Jack Ralph Cole (December 14, 1914 – August 13, 1958) was an American cartoonist best known for creating the comedic superhero

Plastic Man Plastic Man (Patrick "Eel" O'Brian) is a superhero first appearing in ''Police Comics'' #1, originally published by Quality Comics and later acquired by DC Comics. Created by cartoonist Jack Cole (artist), Jack Cole, Plastic Man was one of the fi ...

, and his cartoons for ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...

'' magazine. He was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's

Jack Kirby Hall of Fame The following is a list of winners of the Harvey Award, sorted by category. In 2017, the Harvey Awards decided to skip the 2017 awards ceremony and to reboot the ceremony for 2018 in order to give fewer awards by focusing on works instead of indivi ...

in 1991 and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999.

Early life

Born in New Castle,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, Cole—the third of six children of a

dry goods Dry goods is a historic term describing the type of product line a store carries, which differs by region. The term comes from the textile trade, and the shops appear to have spread with the mercantile trade across the British Empire (and forme ...

-store owner and amateur-entertainer father and a former elementary school-teacher mother—was untrained in art except for the Landon School of Illustration and Cartooning

correspondence course Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Traditionally, this usually in ...

. At age 17, he bicycled solo cross-country to Los Angeles, California and back. Cole recounted this adventure in an early self-illustrated professional sale "A Boy and His Bike" (which has often been cited as appearing in ''

Boys' Life ''Scout Life'' (formerly ''Boys' Life'') is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Its target readers are boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 18. The magazine‘s headquarters are in Irving, Texas. ''Scout Life'' is pu ...

'' magazine, but in fact the source of this article is unknown, but speculated to have likely appeared in Cole's hometown newspaper). Back home, Cole took a job at American Can and continued to draw at night.

Career

Early work

In 1936, having married childhood sweetheart Dorothy Mahoney soon after graduating

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

, Cole moved with his wife to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

. After spending a year attempting to break in as a magazine/

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...

illustrator, Cole began drawing for the studio of the

Harry "A" Chesler Harry Chesler (January 12, 1897, or January 12, 1898 (sources differ) – December 1981),Harr ...

, one of the first comic-book "packagers" who supplied outsourced stories to publishers entering the new medium. There, Cole drew such features as "TNT Todd of the FBI" and "Little Dynamite" for

Centaur Publications Centaur Publications (also known as Centaur Comics) was one of the earliest American comic book publishers. During their short existence, they created several colorful characters, including Bill Everett's Amazing-Man. History Comics Magazine Co ...

comics such as ''Funny Pages'' and ''Keen Detective Funnies''. He produced such additional features as "King Kole's Kourt" (under the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

Geo. Nagle), "Officer Clancy", "Ima Slooth", "Peewee Throttle", and "Burp the Twerp: The Super So-An'-So" (the latter two under the pseudonym Ralph Johns).

Golden Age of Comic Books

Lev Gleason Publications Lev Gleason Publications, founded by Leverett Stone Gleason (1898–1971), was the publisher of a number of popular comic books during the 1940s and early 1950s, including '' Daredevil Comics'', '' Crime Does Not Pay'', and '' Boy Comics''. Backg ...

hired Cole in 1939 to edit ''Silver Streak Comics'', where one of his first tasks was to revamp the newly created superhero Daredevil. Other characters created or worked on by the prolific tyro include MLJ's The Comet in ''

Pep Comics ''Pep Comics'' is the name of an American comic book anthology series published by the Archie Comics predecessor MLJ Magazines Inc. (commonly known as MLJ Comics) during the 1930s and 1940s period known as the Golden Age of Comic Books. The titl ...

''—who in short order became the first superhero to be killed—and his replacement, the Hangman. After becoming an editor at Lev Gleason and revamping

Jack Binder Jack Binder is an American film producer (''The Upside of Anger'', '' First Reformed'', ''Reign Over Me'') and television producer (''The Mind of the Married Man'', HBO) and second unit director active since 1985. With older brother Mike Binder ...

's original

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the '' Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the G ...

Daredevil in 1940, Cole was hired at

Quality Comics Quality Comics was an American comic book publishing company which operated from 1937 to 1956 and was a creative, influential force in what historians and fans call the Golden Age of Comic Books. Notable, long-running titles published by Qualit ...

. He worked with

Will Eisner William Erwin Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series '' The Spirit'' (1940–1952) was no ...

, assisting on the writer-artist's signature hero

The Spirit The Spirit is a fictional masked crimefighter created by cartoonist Will Eisner. He first appeared June 2, 1940, as the main feature of a 16-page, tabloid-sized, newsprint comic book insert distributed in the Sunday edition of Register and Trib ...

—a masked crime-fighter created for a weekly syndicated newspaper Sunday supplement and reprinted in Quality Comics. At the behest of Quality publisher Everett "Busy" Arnold, Cole later created his own satiric, Spirit-style hero, Midnight, for ''Smash Comics'' No. 18 (Jan. 1941). Midnight, the alter ego of

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

announcer Dave Clark, wore a similar fedora hat and domino mask, and partnered with a talking monkey—questionably in place of the Spirit's young

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

sidekick, Ebony White. During Eisner's

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

military service Military service is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, air forces, and naval forces, whether as a chosen job ( volunteer) or as a result of an involuntary draft (conscription). Some nations (e.g., Mexico) require ...

, Cole and

Lou Fine Louis Kenneth Fine (November 26, 1914 – July 24, 1971)Louis Fine
at the United States

DC Comics DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...

' hardcover collections ''The Spirit Archives'' Vols. 5 to 9 (2001–2003), spanning July 1942 – Dec. 1944. In addition, Cole continued to draw one and two-page filler pieces, sometimes under the pseudonym Ralph Johns, and a memorable autobiographical appearance in "Inki," which appeared in '' Crack Comics'' #34.

Plastic Man

Cole created Plastic Man for a backup feature in Quality's ''

Police Comics ''Police Comics'' was a comic book anthology title published by Quality Comics (under its imprint "Comic Magazines") from 1941 until 1953. It featured short stories in the superhero, crime and humor genres. Publication history The first issue of ...

'' #1 (Aug. 1941). While

Timely Comics Timely Comics is the common name for the group of corporations that was the earliest comic book arm of American publisher Martin Goodman, and the entity that would evolve by the 1960s to become Marvel Comics. "Timely Publications became the name ...

' quickly forgotten Flexo the Rubber Man had preceded "Plas" as comics' first stretching hero, Cole's character became an immediate hit, and ''Police Comics'' lead feature with issue #5. As well, Cole's offbeat humor, combined with Plastic Man's ability to take any shape, gave the cartoonist opportunities to experiment with text and graphics in groundbreaking manner—helping to define the medium's visual vocabulary, and making the idiosyncratic character one of the few to endure from the Golden Age to modern times. Plastic Man gained his own title in 1943. By the decade's end, however, Cole's feature was being created entirely by anonymous ghost writers and artists—including Alex Kotzky and John Spranger—despite Cole's name being bannered. One last stint by Cole himself in 1949 and 1950 could not save the title. ''Plastic Man'' was cancelled in 1956 after several years of reprinting the Cole material, and new stories by others. Additionally, Cole and writer Joe Millard created the lighthearted feature "The Barker", starring

carnival barker A barker, often a carnival barker, is a person who attempts to attract patrons to entertainment events, such as a circus or funfair, by exhorting passing members of the public, announcing attractions of show, and emphasizing variety, novelty, beau ...

Carnie Callhan. Introduced in ''National Comics'' #42 (May, 1944), the feature spun off into a 15-issue comic of its own (Autumn 1946 - Dec. 1949)

''Playboy''

Cole's career by that time had taken on another dimension. In 1954, after having drawn slightly risqué, single-panel "

good girl art Good Girl Art (GGA) is a style of artwork depicting women primarily featured in comic books, comic strips, and pulp magazines. The term was coined by the American Comic Book Company, appearing in its mail order catalogs from the 1930s to the 1970 ...

" cartoons for magazines, using the pen name "Jake", Cole became a cartoon illustrator for ''Playboy''. Under his own name, he produced full-page, watercolored gag cartoons of beautiful but dim girls and rich but equally dim old men. Cole's art first appeared in the fifth issue; he would have at least one piece published in ''Playboy'' each month for the rest of his life., So popular was his work that the second item of merchandise ever licensed by Playboy (after cufflinks with the famous rabbit-head logo) was a cocktail-napkin set, "Females by Cole", featuring his cartoons. Cole biographer

Art Spiegelman Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel '' Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines ''Arcade'' and '' Ra ...

said, "Cole's goddesses were estrogen soufflés who mesmerized the ineffectual saps who lusted after them."

''Millie & Terry''

Around the same time he started at Playboy, or possibly just before that, Jack Cole created a new comic strip for the faux army Sunday section The American Armed Forced Features, which was produced between 1955 and 1965 by the W.B. Bradbury Co. (which, according to comic and magazine historian Steven Rowe was "an ad agency, selling ads for college magazines in the 40s-50s, before branching out to ad inserts for the military") as a ready made Sunday comic section that army newspapers could add to their own Saturday or Sunday paper (with room left for their own masthead). Called Millie & Terry, it told the humorous adventures of two friends who move to an army town, where they are constantly pursued by the wolfish soldiers. Stylistically, it fits right in between the style he used for his "Jake" cartoons and the later "Betsy and Me". Starting with three one page gags, Cole continued the series with half page gags until September 1957. Not much has been written about this unknown series, except for a short piece on Alan Holtz' The Stripper's Guide , a discussion by Jack Cole expert Paul Tumey and a discussion with lot of samples by The Fabulous Fifties

''Betsy and Me''

In 1958, Cole created his own daily newspaper comic strip, ''Betsy and Me'', which he sold to the

Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate The Field Newspaper Syndicate was a syndication service based in Chicago that operated independently from 1941 to 1984, for a good time under the name the Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate. The service was founded by Marshall Field III and was part of ...

.''Betsy and Me''
at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. from the original on August 27, 2015. The strip began on May 26 and chronicled the domestic adventures of nebbishy Chester Tibbet as narrator, his wife Betsy, and their 5-year-old genius son, Farley. For it, Cole utilized "a simplified style," historian

Ron Goulart Ronald Joseph Goulart (; January 13, 1933 – January 14, 2022) was an American popular culture historian and mystery, fantasy, and science fiction author. He published novelizations and other work under various pseudonyms: Kenneth Robeson, Co ...

wrote, "reminiscent of the drawing in the UPA animated cartoons." ''Betsy and Me'' ran for months before Cole's self-inflicted death; his last daily was published on September 6 and his last Sunday on September 14. In the final Cole daily, Betsy and Chester are seen signing up for a brand-new tract house in Sunken Hills. To continue the strip, the syndicate hired advertising artist Dwight Parks, who had been trying to sell his own strip about a philosophical hobo.

Death

On August 13, 1958, Cole got in his Chevy station wagon, purchased a rifle, and fatally shot himself in the head. On the day he died, Cole mailed a suicide note explaining the reasons for his suicide to his wife Dorothy. The coroner deemed that letter too personal and did not enter it as evidence at the ensuing inquest. The only explanation Dorothy Cole publicly gave was "We had had an argument before." She subsequently remarried, and disappeared from public view. Cole also wrote a suicide note to his editor and father figure, Hugh Hefner, which was printed in

's biography of Cole, ''Jack Cole & Plastic Man: Forms Stretched To Their Limits''. The note reads: :"Dear Hef, When you read this I shall be dead. I cannot go on living with myself and hurting those dear to me. What I do has nothing to do with you." Gravett notes that while Cole owed Hefner money, his estate would cover this debt. Cole did not participate in the ''Playboy'' lifestyle, though the evening before his suicide, he did drink a substantial amount at a ''Playboy'' office party. The reason why the 43-year-old Cole killed himself remains one of the greatest mysteries in 20th century American cartooning, according to journalist

Paul Gravett Paul Gravett is a London-based journalist, curator, writer, and broadcaster who has worked in comics publishing since 1981. He is the founder of ''Escape Magazine'', and for many years wrote a monthly article on comics appearing in the UK magaz ...

. Gravett, Paul (August 31, 2008)
"Jack Cole: Stretched To His Limits"
Paul Gravett. Reprinted from ''Comic Book Marketplace'' (2001). Retrieved September 24, 2018. Cole was in the prime of a celebrated cartooning career, complete with praise for his sophisticated gag cartoons in ''Playboy'', and gaining increasing visibility for his newspaper strip ''Betsy and Me'',

R. C. Harvey Robert C. Harvey (May 31, 1937 – July 7, 2022) was an American author, critic and cartoonist. He wrote a number of books on the history and theory of cartooning, with special focus on the comic strip. He also worked as a freelance cartoonist. ...

described the suicide as "one of the most baffling events in the history of cartooning".

Legacy

Cole was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's

in 1991 and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999. Cole's story "Murder, Morphine and Me", which he illustrated and possibly wrote for publisher Magazine Village's ''

True Crime Comics True most commonly refers to truth, the state of being in congruence with fact or reality. True may also refer to: Places * True, West Virginia, an unincorporated community in the United States * True, Wisconsin, a town in the United States * Tr ...

'' No. 2 (May 1947), became a centerpiece of psychiatrist Dr.

Fredric Wertham Fredric Wertham (; born Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer, March 20, 1895 – November 18, 1981) was a German-American psychiatrist and author. Wertham had an early reputation as a progressive psychiatrist who treated poor black patients at his Lafarg ...

's crusade against violent comic books. Wertham, author of the influential study ''

Seduction of the Innocent ''Seduction of the Innocent'' is a book by German-born American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, published in 1954, that warned that comic books were a negative form of popular literature and a serious cause of juvenile delinquency. The book was tak ...

'', cited a particular panel of the story's dope-dealing narrator about to be stabbed in the eye with a

hypodermic needle A hypodermic needle (from Greek ὑπο- (''hypo-'' = under), and δέρμα (''derma'' = skin)), one of a category of medical tools which enter the skin, called sharps, is a very thin, hollow tube with one sharp tip. It is commonly used w ...

as an example of the "injury-to-the-eye" motif.Chun (2004), p. 4 In 2003, writer-artist

and artist

Chip Kidd Charles Kidd (born 1964) is an American graphic designer known for book covers. Early childhood Born in Shillington in Berks County, Pennsylvania, Kidd grew up being fascinated and heavily inspired by American popular culture. Comic books ...

collaborated on a Cole biography, ''Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits,'' a portion of which had been published in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' magazine in 1999.

Notes

References

* * * Spiegelman, Art, and

. ''Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits'' ( Chronicle Books, 2001)
Jack Cole
at the Lambiek Comiclopedia *

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cole, Jack Artists who committed suicide Artists from Pittsburgh Golden Age comics creators Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame inductees 1914 births 1958 suicides Artists from Illinois People from Lawrence County, Pennsylvania People from Cary, Illinois Playboy cartoonists Chicago Sun-Times people Suicides by firearm in Illinois 20th-century American artists Writers from Illinois 20th-century American writers Writers from Pittsburgh Artists from Pennsylvania 1958 deaths