WINDY BREEZE Part 3 – 1944

Here’s the next 10 delightful episodes of Jack Cole’s classic Windy Breeze one-page comic book stories, signed with his pen name, Ralph Johns.

These are presented in the order of publication. This set of 10 are from National Comics #40-50. There was no Windy Breeze published in National Comics #43, although Cole was more than usually present in that issue with the cover and lead feature, the first BARKER story (which we will present in this blog very soon!), For the previous 20 Windy Breeze pages, see my earlier postings here.

Note that, as in the earlier postings, I have touched up some of the pages and added publication information on each page.

I am indebted to Ger Apeldoorn’s great blog, The Fabuleous Fifties, for a couple of the scans below. Notes on the individual episodes follow.

 

National Comics #40 (March, 1944)
In their great book, Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits, Art Speigelman and Chip Kidd refer to “the idea-per-minute vaudeville zaniness of Olsen and John’s Hellzapoppin…” This episode is a good example of Cole’s Vaudeville like theatrical staging. His characters often “acted” for the audience, dropping outrageous puns and striking humorous poses, just like comedians in the Vaudeville and early film comedies did.

National Comics #41 (April,1944)
This scan comes from my own collection, and is part of what I call the Great Tallahassee Golden Age Score, in which I managed to acquire two large cartons of random pages of classic Golden Age comic books, including some nice Jack Cole material. For the whole story on that collector’s dream find, see this posting. In panel 3, Windy talks directly the audience, another Vaudeville, broadly comic touch.

 

National Comics #42 (May, 1944)
A bizarrely violent episode with great cartooning. I love the way Cole’s figures in the mid-forties had become refined and angular. Note also the amazingly good lettering (which Cole did himself in these 1-pagers), especially in panel 5. His lettering enhances the “actors” delivery of the lines. Look at how the rising and lowering of the h’s in “Ohhhhhh!” suggests the wavering of a prolonged exclamation. It’s a myriad of touches like this that makes Cole’s comics a world unto their own, and fun to read.

National Comics #44 (June, 1944)
Lots of wonderful little touches here. The scalloped edges of the middle tier. The dynamic integration of the “zoom” sound effect in panel 5, the labels for the 20th floor and the banana peel, which somehow add to the zany humor.

National Comics #45 (July, 1944)
One of the very best of all of Cole’s one-pagers. Beautiful design, great pacing, lovely cartooning. Note the scalloped edged panels again for the imaginary flashbacks.

 

National Comics #46 (August, 1944)
Cole is hitting some kind of peak here with another breathtaking page. The fanciful rowboat reminds me of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. Look how Cole breaks up the three tiers with tall and shot panels. I love how Windy’s speech balloon in the final panel dovetails into the space made by the 3 panels around it. Outstanding layout.

 

National Comics #47 (September, 1946)
A rare wartime joke. Windy’s character is getting richer. Here, he’s cheap, and quarrelsome.

National Comics #48 (October, 1944)
Occasionally luck breaks in Windy’s favor, which keeps the strip interesting. The idea of propelling a motorboat with furious ear-wiggling is funny. Cole was such a good writer that he doesn’t even need to illustrate this to make it funny. Love panel seven, where Cole really suggests a strong wind with the poses and displaced clothing.

National Comics #49 (November, 1944)
This episode is funny, but there is a slight edge of darkness, especially in the great opening panel.

 

National Comics #50 (December, 1944)
Brilliant word play. Cole was a true master. If Samuel Beckett wrote comics in the 1940’s they might read like this. Note how Cole has simplified the images to match the reduced verbiage. And note also how his expert lettering carries the entire concept forward, as it subtly increases in size.

I Was The Monster They Couldn’t Kill – So I Had To: Jack Cole’s Final Comic Book Story

Story in this post: “The Monster They Couldn’t Kill”
Story and Pencils by Jack Cole, inker unknown
Web of Evil #11 (Feb., 1954 – Quality Comics Publications)

Jack Cole’s dark and disturbing last published comic book story haunts me. I first read it about 6 months ago, and have read it about a dozen times since. I cannot escape the growing sense that Cole was sending out a personal message in this story: a comment on his 16 year career in comic books, and perhaps a bitter statement about the way the industry had changed. I think Cole drew back the curtain and exposed his own inner psyche in this story. Knowing that he would take his own life in despair just a few years later, this story haunts me.

It’s my own theory that Jack Cole wrote at least 8 of the 16 stories he penciled that appeared in Web of Evil #1-11 (I haven’t seen the first story he did, in Web #1). It seems to me that these stories are all better written and revolve around a character’s psychological breakdown instead of an unexplained supernatural event. A more complete explanation of this theory is available in an earlier posting, here.

In “The Monster They Couldn’t Kill,” Cole creates the character of a scientist who has a serious lapse in judgment and makes himself the test subject of an experiment involving atomic energy. Cole begins the story brilliantly AFTER the experiment, our first indication that this is – either deliberately or unconsciously – a story reflecting BACK on his career in comics. It seems certain that Cole created this story knowing full well it would be his last, since it was his decision to go work for Hugh Hefner at PLAYBOY.

Even though he was dismissive of his comic book work, there can be no doubt for anyone that has read Jack Cole’s stories that he poured his heart and soul into these stories, and realized on some level that they represented an enormous effort on his part. This was a guy that clearly LOVED comics. “The Monster They Couldn’t Kill,” then, is a window into Cole’s feelings as he closed this chapter of his life.

The scientist-monster has no voice in this story. Not until the end do we even know for sure that anything of his mind and humanity remain.

Once again, we have Cole’s favorite theme of crazy inventions, which he used over and over in his graphic stories, starting with some of his earliest work on the DICKIE DEAN, BOY INVENTOR stories (1940).

In this story, the focus is not on the invention at all, but the terrible consequence it has had on it’s inventor, and the people around him. We know that Cole himself was an inventor, so if we switch out the scientist with Cole in this scenario, a chilling personal statement about how he may have regarded himself comes into focus.

It’s almost as if Cole is revealing some deep inner part of himself. A grim-faced scientist pulls aside a curtain on page two and we see what this great inventor has become: a giant idiot, barely recognizable as a human. He wears goggles with slits in them, presumably eye protection from when he irradiated himself.

The goggles and his deformed face and body give him a preternatural look, like something out of a Goya painting. I was struck by the similarity between the post-atomic Dr. Fry and Jack Kirby’s Mole Man villain from his FANTASTIC FOUR stories (which was derived from his 1950’s monster stories):

Cole was a tall man, with thin fingers, and it seems to me he put something of himself into both Plastic Man and Dr. Fry.

The psychological overtones are rampant in this story. I also wonder if Cole was thinking about the comic industry, which had grown so rapidly and which had seemingly morphed into a world where he was no longer welcome. The industry had grown at a maniac pace. It’s no subtle clue that Cole names the super-computer in the story “Maniac.”

Dr. Fry is a sort of post-atomic age version of Plastic Man, in that his body is deformed by a brand new technology. Going all the way back to Jack Cole’s first adventure story, Little Dynamite, so many of Jack Cole’s stories are about the power – and chaos - that is unleashed when the human body is stretched, deformed, pulled, stunted, or gigantized.

Like Plastic Man, Dr. Fry is a hero, but for different reasons. Dr. Fry’s growth is out of control. Maniac informs us that he will eventually be larger than the earth. In short order, he’s too large for humans to control. He bursts out of a railroad freight car as if it were made of tissue paper. He tears a building down as if it were made of Legos.

But none of this destruction is mindless, as it turns out. Dr. Fry is well aware that he has become the monster they can’t kill… therefore the only solution left in this desperate situation is… suicide. In the last panel of the last story Jack Cole published, the “monster” is praised for taking his own life and sparing those around him. Suicide as heroism.

Jack Cole took his own life on August 13, 1958, just about four years after he wrote and drew “The Monster They Couldn’t Kill.”  He wrote two suicide notes, bought a hand gun, and drove to a road outside of town and shot himself in the head. Sadly, two children on bikes found him, still alive. He died later that day in a hospital.

It has never been clear why this enormously talented and powerful creator ended his life so early, in the prime of his life. His last comic book story, perhaps, holds a clue.

Copyright 2009, Paul C. Tumey

LITTLE DYNAMITE – Jack Cole’s First Heroic Adventure Comic Book Story (1939)

Story this post: “Little Dynamite”
Story, art, and lettering by Jack Cole
Fantoman #2 (August, 1940 – Centaur)

First off, a heartfelt thank you to all those great folks who have scanned their precious delicate paper copies of these rare comic books and shared them with the rest of the world. Without your efforts, this blog would not be possible!
Speaking of scanners, one of the more entertaining comic book scan blogs I’ve run across is The Panelogical Pantheon, hosted by Mr. Mason Moray, who has just recovered from the gout. This blog has to be seen to be believed! 

Apparently, Mr. Moray, an older mid-west insurance man, owns a utility shed in his back yard stuffed with valuable old Golden Age comic books. This blog is so bizarre that it’s entertaining, in part because Mr. Moray’s taste is – to put it politely – different than the mainstream.

Being an older comics fan, Mr. Moray has some firsthand knowledge of some of the great comics masters. He’s published published an rather strange early interview with Will Eisner here… which, as far as I can tell, is mostly about Eisner’s minor character, YARKO THE GREAT. That’s a little like interviewing Einstein and only discussing his hairstyle!
The blog’s real meat, though, is in reading the rich details of Mr. Moray’s life. He seems to be oblivious of how absurdly comical many of the events of his life are… but then, perhaps the same can be said for myself and many of my fellow “panelologists!”

Jack Cole’s first published adventure story was “Little Dynamite,” published in Keen Detective Funnies #6 (Feb. 1939). The story represents a major change in direction for Cole, and also prefigures PLATIC MAN and Cole’s obsession with shape-shifting.

At the time, Cole was working in the Harry “A” Chesler studio, alongside other fledgling graphic storytellers that would also have successful careers in comic books, including Fred Guardineer, Paul Gustavson, Charles Biro, and Gill Fox, to name just a few. While the first comic books were reprints of newspaper strips, Chelser was the first, I think, to reprint comic book stories. It was a good business practice, and he reprinted a lot of Cole’s first stories – an indication of how they stood from the pack, even then.
“Little Dynamite” was reprinted about a year later, in another Chesler publication, Fantoman #2 (August, 1940). It may have been recolored, but otherwise I can detect no changes from the black and white version available in Ron Goulart’s book, Focus on Jack Cole. The lavishly colored pages below are from that reprinting:

This was the longest sustained story, and the first adventure story Cole published (unless you count his 1935 Boy’s Life article about his amazing cross-country solo bicycle trip, which was mostly text).

Prior to LITTLE DYNAMITE, Cole had created a series of short comic fillers, such as KING COLE’S KOURT and INSURANCE IKE. After a year or so at Chesler’s studio, Cole thought he had found his big break. A well-heeled entrepreneur hired him to contribute a feature, PEEWEE THROTTLE In FUZZYLAND to Circus The Comic Riot (Globe Syndicate). (If anyone has a scan of these stories, please share!)

Cole wrote home to his parents in New Castle, Pennsylvania that he had made it, and graciously thanked everyone that helped him. Other top talent had been hired to the project as well, including Basil Wolverton and Will Eisner. The book consisted of original short 1-4 page humor pieces. I found an informative article about Circus here.

Unfortunately, Circus bottomed out, only lasting three issues (June-August, 1938), and Cole was back at Chesler’s for a while.

By this time, Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster’s SUPERMAN and Bob Kane’s BATMAN (Kane also had stories in the failed Circus) had begin to take off and comic books were increasingly populated less by comic fillers and more by longer adventure stories featuring costumed crimefighters. If an artist could turn in a 5-10 page adventure story, he could make a great deal more income than possible with the short 1-2 page humorous gag pages.

So it was to Cole’s economic advantage to learn to create adventure strips. LITTLE DYNAMITE was the first effort of a creator who master and innovate the medium of graphic storytelling.

As crude as the story is, it is obvious that Cole dug down deep for this one. He has put so much effort into the artwork that it has a beautiful decorative woodcut quality. Never again would Cole fill his panels with quite so much darkness and shadow.

Jack Cole is already acquiring the rich and unique vernacular of telling a dramatic story in a comic book and making it his own. He jags the edges of the speech balloon in panel two on the first page of the story, indicating the words are said not only loudly, but emphatically. He mixes narration and dialogue to move the story forward.

Also of interest is the way Cole employs extreme points of view, placing the “camera” on the floor, or high up in air at times, to heighten the drama of the story.

Most impressive though, is the story itself. The man who published more of Cole’s stories than anyone else, Everett “Busy” Arnold (Quality) said that Cole was the rare comic book artist who could also write a good story.

In LITTLE DYNAMITE, Cole as a writer really explodes on the scene. The story is a genre story, slotting perfectly into the  crime drama format that flooded the pulpy pages of popular magazines and the roaring airwaves of radio.

The title alone,”Little Dynamite,” is poetic. The “mite” part of the word “dynamite” resonates with “little.”
The story, about a diminutive policeman who uses his size as an advantage against hardened criminals, prefigures Cole’s most famous creation, PLASTIC MAN.

It is to career criminal Eel O’Brian’s everlasting credit that, upon discovering he has the ability to stretch his body at will, he imagines what a force it would be in fighting crime and redeeming himself. In this famous story, the origin story of PLASTIC MAN, Cole again has a character using a deformity as an advantage.

Cole returned to deformity, or shape-shifting, over and over throughout his 16 year career in comics. His very last published comic book story, “The Monster They Couldn’t Kill” (Web of Evil #11, Feb. 1954) deals with deforming the human body. In his PLASTIC MAN stories, evil men often become powerful through deformity. And, of course, Plastic Man himself is all about changing shape and identity.

The story also speaks to the idealism and nobility of purpose that Jack Cole embraced in his early life. Far from being cardboard characters, the policemen in this story are highly motivated by a sense of good, which shows in how they treat each other with decency and support, and in the brave act of heroism the diminutive policeman demonstrates when he goes against the car-stealing gang.

Next posting, we’ll look at Jack Cole’s last published comic book story, mentioned above, to see if there are some insights about the arc of his career and personal development.