A New Unknown Jack Cole Cartoon Before Playboy

The "Unknown Jack Cole" goodies continue to come to light! Yes, your intrepid 'Cole miner,' has emerged from the dark, musty caverns of history into the sunlight with another sparking gem -- a wonderfully clever, forgotten Jack Cole cartoon published in a major mainstream American magazine.

With the discovery of Cole's previously unknown Millie and Terry comic strips, I theorized a few weeks ago that there could be several previously undiscovered Jack Cole cartoons published in 1954-55. This was the time that Cole was in transition from comic books to magazines, and it is now coming to light that he reached out to several markets in this transition, before settling in at Playboy, to become the magazine's first signature cartoonist.

We know about the "Jake" cartoons published in Martin Goodman's Humorama digests, and recently, comics historian and blogger Ger Apeldoorn (see his always fun and enlightening blog here) discovered a previously unknown Jack Cole cartoon in a 1955 issue of Look, a major US magazine at the time. I'm happy to announce and share yet another Cole discovery, this time from a 1954 issue of The Saturday Evening Post!

On February 12th 1954, this small, hastily written item appeared on the front page of the New Castle News, Jack Cole's hometown newspaper:

Many thanks to Alter Ego Magazine (recommended for anyone interested in comics history) for reprinting the article a few years ago ( I think it was provided to them by Jack's brother, Dick Cole). The article reads as follows:

"In the January 23 issue of the Saturday Evening Post you probably noticed an unusual cartoon of a house in which the picture told the story of someone going from floor to floor an turning on the lights.

"The artist's signature in the lower left hand corner was 'Jack Cole.'

"Jack Cole is a New Castle product, son of Mr. and Mrs. DeLace Cole, of 411 Euclid avenue (sic). His home is now in Milford, Conn., but presently he is here in New Castle, called here by the serious illness of his mother.

"Seventeen years ago Jack went to New York City with little more than a few sheets of paper and a burning ambition. His original ideas caught on fast and shortly he was drawing not one but two comic books monthly. (my note: this probably refers to Cole's Plastic Man and Midnight stories, which were the lead features in two comic books, but not the whole comic book, a distinction that was probably lost on the Pennsylvania newspaper writer). Between times, he turned out cartoons good enough for 'Judge' and Colliers. (sic) His first 'Satevepost' was Jan. 23.

He has abandoned the comic book field for free lance (sic) work and more and more his art will undoubtedly be seen in national magazines."

This tiny piece has some interesting information in it. It tells us that at the time that Cole's 16-year career in comic books was collapsing, his mother was probably dying. It must have been a time of great stress for Jack Cole. The article also fails to mention Plastic Man, the primary creation that, over fifty years later, Jack Cole is famous for having created. In all, the article is a nice snapshot of Jack Cole as he transitioned from comic books to magazines. 

Of course, the article also tell us very specifically where to find a Jack Cole cartoon in the pages of one of the top magazines of the day! Here then, is the delightful Jack Cole cartoon that appeared in the January 23, 1954 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, on page 125:

I love that the cartoon has a green outline to set it off in the dense page. This clever cartoon appeared amid spectacular lushly colored advertisements for modernistic new cars, plastic products, and articles about the cold war. The cartoon firmly places Cole's work in the context of 1950's "atomic age" America. The issue also had numerous cartoons, including several by Ted Key (of "Hazel" fame. The cartoon on the page opposite from Cole is by Cavalli, one of the ubiquitous career-cartoonists of the latter half of the 20th century. Amid all this professionalism, we find a little gem that gives us a glimpse into Jack Cole's life at the time.

The 1954 newspaper article above gives us the address of Cole's parents, "411 Euclid Ave." The actual address was 411 East Euclid Avenue. In Jim Steranko's History of Comics Volume 2, he states that Cole's boyhood home was on Euclid Avenue. Therefore, unless the Coles relocated to another house on the same street, here's a satellite image of the house where Jack Cole grew up, as it stands today:

And here is a satellite photograph of the neighborhood where Jack Cole grew up, with the Cole home on Euclid Ave, circled:

Cole lived on the edge of town, almost to the end of the street, and was within walking distance of the large Oak Park Cemetery. One wonders if he explored the city graveyard and if that perhaps fueled his later comic book horror stories. Perhaps he pulled a prank or two there.

When Jack Cole lived in New Castle, it had a population of about 35,000 people. Today, the town has a smaller population, around 25,000. In Cole's day, New Castle hit the peak of its prosperity. In 1954, Cole may have seen a few changes upon his return to his hometown. Here's a photo of Castle Motors in the mid-fifties, a New Castle car dealership that stuffed their vehicles with appealing female radio and TV performers and drove them around town to attract attention:

Interestingly, New Castle is often referred to as a "little New York City," because of its diverse ethnicity. The town is famous in part for its chili dogs, which were developed by Greek immigrant restaurant-owners who lived there. Perhaps, in some ways, when Cole moved from New Castle to New York in 1936, he was already familiar with a city that has a diverse population.

It's difficult to tell for sure from the steep angle of the photo of the Cole home above, but the house appears to be very similar to the one in Cole's Saturday Evening Post cartoon. The Cole family, with six kids, would have needed a large house. Here is an image from a modern promotional film on New Castle real estate that shows the typical style of the town's residential architecture:

Again, very similar to Cole's cartoon:

Perhaps the comical incident Cole depicts in the cartoon actually occurred in his house. Perhaps he looked out from his bedroom window and saw lights going on and off in a house across the street. 

Years earlier, Cole put New Castle and some personal details into his comic book work. The first stories of his early 1939-40 comic book series, Dickie Dean (read the stories here), are set in New Castle. The character's name, no doubt, refers to Jack's brother, Dick Cole. Jack also used the pen name "Richard Bruce" for his 1940 comic book story, "Mantoka" (read it here). In the second Dickie Dean story, Cole writes,"Living in the small city of New Castle, PA is one who can truly be called "genius."

In his introduction to the 2007 collection of Cole's "Betsy and Me" comic strips, historian and author R.C. Harvey mentions that the "nimbus of genius" surrounds Cole's work. There's a bit of brilliance in the Saturday Evening Post cartoon. By no means the first -- or last -- to do so, Cole nonetheless combined sequential cartooning with gag cartooning. In effect, his Post cartoon is a one-page, 8-panel comic strip. 

However, while Cole's comic book one-pagers (and he created hundreds of these!) were stuffed with extra comic details, this cartoon is sparse. Knowing the cartoon would be published at a much smaller size than a comic book page, Cole simplified the image, stripping it of anything but the most essential details so that the repeated house images would read clearly at a postage stamp size. The high light and dark contrast of the house with lighted windows works perfectly for the format. The cartoon is a series of 8 almost identical images, and the key is to discover not only the differences between the images, but the pattern of increasing and then decreasing lights, as they are turned on and then off. 

We don't need to see the people inside to get the joke. In fact, it's considerably funnier if we don't see the people. This is very similar to how the comedy of Laurel and Hardy works. We see a shot of Stan with a ladder. We see a shot of Oliver bending over. We see a shot of Stan turning around with the ladder. We hear "Ohhh!" We see Ollie on the floor covered in paint.

Speaking of film comedy, when I first saw Jack Cole's Saturday Evening Post cartoon, I was reminded of a similar sequence in the amazing Jacques Tati film, "Mon Oncle," in which lighted windows in a silhouetted house react to noises. 

Tati's film came out four years after Cole's Post cartoon. Did Tati see the cartoon? Did Jack Cole influence Jacques Tati? Probably this is merely an instance of two comic geniuses arriving at a similar gag.

An essential part of the genius of Jack Cole's cartoons is how well form follows function, while still allowing for Cole's unique and personal voice. His drawings here are perfect for the medium and totally get the gag/story across.

I can picture the mature husband and wife in their pajamas in the upstairs bedroom. I can see the scornful look on the wife's face as she tells the husband who has just searched the house to see the source of the noise that he was just imagining things. I can see the slightly sheepish look on the husband's face. Not to make too much of it, but it seems to me this is ultimately is yet another Jack Cole cartoon about impotence. Heartbreaking, when you consider how magnificently gifted Cole was, and the courage and competence of his mid-fifties career change. Where many men might have found an safer but less artistic income source, Cole went for it -- and scored. It's admirable.

Here is the cartoon reorganized into a vertical strip, just for fun:

All text copyright 2011 Paul Tumey

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The Barker, Part 3: The Klaus Nordling Connection, and a Surprise Late-Career Return to Early Form

There’s a lot of cross-over between the careers and styles of Jack Cole and Klaus Nordling. “Thin Man,” one of Nordling’s earliest stories (from August, 1940) not only vaguely resembles Jack Cole’s work of the same period, but it also presents the origin of a character who can stretch his body, pre-dating Plastic Man by a full year.

From Mystic Comics #4 (August, 1940, Timely)

 

The story, when compared with Cole’s Plastic Man origin story from Police Comics #1,  is a good illustration of both the similarity and the difference between the two men’s approaches. Both stories are solid and imaginative, but Cole started with a crook and made him go good, turning the superhero myth inside out and establishing a sly tone of satire and self-parody that made Cole’s Plas stories a cultural landmark.

By the way, the THIN MAN didn’t catch on and the character was gone by issue 5, appearing only once. (He was brought back in the 1970’s)

At his best, Nordling matches Cole’s nothing-held-back commitment to the story. Just as Cole’s stories can transport you to a world all their own, the best of Nordling’s stories – especially the longer ones - are equally atmospheric.

Klaus Nordling was a Finnish-American writer-artist who worked in comics from the 40’s through the 70’s. He broke in through Will Eisner’s studio, and became one of Quality Comics’ best writer-artists.

His best-known feature was LADY LUCK, which appeared in various Spirit sections, as a back up in various Quality comics, and eventually in its own title (here Nordling hit a peak with long, funny, off-beat stories and a personal investment that matches the way Cole wrote and drew Plastic Man and Woozy Winks).

For more information on Nordling, read the Wikipedia article on him.

Nordling took over THE BARKER, the colorful feature in National Comics that Jack Cole and writer Joe Millard created (see earlier posts here and here) with the series’ third story. His style was similarly cartoony to Cole’s, and his sense of humor and imagination made him a natural to take a world Cole designed and flesh it out. He kept Cole’s character designs, right down to Col. Lane’s checkered vest. But he also layered on his own rich cast of oddballs.

Building on the Millard-penned BARKER story from National #43 (see here), in the fourth-ever Barker story, Nordling plays his own broadly comical riff on the mythical carnie story about a small town crook who tries to get the upper hand on the travelling carnival.

From National Comics 45 (Dec. 1944 – Quality)

 

The lisping, crooked mayor is particularly pungent in this story. Like Cole, Nordling built whole stories around strange, cartoony villains. Both men were likely heavily influenced in this by Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy stories, which splintered the human psyche into a bevy of bizarre bad guys.

Nordling wrote and drew BARKER stories from National Comics #44 to #67. In Autumn, 1946 the character got his own comic, starting with The Barker #1. Most of the 15-issue run was written and drawn by Nordling, although clearly other hands were involved. For over 30 years, each annual edition of Overstreet’s Comic Book Price Guide has listed Jack Cole as one of these hands. Here is the listing from the 39th edition of Overstreet’s:

How poetic it seems that Jack Cole contributed the first and last appearance of this wonderful character. The lead story in The Barker #15 has a definite dark, psycho-comics Cole feel, as inky black dark waters literally drag the characters down. Also, there’s a drawing of a sexy drenched damsel that barks (if you will) Cole’s touch:

 

It’s unclear if Cole penciled the whole story and Nordling inked it. The inking is so black and unlike Nordling’s airy feel that I almost want to say that Cole is inking Nordling’s pencils! Why this would be, I have no idea. I actually think Nordling had nothing to do with this story and more likely one of Cole’s tried-and-true assistants, such as Alex Kotzky or John Spranger did a lot of the inking and finishes. I think it’s very likely that Cole wrote this story, as it has dark overtones, typical of his later work. See for yourself:

From The Barker #15 (December, 1949 – Quality)

It’s interesting to reflect that Jack Cole was probably ghosting here for a fellow artist who got into deadline trouble. The same thing happened with Cole when Plastic Man became a monthly comic and other writers and artists were brought in to meet the demand that Cole, as prolific as he was, could not keep up by himself. Perhaps there was a deadline crunch and Cole, always scouting around for more work, and the original artist, after all, may have been asked to help out in an ironic twist.

In any case, the way the extraordinary splash page (no pun intended!) works as both an intro to the story by showing a vignette of the climax and as a kind of symbolic picture of the power of the sub-conscious, suggests that Jack Cole wrote and drew this story. In this respect, the story feels very much like Cole’s multi-level Web of Evil stories of the early 1950’s.

The use of water as a compelling visual and symbolic device reminds me of a great 1940 story Cole did with his semi-autobiographical character DICKIE DEAN (see here) in which the drawings of water have the same inky-black darkness as the images in the above Barker story.

The note at the bottom of the above Overstreet’s entry for The Barker is intriguing: “Cole art in some issues.” I’ve scoured several issues of the Barker and one story does stand out for it’s dark atmosphere, jam-packed story, and general weirdness. I think it’s a lost Jack Cole gem.

from The Barker #6 (Winter, 1948 – Quality Comics)

     

Why these two stories are signed by Klaus Nordling when Cole worked on them is a mystery. Perhaps there’s a clue in this quote from Quality editor Gill Fox about Nordling:

“Nordling was a little guy. Good-looking. And involved in local theatre. He had a very vivid imagination and was a good writer. In later years I'd send some work in his direction. But if you did something for him, he'd think you wanted something back. We got to know each other socially, but he still mistrusted people. Even me.”

Perhaps there had been a promise to Nordling to “brand” the Barker stories with his name as he built a career. Or, perhaps the editor of the book wanted to avoid conflict. Or… perhaps I am wrong and this is all the work Nordling, but after studying the comic book stories of Jack Cole intensely for the last eight months, these stories feel like Cole to me, even though it’s hard to be 100% certain.

This is a pretty clever story, you’ll probably agree. I think there’s a case to made for this being a Cole script and pencils with Klaus Nordling providing the inking and finishes. Just the imagery of the carnival setting up on the side of hill in front of a deserted ghost town alone is enough to convince me. Here’s yet another of those weird, veiled stories in which Cole’s sub-conscious seems to be saying something is not right. I get this sense very strongly in the beautifully cinematic night-time scenes, like this one:

We also get Cole’s core theme of shape-changing when Carnie Callahan (The Barker) disguises himself as a western owl hoot. And there’s the doppelganger theme that Cole toyed with throughout his career, when the performers of one circus go to battle with their alter egos who work for the rival circus.

The pacing, the richness of ideas, and the sheer quantity of ideas feel very much like a typical overstuffed Jack Cole story. In fact, this story is really quite a lost gem. The old western towns have a palpable presence. When you read the story, you can feel the “Cole magic.”

Whenever Cole set a story in the old west it was always vivid. Perhaps that’s due to his own vivid impression gained by biking through the western desert of the United States when he was only 18. See my article about his epic bike trip here.

The story also has several instances of some of Jack Cole’s oft-used graphic devices, or “Cole-isms,” as I call them (see here). One such Cole-ism is depicting a crowd in a very interesting way in which each person is more realized than a comic book artist of this era would typically bother with. You can see this in the night-scene panel above.

Also silhouetting the tents, banners, and circus roustabouts is very typical of Cole’s work. Lastly, his use of a full moon in story, 5 times times by my count, is something Cole’s drawings are filled with.

This is a very special story. In this story, Cole returned to his earlier style and also recovered, for the span of these 14 pages, the youthful exuberance and astonishing energy of his best early 1940’s graphic narratives. This story feels like the early MIDNIGHT, QUICKSILVER, and PLASTIC MAN stories.

Jack Cole would soon hit a wall in comics, as he personally became burned out and as the industry changed rapidly and classified him as too old-school for their needs. He would become a major magazine cartoonist and then create his own successful syndicated newspaper strip (Betsy and Me).

But back in early 1948, Cole somehow brought back some of the style and energy of his early 1940’s work, and created a lost gem in the back pages of an obscure comic.