Cole's Influences - The Landon School of Cartooning

Jack Cole first learned cartooning through a correspondence course mailed out of Cleveland, Ohio called the Landon School of Cartooning. When he was 15, he saw an ad in a magazine for the course. It probably looked something like this ad, from an early 1920's issue of Popular Science:

According to Jim Steranko's History of Comics 2 (an excellent book, worth searching for), Cole asked his father, who was in the dry good business, to pay for the course. When his Dad refused, the endlessly inventive (and stubborn) Cole hollowed out one of his text books, smuggled sandwiches to school, and saved saved his lunch money until he could pay for the course himself.

The Landon School of Cartooning can be said not only to be a major influence on Jack Cole, but also on American comics in general. Artists known to have taken the course include Roy Crane, Milt Caniff, V.T. Hamlin, Ethel Hays, Bill Holman (see our post on Holman's influence on Cole here), E.C. Segar, Chic Young, and Carl Barks (who only completed four classes, but nonetheless acknowledged its influence on his development as a cartoonist).

In 2008, a facsimile edition of this seminal body of knowledge was published, but has since gone out of print. You can find some of the text on the first few pages of this reprint edition here.

Cole's early published comic book artwork owes a great deal to his lessons in the Landon School of Cartooning. You can see a similarity in style between the pages below, a selection of humorous fillers from 1939, and the drawngs in the ads for the Landon School, above.

With the next 2-3 years, Cole would grow out of this pie-eyed style of cartooning, sometimes known as the "bigfoot" style, but a flavor of this style would stay with his work for the rest of his career.

Blue Ribbon Comics #1 (Nov. 1939, MLJ/Archie)

Inside front cover

Blue Ribbon Comics #1 (Nov. 1939, MLJ/Archie)
FOXY GRANDPA

A typical characteristic of Cole's early funny comics is the white "pie-slice" in the eyes of his characters. The point of the slice is always in the same direction the characters are looking. Carl Barks used this effective technique throughout his work.

Blue Ribbon Comics #1 (Nov. 1939, MLJ/Archie)
KING KOLE'S KOURT

Here, Jack Cole uses the George Nagle pen name. Another KING KOLE'S KOURT was published in this blog here.

Top-Notch Comics #1 (Dec. 1939, MLJ/Archie)

Take a look at the great faces on this page!

In 1937, probably with more time on his hands and less money than he desired, Cole himself created his own quickie cartooning course, modeled on the Landon School (and reprinted in Steranko's History of Comics 2). In his course, Cole condenses a vast amount of information and advice into a single sheet of paper. My guess is it was an attempt at generating income. It was also a marvelous summing up of what he had learned about the basics of cartooning.

In his advice on drawing faces, Jack Cole writes: "Another ideal way of learning expressions is to make faces in the mirror. I used to stand in front of my dresser for hours, laughing, pouting, frowning, sighing, etc. all the while recording on paper the characteristic wrinkles."

Nice penguins, too!

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.