Manhunters (1940) - The third story in Jack Cole's early crime series

Story presented in this posting:
"Manhunters" - Story and art (and coloring?) by Jack Cole
Top-Notch Comics #3 (Feb. 1940, MLJ/Archie)

In February, 1940, the third and last story in Jack Cole's early crime series, MANHUNTERS, appeared.

Top-Notch Comics #3 cover (Not by Cole)

The criminal in this story, Herman Taylor, wears both the clothing and moral fabric of an unreformed EEL O'BRIAN, the early alter-ego of PLASTIC MAN. Both Eel and Taylor are tall, skinny fellows and they even dress similarly, in pin-stripe suits.

Jack Cole, whose capabilities as a comic book artist grew daily in 1940, turns in the most visually accomplished story in the set. He punches up the drama with extreme camera angles and distortions, such as this beautiful panel:

In addition to a gripping splash panel, Cole also draws several atmospheric panels throughout the story, making the reader feel the humid heat and mosquitoes of the Louisiana swamps, where the crooks eventually wind up.


It's too bad that Cole didn't continue his highly entertaining crime series. Very shortly after MANHUNTERS trickled out, Cole's fellow creator in the Harry A. Chelser shop, Charles Biro, would go on to create the hugely successful true crime comic, Crime Doesn't Pay, and spawn numerous imitators. The budding comic book artist in the third year of his 18-year career was clearly on to something. Jack Cole would soon take the lessons he had learned in telling tightly-plotted, neo-realistic crime fiction, and apply them in the creation of his masterpiece, PLASTIC MAN.

Females By Cole (1954-55) - Jack Cole original art!

Original Jack Cole art is as scarce as hen's teeth. Out of over forty thousand archived lots on the Heritage Auction Galleries website, representing several years of buying and selling of original comic art, there are just 3 pieces by Jack Cole.

The bulk of Cole's comic book work was with Quality. Everett "Busy" Arnold, is said to have personally cut up and disposed of Cole's art to prevent others from reprinting it. As far as I know, there are no existing original Jack Cole Plastic Man pages. A heartbreaking thought. Perhaps someday, a newspaper-wrapped bundle will be found in an attic, and we will be able to study Cole's supple linework in all it's glory.

Until then, courtesy of the Heritage Auction Galleries website, we present three lovely pieces of Cole's original art created for Playboy magazine sometime in the mid-1950's. These cartoons were part of a larger series called "Females by Cole." The series was so popular that Playboy printed them on cocktail napkins and sold them as a set, one of the very first Playboy collectables.

These simple but effective line drawings were a departure from Cole's lush, elaborate washes and watercolors from this period. After 18 years in the comic book biz, Cole was a master with ink and brush, and these drawings are a tour de force of his craft, humor, and inventiveness.

Note: you can find a few more originals of Jack Cole's sexy gag cartoons here.

Manhunters (1940) - Second story in Jack Cole's early crime series

Story presented in this post:
"California's Kidnap-Murder Mystery" (Story and art by Jack Cole)
Top-Notch Comics #2 (Jan. 1940, MLJ/Archie)

Jack Cole's second MANHUNTERS crime story is perhaps the weakest of the three. The writing doesn't sell the co-incidences, breezing over just how a gun was found lying untouched, on a busy street, for example.

Top-Notch Comics #2 cover. Not by Cole

In the course of his career, Jack Cole would periodically turn in a very engaging story about child abuse. Police Comics #22 had the affecting and sad story, "The Eyes Have It," for example. The story here may be the first incidence of abuse of a child in Cole's work. The child here is "spunky" enough to fight back, but one still feels sympathy for the kid when she is ditched by the cop-killing kidnapper and is lost and traumatized.

As in the first story and in much of his 1939-41 work, Cole inserts an enagging information diagram:

Cole's obsession with movement and speed, another characteristic design theme in his comic book work, crops up in this story in a beautifully designed car/motorcycle chase sequence on page 2. In one panel, the speeding car is moving so fast, it even breaks out of the panel.

The pages below are the only scans we've been able to locate of this rare story. Unfortunately, the original images were quite distorted with curling. We have retouched the artwork to make it more readable and minimized the distrotion as much as possible. The curved edges of some of the panels in the scans below are due to this, not to Cole's design.

As with nearly all of his comic book stories, the story opens with a visually compelling splash page.