View source for Jack Cole (artist)

{{short description|American cartoonist}}
{{more citations needed|date=September 2018}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2012}}
{{Infobox comics creator
| name          = Jack Cole
| image         = Jack Cole 1956.jpg
| birth_name    = Jack Ralph Cole
| alt           =
| birth_date    = {{birth date|1914|12|14}}
| birth_place   = [[New Castle, Pennsylvania]]
| death_date    = {{Death date and age|1958|08|13|1914|12|14}}
| death_place   = [[Crystal Lake, Illinois]]
| nationality   = [[United States|American]]
| cartoonist    = y
| write         = y
| edit          = y
| alias         = {{plainlist|
*Geo. Nagle
*Ralph Johns
*Jake}}
| signature     =
| notable works = [[Plastic Man]]
| awards        = {{plainlist|
*[[List of Harvey Award winners#The Jack Kirby Hall of Fame|Jack Kirby Hall of Fame]] (1991)
*[[List of Eisner Award winners#The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame|Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame]] (1999)}}
}}

'''Jack Ralph Cole''' (December 14, 1914&nbsp;– August 13, 1958)<ref>Spiegelman and Kidd (2001) give Cole's birth and death dates as "December 1914" and Wednesday, Aug 13, 1958; that death date also appears in Cole's suicide note to Hugh Hefner and in an Aug 14, 1958, ''[[Chicago Sun-Times]]'' news report, both reprinted in the book. The [http://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/cole.htm Jack Cole entry] at the [[Lambiek Comiclopedia]] gives his birth date as December 14, 1914.</ref> was an American [[cartoonist]] best known for birthing the comedic [[superhero]] [[Plastic Man]], and his cartoons for ''[[Playboy]]'' magazine.

He was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's [[List of Harvey Award winners#The Jack Kirby Hall of Fame|Jack Kirby Hall of Fame]] in 1991<ref name="ha">{{cite web|url=http://www.harveyawards.org/awards_1991win.html|title=1991 Harvey Award Winners|publisher=The Harvey Awards|access-date=November 29, 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101109200822/http://www.harveyawards.org/awards_1991win.html|archive-date=November 9, 2010|df=mdy-all}}</ref> and the [[List of Eisner Award winners#The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame|Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame]] in 1999.<ref name="ea">{{cite web|url=http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_pastwinners.php#1999 |title=1999 Eisner Awards |publisher=Comic-Con International |access-date=November 29, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110427023810/http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_pastwinners.php |archive-date=April 27, 2011 }}</ref>

==Early life==
[[File:PoliceComics24.jpg|thumb|''Police Comics'' No. 24 (Nov. 1943). Cover art by Jack Cole]]
Born in [[New Castle, Pennsylvania|New Castle]], [[Pennsylvania]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lawrencecountymemoirs.com/lcmpages/811/artist-cartoonist-jack-cole-new-castle-pa|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131210023958/http://www.lawrencecountymemoirs.com/lcmpages/811/artist-cartoonist-jack-cole-new-castle-pa|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 10, 2013|title=Lawrence County Memoirs: Artist/Cartoonist Jack Cole - New Castle PA|website=www.lawrencecountymemoirs.com}}</ref> Cole—the third of six children of a [[dry goods]]-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]]. 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]]'' 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.{{citation needed|date=September 2018}}

==Career==
===Early work===
In 1936, having married childhood sweetheart Dorothy Mahoney soon after graduating [[High school (North America)|high school]], Cole moved with his wife to [[New York City]]'s [[Greenwich Village]]. After spending a year attempting to break in as a [[magazine]]/[[newspaper]] illustrator, Cole began drawing for the studio of [[Harry "A" Chesler]], 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]] comics such as ''Funny Pages'' and ''Keen Detective Funnies''. He produced such additional features as "King Kole's Kourt" (under the [[pseudonym]] 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===
{{more citations needed|section, except for one footnote,|date= April 2014}}
[[Lev Gleason Publications]] hired Cole in 1939 to edit ''Silver Streak Comics'', where one of his first tasks was to revamp the newly created [[superhero]] [[Daredevil (Golden Age)|Daredevil]]. Other characters created or worked on by the prolific tyro include [[Archie Comics|MLJ]]'s The Comet in ''[[Pep Comics]]''—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 (comics)|Jack Binder]]'s original [[Golden Age of comic books|Golden Age]] [[Daredevil (Golden Age)|Daredevil]] in 1940, Cole was hired at [[Quality Comics]]. He worked with [[Will Eisner]], assisting on the writer-artist's signature hero [[Spirit (comics character)|The Spirit]]—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 (DC Comics)|Midnight]], for ''Smash Comics'' No. 18 (Jan. 1941). Midnight, the alter ego of [[radio]] announcer Dave Clark, wore a similar [[Fedora (hat)|fedora]] hat and domino mask, and partnered with a talking [[monkey]]—questionably in place of the Spirit's young [[African-American]] sidekick, [[Ebony White]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.toonopedia.com/midnight.htm|title=Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Midnight|first=Donald D.|last=Markstein|website=www.toonopedia.com}}</ref> During Eisner's [[World War II]] [[military service]], Cole and [[Lou Fine]] were the primary ''Spirit'' ghost artists; their stories were reprinted in [[DC Comics]]' hardcover collections ''The Spirit Archives'' Vols. 5 to 9 (2001–2003), spanning July 1942&nbsp;– 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.<ref>''Crack Comics'' No. 34 (Quality Comics, Autumn 1944).</ref>

===Plastic Man===
{{main article|Plastic Man}}
[[File:JackColeMagArt01.jpg|thumb|left|190px|Sample of Cole's original art for ''[[Humorama]]'']]
Cole created Plastic Man for a backup feature in Quality's ''[[Police Comics]]'' #1 (Aug. 1941). While [[Timely Comics]]' 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{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}, 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]]{{citation needed|date=August 2015}} and [[John Spranger]]{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}—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]] 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)<ref>[http://toonopedia.com/barker.htm "The Barker"] at [[Don Markstein's Toonopedia]].  {{webarchive|url=https://www.webcitation.org/6b6cHdl9u?url=http://toonopedia.com/barker.htm |date=August 27, 2015 }} from the original on August 27, 2015.</ref>

===''Playboy''===
{{more citations needed|section, except for one quote with two footnotes for it, |date= April 2014}}
Cole's career by that time had taken on another dimension. In 1954, after having drawn slightly risqué, single-panel "[[good girl art]]" 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.<ref>''Playboy'', (November 1958), p.24</ref>  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.{{Citation needed|date=November 2010}} Cole biographer [[Art Spiegelman]] said, "Cole's goddesses were estrogen soufflés who mesmerized the ineffectual saps who lusted after them."<ref>Chun (2004), p. 8</ref><ref>Spiegelman and Kidd (2001), p. 112</ref>

===''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") {{cite web|title= Jack Cole's 1956 Mystery Comic Strip, comments section|date=February 21, 2010 |url=http://colescomics.blogspot.com/2010/02/millie-and-terry-jack-coles-1956.html}} 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 {{cite web|title=American Armed Forces Features - Wha?|url=http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2006/04/american-armed-forces-features-wha.html}}, a discussion by Jack Cole expert Paul Tumey {{cite web|title=Jack Cole's Mystery 1956 Comic Strip|date=February 21, 2010 |url=http://colescomics.blogspot.com/2010/02/millie-and-terry-jack-coles-1956.html}} and a discussion with lot of samples by The Fabulous Fifties {{cite web|title=Back To The Cole Mine|date=May 28, 2022 |url=https://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2022/05/back-to-cole-mine.html}}

===''Betsy and Me''===
{{main article|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]].<ref name=toonopedia>[http://toonopedia.com/betsynme.htm ''Betsy and Me''] at [[Don Markstein's Toonopedia]].  {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20240527115035/https://www.webcitation.org/6b6ZBrhVh?url=http://toonopedia.com/betsynme.htm |date=May 27, 2024 }} from the original on August 27, 2015.</ref> 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.<ref name=toonopedia /> For it, Cole utilized "a simplified style," historian [[Ron Goulart]] wrote, "reminiscent of the drawing in the [[United Productions of America|UPA]] animated cartoons."<ref name=hogans-goulart>{{cite news | url = http://cartoonician.com/jack-and-betsy-and-me/ | title = Jack and Betsy and Me | author-link = Ron Goulart | first = Ron | last = Goulart | work = Hogan's Alley | publisher = Bull Moose Publishing | date = May 18, 2012 | access-date = 2013-12-29 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131013145642/http://cartoonician.com/jack-and-betsy-and-me/ | archive-date = October 13, 2013 | url-status = dead }}</ref> ''Betsy and Me'' ran for {{frac|2|1|2}} 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.<ref name=hogans-goulart /> To continue the strip, the syndicate hired advertising artist Dwight Parks, who had been trying to sell his own strip about a philosophical hobo.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Apeldoorn|first=Ger|journal=Hogan's Alley| title=Jack and Betsy and Me|date=January 2010|issue=17}}</ref> <!--The last Sunday by Parks was dated December 21, 1958.<ref>''Betsy and Me", December 21, 1958, reprinted at {{cite web|last=Apeldoorn|first=Ger|title=Last Betsy|url=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lBp6zXnn7nQ/UrtM46JJznI/AAAAAAABJOE/IJgi10xSK2c/s1600/Betsy-and-Me-1958-12-21.jpg}}</ref>-->

===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 [[Art Spiegelman]]'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.<ref name=PaulGravett/>

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]].<ref name=PaulGravett>[[Gravett, Paul]] (August 31, 2008). [http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/article/jack_cole "Jack Cole: Stretched To His Limits"]. Paul Gravett. Reprinted from ''Comic Book Marketplace'' (2001). Retrieved September 24, 2018.</ref><ref>R. C. Harvey (2007), p. xx–xxi</ref> 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]] described the suicide as "one of the most baffling events in the history of cartooning".<ref>Ho, Oliver (February 11, 2010). [https://www.popmatters.com/120702-borderland-speakeasy-3-needle-in-the-eye-2496164660.html "Borderland Speakeasy #3: Needle in the Eye"]. ''[[PopMatters]]''. Retrieved September 24, 2018.</ref>

==Legacy==
Cole was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's [[List of Harvey Award winners#The Jack Kirby Hall of Fame|Jack Kirby Hall of Fame]] in 1991<ref name="ha"/> and the [[List of Eisner Award winners#The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame|Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame]] in 1999.<ref name="ea"/>

Cole's story "Murder, Morphine and Me", which he illustrated and possibly wrote<ref>Spiegelman and Kidd (2001), p. 91, do not specify who wrote the uncredited story; the [http://comics.org/details.lasso?id=255419#2 Grand Comics Database entry for the issue] cites it as possibly written by Cole.</ref> for publisher [[Magazine Village]]'s ''[[True Crime Comics]]'' No. 2 (May 1947), became a centerpiece of psychiatrist Dr. [[Fredric Wertham]]'s crusade against violent comic books. Wertham, author of the influential study ''[[Seduction of the Innocent]]'', cited a particular panel of the story's dope-dealing narrator about to be stabbed in the eye with a [[hypodermic needle]] as an example of the "injury-to-the-eye" motif.<ref>Chun (2004), p. 4</ref>

In 2003, writer-artist [[Art Spiegelman]] and artist [[Chip Kidd]] 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]]'' magazine in 1999.

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
*{{Cite book|editor=Chun, Alex|title=The Classic Pin Up Art Of Jack Cole|year=2004|publisher=[[Fantagraphics Books]]|isbn=978-1-60699-284-5}}
*{{cite book|last1=Cole|first1=Jack|last2=Parks|first2=Dwight|others=[[R. C. Harvey]] (Foreword)|title=Betsy and Me|year=2007|publisher=Fantagraphics Books|isbn=978-1-56097-878-7}}
*[[Art Spiegelman|Spiegelman, Art]], and [[Chip Kidd]]. ''Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits'' ([[Chronicle Books]], 2001) {{ISBN|0-8118-3179-5}}
*[http://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/cole.htm Jack Cole] at the [[Lambiek Comiclopedia]]
*{{gcdb|type=credit|search=Jack+Cole|title=Jack Cole}}

==Further reading==
*"The Rehabilitation of Eel O'Brian" by [[Maggie Thompson|Don Thompson]] in ''The Comic-Book Book'', edited by Don Thompson and [[Richard A. Lupoff|Dick Lupoff]] (Arlington House, 1974)
*''Focus on Jack Cole'' by [[Ron Goulart]] ([[Fantagraphics Books]], 1986) {{ISBN|9780930193232}}

==External links==
*{{Comicbookdb|type=creator|id=3571|title=Jack Cole}}
*{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927212433/http://www.chs.org/comics/creators.htm |archive-date=September 27, 2007 |title=Connecticut Talent |publisher=[[Connecticut Historical Society]] |url=http://www.chs.org/comics/creators.htm |url-status=dead }}
*{{cite web|title=The Lost Comics of Jack Cole&nbsp;– Part 1 (1931–38)|url=http://www.tcj.com/the-lost-comics-of-jack-cole-part-1-1931-38/|publisher=The Comics Journal|author=Paul Tumey|date=1 July 2013}}
*{{cite web|title=The Lost Comics of Jack Cole&nbsp;– Part 2 (1938)|url=http://www.tcj.com/the-lost-comics-of-jack-cole-part-2-1938/|publisher=The Comics Journal|author=Paul Tumey|date=7 August 2013}}

{{Authority control}}

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