazine, Boy's Life, in 1936 (you can read my article and see over 20 rare Cole cartoons here). He continued to place cartoons in magazines through at least the early 1940s. Then, he became so successful and busy with his comic book stories that he stopped pursuing the magazine markets for about a decade. So it was that Jack Cole returned to selling cartoons to magazines around 1953 or so, with rusty chops and an outdated style.

Although he had a few promising sales to the higher markets, such as The Saturday Evening Post in 1954, and Look in 1955, Cole discovered that, if he wanted to pay the bills, he had to set his sites lower. And so he did. Most famously, Cole published sexy girlie cartoons in the Martin Goodman "Humorama" line of cheap digests. His mid-50s cartoons turn up in the darnedest places, In a March, 1955 issue of Mirth, we find a stunning 12 great gag cartoons (you can read them here). He had a sexy, and genuinely funny color comic strip in a Military newspaper (read that one here).

One of the "low" markets Cole submitted cartoons to was a brand new, obscure magazine called Playboy. In short order, his star rose again, even higher than with Plastic Man, as he became the signature star Playboy cartoonist and smack dab in the middle of a major cultural phenomenon. You can read Cole's Playboy cartoons here.

While recently in New York, I was lucky enough to visit a noted Cole scholar and discovered, with delight, the original art for two Jack Cole gag cartoons hanging on his wall! Both cartoons were previously unknown to me. I was fascinated to see that both cartoons had a "Stamp Wholesaler" slug pasted on them. These are clearly part of Cole's mid-50's climb to establish himself as a magazine cartoonist.

There's an entire secret history of cartoons and comics in America that can be found in specialist trade and hobby magazines such as the Stamp Wholesaler. Plumbers, electricians, and even hardware retailers all had trade magazines with cartoons. So why not stamp collectors?

Here's the first Cole cartoon. I apologize for the fuzziness. This is a camera photo taken in low light, but still clear enough to read and appreciate:

"Oh, all right, if it'll make you feel better, I'll burn Russia and her satellites."

The cartoon is a clever reference to the anti-communist movement in America led by Joseph McCarthy. The composition is exquisite, with the wife's body forming almost an arrow pointing out the window. We naturally see her figure first, and then trace back to the husband and his stamp album.

I did a little research and discovered that the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library at Ohio State University has a collection of over one thousand original cartoons published in The Stamp Wholesaler. Cole's name is not listed, but the collection is not extensively cataloged. Here's some information about the Stamp Wholesaler found on the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library blog:

The magazine, published by Lucius Jackson until the late ’70s, was (from what we can gather) much beloved in the philatelic community and ran articles on stamp collecting, as well as cartoons, among their ads for dealers. Contributing cartoonists included Bill Bobb, Joseph Serrano, Bert Gore, John Dunnett, Roy O. Carling, John Dawson, Cairo Sturgill, Lowell E. Hoppes, Bill Newcombe, Brad Anderson, C. K. Weil, Joe Bresch, Jim M’Guinness, Tony Saltzman, George L. Stewart, Bob Rieker, Doug Baker, and H.B. Harn.

I also discovered, on the Comics DC blog, the existence of a 1951 collection of cartoons from The Stamp Wholesaler. There's very likely no Jack Cole cartoons in this collection, since he was submitting cartoons to niche markets like this mostly from about 1953-56.

Amazon currently has a copy for sale for a mere $40, if anyone wants to check it out, just to be sure. . Here's a scan of the center spread:

These cartoons are decent enough, but Cole's work is far superior to these. I have no idea if the cartoons I saw were ever actually published in the Stamp Wholesaler, but they'd have been crazy NOT to take these gems!

Here's the second Jack Cole stamp collecting cartoon:

"But how can you make a living at it if you won't let anything go?"

I imagine that many collectors (stamps, comics, or you name it) out there can relate to this scenario. I can't tell you how many times I found a treasure in a dusty, dank corner of a comics shop and when I asked about the price, the owner furtively said, "Oh this -- it's not for sale."

Cole was letting go of a lot... and his cartoon draws on his experience. These two cartoons both are drenched with anxiety, as with his last comic book stories and his comic strip, Betsy and Me, from a few years later.

Again, we have a masterful composition, with the anxious stamp dealer backed into a corner. The perspective focuses the eye on the dealer, and then, as with the anxious wife in the cartoon above, we trace back to the customer. Perfectly done.

I also love the organic shapes of the blacks, and the thin, perfectly controlled brush line. It was a treat to find these gems. Many thanks to the art's owner, who generously allowed me to share these with ya!

Always unhinged,
Paul Tumey

Jack Cole Gets A Cloo: Racism, Morbidity, and Great Screwball Comics

2012-07-11T21:58:00.001-07:00

Jack Cole wrote and drew about 700 one-pages for Quality comics, mostly from about 1940 to 1945. Some of these I've shared in this blog: Burp the Twerp, Dan Tootin, Windy Breeze, and Slap Happy Pappy. It's time we rolled out the last of Jack Cole's great one-pager series, Wun Cloo, The Defective Detective. Cole did not create the character -- that dubious honor goes to Gill Fox, who also created Windy Breeze. When Fox moved up through the ranks to become an editor at Quality, Cole took over many of his one pagers.

The premise of the Wun Cloo one-pagers is to present a screwball (and unknowingly racist!) send-up of detective stories. It was likely inspired by the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto books and movies featuring Asian detectives. I have put off posting anything about Wun Cloo because, by today's standards, the comic is painfully disrespectful to people of Asian descent. Fox and Cole don't even have the excuse that we were at war with Japan, since the character was created before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

In their feeble defense, such stereotyped portrayals were pretty common place and their comic was just one of many. Here's a comic from the same period, Ching Chow:

Ching Chow by Stanley Link offered daily pearls of wisdom

Amazingly, Ching Chow, which started in 1927, lasted until 1980!

Nevertheless, some of the Wun Cloo pages are still of interest of to Cole fans -- if you can peel away the racism, there's some mighty fine screwball cartooning. This is something that modern fans of American Golden (and earlier) comics and pop culture have become expert at -- looking past the outrageous racism in the works. Plastic Man was also a humorous version of crime and detective stories, so Wun Cloo could be seen as a testing ground for what Cole later used in his Plas stories.

In fact, months before he created Plastic Man, Cole used the concept in a landmark morbid Wun Cloo 2-pager:

from Smash 17 (December, 1940)

As he did with many of his one-pagers, Cole played with his drawings and had fun. I've read that he would start his work session knocking off one of the one-pagers as a warm-up. Whew! This was a hard-working guy! In our next example, you can see Cole indulging his love of visual patterns...

Smash Comics #20 (March, 1941)

Despite his appearance, Wun Cloo often came out on top:

Smash #24 (July, 1941)

For some reason, Cole seems to have populated Wun Cloo with a great deal of his darkly comic imagery, as in this next page:

Smash #29 (Dec, 1941)

This next Wun Cloo one-pager features both a rare Jack Cole caricature of Adolf Hitler, and an example of his patented face-changing trick, which Plastic Man used on numerous occasions. The page is also looney as hell...

Smash #32 (March, 1942)

That's all for now! More Wun Cloos to come at a later date!

Thanks for reading and be sure to visit my NEW BLOG all about cool screwball comics, featuring original paper scans from my collection of Milt Gross, Rube Goldberg, The Squirrel Cage, Smokey Stover and more! This is the stuff that inspired Jack Cole. You can only find this stuff at The Masters of Screwball Comics!

Stretchily Yours,

Paul TwoClueMe

Jack Cole's High Velocity Grandpa - A New Find From Circa 1938

2012-04-12T16:49:00.001-07:00

I never cease to be amazed at Jack Cole's unmatched ability and desire to propel his characters through space. The Digital Comic Museum recently shared a rare, obscure Harry Chesler comic that contains a reprint of a terrific little 2-page story Jack did at the dawn of his career in comics, circa 1938-39 (thanks to Frank Young for this dating information). Although we don't yet know the original publication information for this story, it appears in The Komik Pages #10 (April, 1945). Incidentally, this was the only issue published! Even though it's unsigned, there's no doubt this story is written, penciled, inked, and lettered by Jack Cole. The manic energy and sheer quantity of comic graphic ideas in these two pages is unique to Cole, who embraced these elements of screwball comics and made them his own.

Harry Chesler was an early -- if not the first -- example of a comic book publisher of reprinting their own material. This is why we see a Jack Cole story in one of Chesler's 1945 books, years after Cole had begun to work at Quality. It's interesting to think that on some newsstands around February 1945, Cole's great Plastic Man comics stood alongside this unsigned reprint of his much earlier work.

Foxy Grandpa is a character that can be traced back to early newspaper comics. How -- and why -- Chesler felt compelled to add such an ancient character to his own mix of one- and two-page comics, is a mystery. The idea of an old man doing funny things has limited appeal to me, but maybe it cracked up readers of Chesler's generation. Here's a Foxy Grandpa page from 1902, a dozen years before Jack was even born! I'm not sure who drew this.

In this episode, Foxy Grandpa cleverly foils two Katzenjammer-style kids and turns their own prank against them. Maybe this was wish-fulfillment for an older generation. You can find more of these enigmatic old FG comics, plus a ton of other amazing old comics at the Barnacle Press website. In any case, somehow, Foxy Grandpa has become an indelible part of our folk culture. A few years ago, I was startled to see a reference top Foxy Grandpa in a Spongebob cartoon (One Krab's Trash) I watched with my son Reid:.

While others wrote and drew Foxy Grandpa at the Harry Chesler studio, Jack Cole's version of the character is uniquely his, imbued with superhuman energy that at times seems to rival Superman's and The Flash's powers. Check out the 1939 Foxy Grandpa story I posted earlier here, where he runs up and down the side of a mountain! "The body's old, but the motor's in high gear!" sez Foxy Grandpa.

In today's addition to our digital archive of lost gems form the Cole-mine, Foxy Grandpa careens and ricochets across a frozen lake like a bullet shot from a gun. Cole clearly was consciously injecting high velocity into his cartoons to distinguish them. I think he was probably hugely influenced in this by the screwball school of comics, particularly Bill Holman's madcap newspaper comic strip Smokey Stover. (By the account of one of Cole's colleagues, Craig Flessel, Cole was a fan of Smokey Stover). See my earlier post here on Holman's influence.

I think Cole loved the speed and density of screwball comics, and created his own unique mix in the structure of a longer sequential graphic narrative. His breathless Plastic Man stories went up to 15 pages. Here, early on, he's experimenting with extreme speed in a two page story.

Foxy Grandpa 1 by Jack Cole - Komik Pages 10 (April 1945)

Foxy Grandpa 2 by Jack Cole - Komik Pages 10 (April 1945)

There are many remarkable aspects to this little dose of dizziness. Check out the car in page one, panel two -- I've observed before that Cole's cars rarely had their wheels on the ground. You see this a lot in his first run Midnight stories.

Page one, panel seven offers a terrific low-angle "camera" view, which is reversed in the first page of the next page. Page two, panel four shows us Foxy Grandpa underwater, and is a wonderfully abstracted, wordless panel on its own-- somehow Cole perfectly conveys the feeling of diving into dark water. He sure packed a lot into this throwaway story! It's terrific that we have the chance to appreciate it some 70 years later!

Plastic Man's Rare 1944 Cameo Plus a New Dan Tootin

2012-03-29T17:53:00.001-07:00

It's my 50th birthday today, and I wanted to post something cool. Here's a largely unknown Plastic Man cameo from Hit Comics 32 (Summer 1944). The story looks to me to be done by Alex Kotzky, who assisted Jack Cole on many Plastic Man stories at Quality.

The abrupt and brief appearance of Plas in this story on pages 5-7 may have been a tribute of sorts to Cole. Kotzy was the truest imitator of Cole and he does a terrific job of rendering the stretchy sleuth in this story.

Many thanks to Digital Comic Museum (it's their birthday, too!) for sharing this great scan.

Here's the whole wacky story:

And, as an extra special treat, here's a terrific NEW Jack Cole Dan Tootin one-pager, also from Hit Comics #32. More great Dan Tootin pages by Cole can be found here.

GO HERE NOW!
Please check out my NEW blog, The Masters of Screwball Comics. This week, to celebrate my 50th birthday, I'm posting FIFTY rare screwball comics!

Two Rare Jack Cole Pencils of Playboy Style Cartoons

2012-03-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

Sadly, very little of Jack Cole's pencil work exists in any form. Here are two extremely rare examples of his masterful drawing from around 1952-54.

It's a sheer delight to see how loose Cole's pencils are, and how well he captures the necessary round, feminine forms.

The bold strokes on these pages, which were probably done with a very thick pencil lead or perhaps a conti crayon of some sort give us an indication of the strength of his compositions. For example, in the cartoon below, we can see how Cole intends for the lines of the brickwork and even the lines of copy in the newspaper to direct the eye towards the sultry siren he has so beautifully sketched.

These drawings are what is known as "roughs" of cartoons that were sent to magazine editors. It's not known if these cartoons were ever completed or published. In the top right corners of the pages, you can see Jack's address stamp from his New Milford, Connecticut home.

Instead of taking the effort to finish a cartoon, a cartoonist could send in a "rough" preliminary drawing. This also afforded the editor a chance to alter the cartoon or caption, as in the example below, where the caption has shifted towards a more screwball tone.

Jack Cole cartoon rough, probably for a Humorama publication

As in the first rough, this drawing's bold pencil strokes and composition elements indicate exactly where Cole wants the eye to go.

For more on Cole's cartoon composition, see our popular guest post by Timothy O'Neil: Jack Cole's Playboy Style Cartoon Composition.

And, speaking of screwball, be sure to check out my new blog, The Masters of Screwball Comics. This blog features some way cool nutty stuff, including many rare comics scans from my collection that fans of Jack Cole will appreciate. This week's post features more incredibly wacky Gene Ahern comics!

Cole's Screwball Roots: Wacky Inventions

2012-03-05T19:48:00.001-08:00

One of Jack Cole's favorite themes was SCREWBALL inventions. He populated his stories with wacky stuff, such as Midnight's "secret vacuum gun," which fired an avenging suction cup at crime.

One of his first series, Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor, is built around such nutty devices are the "time camera" and an accordion hat retriever. Of course, Plastic Man was filled to the brim with wacky inventions, starting with Plas inventing new forms to stretch his body into.

This theme has its roots in the great screwball comics, which in turn have their roots in the American entrepreneurial spirit. For more on crazy inventions and some great SCREWBALL comics, be sure to check out my article at my MASTERS OF SCREWBALL COMICS blog...

The Snoremonica: They Laughed When I Went to Bed

Lipstick Traces: Plastic Man in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow

2012-02-23T17:12:00.002-08:00

Published in 1973, Thomas Pynchon's massive novel is widely regarded to be one of the greatest works of 20th century literature. Time Magazine included it in its list of "All-Time Greatest Novels." The book is considered to be a landmark work of what is known as "postmodernist" fiction. It plays with the literary novel form itself, much like Jack Cole's comics played with the form of comics. So, it's no surprise to discover that Cole's Plastic Man pops up here and there in Gravity's Rainbow.

In the edition I have, the Plastic Man references show up in four places, on pages 207, 214, 331, and 751. Here's the first reference, which shows that Pynchon has a fine appreciation of the spirit of Cole's character:

It's interesting, though, to note that Pynchon refers to the character as "Plasticman," condensing the true name of Jack Cole's character, "Plastic Man," into one word. Perhaps this was a strategy to avoid to a copyright lawsuit. The next reference is brief, but once again very much captures the spirit and trappings of Cole's work:

Indeed, Plastic Man, where are you when we need you? A few pages later, Pynchon refers to a "Plasticman sound," which also shows an intuitive grasp of Cole's use of sound effects.

In the last reference, Plastic Man is joined by other golden age superheroes, plus Philip Marlowe, the Lone Ranger and... well... see for yourself:

In late 1971, DC published DC Special #15, a terrific reprint of Jack Cole Plastic man stories. This was my first introduction to Cole's work, and may have been an influence on Pynchon during the writing of Gravity's Rainbow, which was first published in 1973.

The Evolution of the Cole Female: Jack Cole's Early Magazine Cartoons 1938-45

2012-02-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

Jack Cole fans know the story about how he left Plastic Man and comic books in 1954 adroitly stretching into a successful new career as Playboy magazine's first signature cartoonist.

Despite appearances, Jack Cole's mastery of magazine cartoons - a vastly different form than the multi-page comic book story that Cole spent 16 years developing -- did not happen overnight. In fact Cole started out as a magazine cartoonist and continued to sell cartoons to various publications from 1938-45, while he was also developing a career in comic books.

Here's a look at a few of those early magazine cartoons, the result of hours of digging. Many thanks to Ger Apeldoorn, who found four of these rare items and first published them on his Fabulous Fifties blog.

In a 1956 Freelancer article (the first page of which is shown above), Jack Cole wrote about his early efforts as a magazine cartoonist:

"Here a buck -- there a buck --- I tried style after style until I finally sold one cartoon to Gurney Williams, then at Collier's Magazine."

The Freelancer article reprints that cartoon, but without the tagline. After much digging, I've finally located Jack Cole's first sale to Collier's Weekly! Here's the page it appeared on:

Collier's Magazine - August 27, 1938
Jack Cole's first cartoon sale to Collier's

And here's the cartoon:

Collier's Magazine - August 27, 1938
Jack Cole's first cartoon sale to Collier's

It's important to note that, while this was a big event for Jack, it was not his first sale. By this time, he had already sold over a dozen cartoons to Boy's Life magazine. See my article on Jack Cole's Boy's Life cartoons for nearly 2 dozen delightful early works by the master!

During the 1940s, Gurney Williams -- the cartoon editor that Cole mentioned in his Freelancer article -- was the cartoon editor for Collier's, American Magazine and Woman's Home Companion, paying $40 to $150 for each cartoon. From a staggering stack of some 2000 submissions each week, Williams made a weekly selection of 30 to 50 cartoons, lamenting

"The other day I found myself staring at the millionth cartoon submitted to me since I became humor editor here. I wish it could have been fresh and original. Instead, it showed several ostriches with their heads buried in the sand. Two others stood nearby. Said one to the other: 'Where is everybody?' " (Time Magazine, August 12, 1946)

A sale to Collier's in 1938 was an auspicious start for any new cartoonist, including Jack Cole. At the time, Gurney Williams was publishing cartoons by such greats as Otto Soglow:

Collier's - Jan 8, 1938 - Otto Soglow

William Steig:

Collier's - Feb 4, 1939 - William Steig

And Charles Addams:

Colliers - June 10, 1939 - Charles Addams

Cole's first sale to Collier's is drawn in a completely different style than his Plastic Man and Playboy work.

It's a loose, fragmented, agitated brush style. The eyeballs of the characters are black raisins. His first Collier's cartoon has an air of freshness about it that went beyond the visual style itself. The joke is genuinely funny and character-driven. We feel that we know this sweet, old-fashioned dowager personally and find it amusing that she thinks an airmail letter is an adventure.

It's interesting to note that the man who would become the creator of some of the sexiest cartoons for men's magazines ever drawn started out with a charmingly innocent cartoon featuring an elderly spinster.

It's also worthwhile to note the details Cole has stuffed into this small, narrow cartoon: the silhouette portraits on the wall that bespeak of a graceful time of the past, the antique grandfather clock, and especially the adorable cat blending into the rug at bottom left -- very similar to one Plastic Man's first tricks:

Police Comics #1, August 1941

Another golden age comic artist, Hal Sherman (known for his early 40s work at DC on Dr. Fate), also had a sale to Collier's around the same time, indicating that the twin trajectories of Jack Cole's careers in magazine cartoons and comic books was not totally unique:

Collier's - March 11, 1939 - Hal Sherman

I've scoured the pages of Collier's Weekly from 1938-1940, and turned up just one more Jack Cole cartoon - one that has been "lost," until now:

Collier's - May 20, 1939 - Jack Cole

Note this cartoon is in the exact same modernistic bush style as Cole's first Collier's sale. Here we have a man, a woman, and a toaster. The woman resembles nothing of the sexy "estrogen souffles" that Cole would become famous creating for Playboy and Humorama (as "Jake"). There is nothing sexy about this woman at all, but it may not be for lack of trying. The decorative hat and veil suggest feminine energy, and foreshadow the filigree touches Cole would use in his Jake and Playboy cartoons. In fact, she seems to be wearing the same old-fashioned clothes as the spinster in the earlier cartoon!

Evidently - and rightfully so -- Cole thought toasters were funny. he created another toaster joke in 1955:

Mirth, 1955 - Jack Cole

Jumping back in time a little, here's another cartoon sale Jack made in 1938, this time to Judge -- another one of those "buck here, buck there" events:

Note the different signature, which is closer to Cole's Boy's Life cartoons of the period. The art style is a less aggressive version of the loose brushwork. The gag is solid, and... what's this? A nurse? yes, a nurse that once again is nothing close to the sexy nurses and women Jack Cole would later turn out like a man possessed, such as in this 1944 comic book story:

Military Comics 30 - July, 1944 - Jack Cole

Jack Cole was considerably more innocent in his younger years and earlier cartoons. His drawing abilities were evolving rapidly, with uneven results. He leaned toward a goofy, screwball sense of humor in his work, such as in this unidentified delightful Rube-Goldberg-style lunch counter scene:

Or in this pair of cartoons from a 1942 issue of the over-sized Gags magazine, which appear to be chopped up to make room for blocks of copy:

Gags Magazine, 1942 - Jack Cole

Even as late as 1945, while he was a master in comic books, Cole was still struggling to master the gag cartoon -- especially the sexually loaded cartoon, as in this example from Judge, which -- oddly -- has the same left-leaning pose as the dental cartoon above!

Judge - December, 1945 - Jack Cole

This may have been Cole's first published wash cartoon. By now, some 7 years after the non-sexy Collier's and Judge cartoons of 1938, Cole has developed a desire to depict sexy women in his work. Yet, he hasn't quite got it. This drawing is too labored over and wooden to be appealing. It contains only hints of the greatness to come. Compare the 1945 Judge cartoon above with this masterful wash composition from sometime in the early 1950's:

Jack Cole 'Jake" cartoon reprinted in 1962 Humorama publication

It's interesting to me, though, to note that Cole hasn't thrown away his desire to draw little swirly filigree abstract designs to suggest sexual excitement and feminine energy, in the same spirit as the woman's veil in his 1939 Collier's cartoon:

It's the same idea we find in the mouth-watering Humorama cartoon above, just done about a thousand times better.

++++

Jack Cole In The News:

Silver Streak 6 on the Auction Block

A key Jack Cole comic is at auction on Ebay. Currently, the bid is $1,000.00. The auction ends Feb 12, 201211:15:10 PST.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Silver-Streak-6-Classic-Jack-Cole-cover-Origin-Daredevil-Claw-returns-/160730014101

UPDATE: The book sold for $1,447 sheckles!

SCREWBALL! A New Tumey Blog!

2012-02-01T00:10:00.000-08:00

Announcing: The Masters of SCREWBALL Comics - a new blog by Paul Tumey!

My study of Jack Cole's work and exploration of what I like about it has led me to a parallel exploration of the sub-genre of old comics known as "screwball comics." Cole started out zealously creating wacky SCREWBALL comics and it informed much of his work in the years to follow, including his Plastic Man stories.

My interest in SCREWBALL comics has become so keen that I've decided to start a new blog. Just as with Cole's Comics, I hope that maybe this new blog will help me develop some genuine scholarship and critical structures that will lead to a deeper understanding and appreciation of this fascinating form of comics.

But mainly I hope it leads to getting some publisher to pay me money to make them a book! Gawrsh!

Here's a taste of what you'll find there:

The Squirrel Cage by Gene(eeyus) Ahern, 1945

Anyway, I thought the readers of Cole's Comics might like to know about this new blog of mine. You can visit it at www.screwballcomics.blogspot.com. Thanks in advance for visiting, and please let me know what you think!

- Paul Tumey

Jack Cole Playboy Cartoon Rejects Appear in Hefner's College Humor Mag

2012-01-28T12:50:00.000-08:00

From 1946 to 1949, Jack Cole's friend and publisher, Hugh Hefner attended the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana.

Incredibly, Hef earned his Bachelor's degree in just two- and-a-half years by doubling up on his classes.

Somehow, he also found the time to start a new magazine, rather boldly named Shaft, which became the U of Illinois' humor magazine. An ambitious cartoonist at the time, Hefner published many of his own cartoons in Shaft. Here's a cover he drew for the January, 1948 issue (courtesy of the University of Illinois archives):

Here's a Hugh Hefner cartoon not from Shaft, but from the college newspaper, the Daily Illini. This example, with its comment on the modern woman, is a primitive form of the sexual cartoon Hefner would develop into its own art form with Jack Cole and others:

During the time he edited Shaft, Hefner introduced a (clothed) Co-Ed of the Month feature, the first version of the famous Playmate of the Month centerfold that would become a staple (or, more accurately, embrace the staples) of Hefner's Playboy magazine.

Hefner graduated in 1949 and went on to create Playboy in 1953 where he quickly attracted Jack Cole's cartoon submissions. As we've recently discovered, in 1954-55, Jack Cole created a number of magazine cartoons and comic strips that have been mostly forgotten and overlooked. He was in transition from a 16-year career in comic books towards being a star magazine cartoonist and then syndicated comic strip creator. 1954-55 was a period of renewal, and rebirth for Jack Cole.

Sam Henderson wrote a while back that he had a Jack Cole cartoon from the April 1954 issue of Shaft. Here then, is yet another "lost" Jack Cole cartoon, thanks to Sam Henderson:

In his Magic Whistle blog, which has several covers and cartoons from 1954 issues of Shaft, Henderson speculates that the Jack Cole cartoon may have been a Playboy reject that Hefner passed on to his alma mater. That seems a reasonable assumption. The cartoon, which is funny enough, doesn't seem in the same league as Cole's Playboy work... and of course, it has nothing to do with women or sex. Maybe someday I'll get up the gumption to attempt to contact Mr. Hefner and find out for sure.

Our friend and fellow comics historian, Ger Apeldoorn recently purchased some issues of Charley Jones' Laugh Book Magazine, a bottom-of-the-barrel cartoon/humor magazine. Ger was delighted to discover, nestled among various minor work by unknown and forgotten cartoonists in the July 1955 issue, a terrific full-page Jack Cole cartoon! Many thanks to Ger for kindly sharing this new discovery with this blog. Be sure to check out his amazing blog, The Fabuleous Fifties which is a treasure-trove of comics and information.

Note the tagline at the bottom right of the page, "Jack Cole in Shaft":

This seems to indicate that this cartoon is a reprint from an issue of Shaft, where it originally appeared. At this time, I have no access to the 1954-55 run of Shaft, so I cannot identify the issue in which this cartoon appeared.

Again, the theory that this cartoon is actually a Playboy reject makes sense. Hefner may have purchased it from Cole and then donated it to the University of Illinois, helping both his alma mater and Jack Cole (who had just lost his house and most of his possessions in a flood). It could even have been a tax write-off! Here's the cartoon, cleaned up:

It's sexual humor, and sophisticated enough for Playboy. But there is a different approach. This is the period that Cole was experimenting and fine-tuning what would become a successful new formula. The cartoon here is very much in the same vein as the dozen Jack Cole cartoons recently discovered in a 1955 issue of Mirth (see my post here).

Perhaps it's simply that the thin, pinched, unhappy woman in this cartoon is much plainer than the typical Jack Cole Playboy women, who Art Spiegelman called "estrogen souuffles who mesmerized the ineffectual saps who lusted after them."

Spiegelman's observation is a terrific summary of the Jack Cole Playboy cartoon formula: bombshell women wielding extreme sexual power over impotent men. However, in this Shaft cartoon, the man has the power. The sexually frustrated woman has been waiting three days to have sex. The man in this cartoon is not ineffectual, he's just uninterested. The cartoon has a sadness about it. Here's the cartoon re-organized in a vertical scrolling format:

Thanks again to Sam Henderson and to Ger Apeldoorn for more "lost" Jack Cole cartoons from the mid-fifties!

All text copyright 2012 Paul Tumey

Insane Comics: 3 Rare Jack Cole Stories From 1938

2012-01-20T14:08:00.000-08:00

Presenting 7 pages of rare Jack Cole comics from late 1938!

Funny Pages Volume 2, issue 11 (November, 1938) featured a panoply of Jack Cole's screwball stories. At the time, Cole was working for the Harry "A" Chelser studio in New York. Sometime in 1936, Jack borrowed some money from various merchants in his home town of New Castle, PA and moved to New York to start a career as a cartoonist. After a year of near starvation, Cole connected with the Chesler studio, which was packaging original comic book content to meet the growing demand for comics.

Cole's work of this time is very much influenced by the "screwball" school of newspaper comics, most famously represented by Bill Holman (Smokey Stover), Dr. Seuss, and Gene Ahern (Nut Brothers, Squirrel Cage). Here's a typical example of Ahern's Nut Brothers (written and drawn by someone other than Ahern who had left the NEA syndicate about three years earlier). This strip shows the screwball school in fine form around the time Jack Cole entered comics (note the Napoleon hat in panel 3) :

Jack Cole's determined screwball approach is certainly evident in his Nutty Fagin one-pager in Funny Pages Vol. 2, issue 11 (November, 1938):

Note that Jack Cole signs this page "Sassafrass." As far as I know, this is the single occurrence of this particular pen name. Other pen names Jack Cole used were: Richard Bruce, Ralph Johns, and Jake.

One thing that strikes me about this page is the bold pattern of the crepe paper bunting that adorns the speaker's podium, and the pattern of polka dots on Fagin's boxer shorts. Over the course of his 16-year career creating hundreds of comic book stories, Jack Cole would expertly use patterns to add visual appeal to his work over and over.

Another screwball artist that I suspect was a huge influence on Cole was Milt Gross. The energy and zaniness, as well as the sheer love of distorting the human figure that is so evident in Gross' comics must have inspired Jack Cole. Here's a couple of Milt Gross Sunday comics from 1931, when Jack Cole was 16 years old and starting to learn to cartoon.

Next we find a rare example of Jack Cole drawing the extremely non-PC "Cheerio Minstrels" two-pager series that seems to have been quite popular at the time, judging by how many Centaur comics have it. I think the "cheerio" concept was probably a core idea for Chesler. Here's the cover to one of his earliest publications, a newspaper Sunday magazine insert called Cheerio from January, 1936:

Note that, among the listed comics inside, we have "Cheerio Hotel" (and also "King Kole's Kourt," appearing before Jack Cole joined the studio -- which confirms that Cole's later episodes of the strip were a happy coincidence, and that he was not the originator of the comic). The Cheerio Minstrels format was always a trio of African Americans singing a song in a sort of comic book version of a vaudeville minstrel routine. Cole's treatment is a shifting filmstrip of insanity:

Observe, if you will, how, in the bottom of page one, Cole pneumatically propels the characters around the panel. This exaggerated movement is another element Cole would develop, particularly in his Plastic Man stories. In fact, Cole recycled the fourth panel on page 2, with the arm amputation with a saw, in his first Woozy Winks story (Police Comics 13):

Last, but far from least, is a zany 4-page story by Jack Cole, Smart Alec, in which the main character is resplendently adorned with reverse polka dot trousers. I particularly love the wonderful 2-panel spread at the bottom of page 3. I don't have a lot to say about this material, but just wanted to share it! Enjoy!

A big thank you to Digital Comics Museum and scanner "dsdaboss" for these marvelous scans!