Speed on Paper - Quicksilver (1941)

Story presented in this post:

"Quicksilver" (Story and art by Jack Cole)

National Comics #13 (July, 1941 - Quality)

How do you show three-dimensional movement at high velocity in a two-dimensional context?

Or, minus the five-dollar words, how do you show speed on paper? That's a question that seems to occupy Jack Cole's mind in the early and, to a lesser degree, middle years of his career as a graphic storyteller. A great deal of his comic book work from 1939-1950 has speed both as a concept of the story, and a quality of the pacing itself. Cole's stories zip, screech, and zoom through ideas and innovations like no other, and it's one of the things that makes Cole great.

Jack Cole didn't create the character of Quicksilver, but he easily could have. Just a year or so earlier, he created another silvery speedster, THE SILVER STREAK, as well as THE COMET. Both heroes drew their power from whirlwind speed.

The "laughing Robin Hood," as Quicksilver was often called, debuted without an origin story in National #5, and ran for eight episodes before Cole turned in the one and only story he would make with this character. The primary artist on the series was the great Nick Cardy, but Cole's story is the stand-out in the series, which stayed a 6-page backup feature through 1949.

Poor Quicksilver never had an origin story or civilian identity. It hardly seems to matter in Cole's story. Aside from the greatest PLASTIC MAN stories, this dense six-page story may be the most perfect and pure expression of a Jack Cole superhero story. The words and images are perfectly melded together, the characters are lively and well-realized, the action is breathless and bizarre, and -- of course -- the level of invention in showing speed on paper is unsurpassed.

In comparing the earnest but grimly moralistic tone of his earlier superhero creations, THE COMET and SILVER STREAK, one sees the emergence of a sense of humor, and a decision to treat the idea of fighting crime as an absolute absurdity in itself, rich with irony and subtext -- a new direction that would result in the creation of Jack Cole's satirical and slapstick masterpiece, PLASTIC MAN, which would debut just one month later.

A word about about digital restoration. In some cases, it seems a good idea to take raw scans and alter them so they are more readable. The original work is treated with great respect. The biggest alteration we make to the pages is the replacement of the background paper, which is often discolored and has the reverse-side printing bleeding through. In the example below, you can see an example of what, hopefully, you will agree is an improvement. On this page, in addition to restoring the background paper, the areas of the title and the target were touched up.

It's too bad Jack Cole only made one Quicksilver story. On the other hand, it's a terrific story. Enjoy!

Death Patrol (Oct. 1941) - The 3rd in Jack Cole's tales of military madness

Story presented in this post:
"Death Patrol 3" (Story and art by Jack Cole)
Military Comics #3 (Quality - Oct. 1941)

Jack Cole created DEATH PATROL at virtually the same time he created PLASTIC MAN. In October, 1941 both the third PLASTIC MAN story and the third DEATH PATROL story, presented below, appeared.

After this entry in his morbidly hilarious take on war, Cole left the series to others, such as Gill Fox and Dave Berg (later of Mad fame). Cole returned to the series in April, 1944 (Military Comics #28) and landed five more astonishing adventures, for a total of eight Cole episodes. More information and other DP stories can be found in this blog here.

Jack Cole's unusual and challenging concept for the series was that each story would introduce a new character, and at the end, kill off one of the team. In this adventure, two members of the Death Patrol team are lost. This series is perhaps Cole's most overt display of the theme of death and morbidity that runs through his work.

Keep in mind the stories also introduced new characters, making the Death Patrol stories a balancing act between birth and death, and a testament to Cole's confidence in his own inventive creative powers.

Despite the heavy concept, the DEATH PATROL stories are wildly funny, and filled with comedic moments. Visually, they are extremely satisfying, with great composition and Cole's trademark bizarre character designs.

The use of black-striped prison uniforms adds a great deal of visual interest to the stories. Notice, in this story, how comparatively plain the last four pages are, after the characters don plain brown aviation suits over their prison stripes.

The outstanding splash panel of this story echoes Jack Cole's CLAW stories, which he created at roughly the same time for Lev Gleason Publications (and which will shortly be shared and studied on this blog!)

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!