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

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

Jack Cole's Playboy Style Cartoon Composition: A Guest Post by Timothy O'Neil

In 2007, blogger Timothy O'Neil published an astute visual analysis of one of Jack Cole's sexy "Jake" cartoons from the early 1950's. In another posting, I'll go more into the history of Cole's career as "Jake." For now, with Timothy's permission, I'd like to share his analysis with you (Thanks, Tim!). Timothy shared with me that this analysis of Jack Cole's composition took a lot of work, and it remains one of his favorite postings.

I've done a few of these visual analysis pieces myself, and I can attest to the fact that they are indeed, a lot of work and require a lot of looking and thinking. Tim's work here is well done and reveals the high level of craft and artistry that Jack Cole brought to his gag cartoon work. Tim concludes his visual essay with  a terrific point, that immediate accessibility is the major goal of most commercial artists. This is an overlooked, but important aspect to Jack Cole's art. His stories and gag cartoons are among the most immediately accessible work done in these mediums. A large part of that has to do with his mastery of composition.

Please be sure to visit Tim's blogs:

The Hurting
Rejected Breakfast Cereal Mascots

I'm happy to share with you this "guest post" on Jack Cole. If anyone else out there would like to write a guest post, please feel free to contact me.

LET'S TALK ABOUT COMPOSTION

This is a pin-up by Jack Cole ("Jake"), one of many produced for the Humorama line of mens' magazines in the years between his early comic book work on Plastic Man and The Spirit, and the Playboy work that defined the last period of his life. (This piece is excerpted from Fantagraphics' wonderful monograph, The Classic Pin-Up Art of Jack Cole, edited by Alex Chun and released in 2004. It doesn't actually contain any of his Playboy material, unfortunately. Fantagraphics and Playboy recently collaborated on an excellent overview of Eldon Dedini's pin-up art, so the idea of the two publishers one day producing such a volume isn't that far-fetched.)


First, let's look at the general shape of Cole's picture. I've used red to delineate the piece's main focus - a central oblong focal point roughly corresponding to the curves of the secretary's body and the faces of the men crowding the opposite end of the office. Notice how most of the straight lines in the composition are tangential to the area of negative space at the heart of the picture, defining the negative space without violating it. 

Something which surprised me was how the picture's sight-lines also framed the focal space. Look at how the direction of each figure's gaze also manages to do a great job of pointing the viewer towards where the artist wants the viewer to look. I've colored each character's plane of vision with a different colored triangle - you can see, roughly, that they all overlap at the center of the picture, in a pentagonal figure roughly corresponding to the composition I outlined above. 

Here, I have colored the picture's three main elements: the figure of the secretary in the center, the furniture in the middleground and the office spectators in the background. Notice how every shape in the picture defines the secretary's figure. The secretary really pops out of the foreground when set against the staid, perpendicular lines of the furniture and her co-workers.

By flipping the colors we see something else entirely: a band of light across the lower half of the picture, roughly corresponding to the ostensible focus point, i.e. the secretary's breasts, torso, hips and legs. In the real piece, obviously, this band of yellow is dark, which also helps to pull the eye down towards the desired focal point. The darkest point of a picture pulls the eye towards it - contrast is one of the illustrator's most potent tools. (This is why flat compositions can present difficulty in terms of immediate accessibility to the viewer. In the case of pin-ups, as well as posters, comic-book covers and album jackets, immediate accessibility is a major goal - if not the major goal - of the artist.)  

This post is copyright 2011 by Timothy O'Neil.