Jack Cole’s Influences – Tex Avery (Females by Cole in Playboy Magazine)

Note: For more articles in my ongoing series on Jack Cole’s influences, including The Marx Brothers, the Landon School of Cartooning, and Bill Hollman (Smokey Stover), please see here.

There is little doubt in my mind that comic book master Jack Cole was heavily influenced by the master of another medium, Tex Avery.  An avid moviegoer, Cole would have seen Avery’s short animated films, such as the sexy Red Hot Riding Hood, probably more than once.  A handful of Avery’s cartoons featured the sexy singer in unforgettable sequences, usually animated by Preston Blair.

Sexy women populated the pages of 1940’s comics, but there is a special similarity between the way Avery and Cole ascribed potent, mythological status to their female sirens. Both artists mined a rich vein of humor in exaggerating the near-helplessness of men when confronted with the objects of their sexual fantasies.

There are many examples of men kneeling at the foot of feminine sexuality in Cole’s work, but perhaps his story from Police Comics #51 represents the most potent example. Here is the splash from that story:

 

Tex Avery’s cartoons are filled with astounding exaggerated reactions. Consider the distortions in this frame from Dumb-Hounded (1943).

Look familiar? It should. Here’s an image from the first PLASTIC MAN story, one of the first of perhaps thousands of such images Cole made:

Both Avery and Cole’s work feature some of the most outrageous and comic distortions of the human shape that can be found in popular culture.

It’s my own theory that Jack Cole had the idea to translate the aesthetic and effects of animated cartoons into comic books. I think it’s quite likely he created Plastic Man in the spirit of the cartoons he loved, including Tex Avery’s mini-masterpieces of madness.

Here’s another classic Tex Avery take, the “crack-up",” which he used in numerous cartoons. After being hit by something, a character would develop a network of cracks and then fall to pieces with the sound of glass breaking. Amazingly, I ran across a similar effect in one of Jack Cole’s WINDY BREEZE 1-pagers:

 

Jack Cole has put his own spin on this visual gag, making Windy a human jigsaw puzzle, an image that works on several different levels.

Years later, in July, 1958, Playboy magazine published a cartoon by Jack Cole entitled Enigma. It used the same concept. Here’s a scan of the original art:

The cartoon was one of a famous, well-received series called Females by Cole. In this cartoon, Cole combines the humorous Avery-style take with the Avery/Cole/Playboy sexpot to achieve an image that is both titillating and humorous. Here is an earlier draft of the cartoon, with a light-haired lass:

The cartoon evokes the sense that yes, women are puzzles for men to figure out. But it also works against the grain of that gag, suggesting the fragility of women. Cole deliberately drew some of the pieces on the ground, suggesting we are looking at a freeze-frame image of a person about to totally fall apart into a heap of fragments. Here is a second earlier draft, with a different, but equally exquisite face:

The issue of Playboy (July, 1958) that had Enigma in it was on the stands the day Jack Cole fell apart and took his own life. In this context, Enigma is not only a universal statement, it is also a highly personal message. But for all this, in the end, it is a good cartoon by a master of the form. Like Tex Avery, Jack Cole was always from the first to the last, an entertainer. 

IS THIS COLE #5 : The 1948 Bob and Swab Stories

In 1948-50, the back pages of Quality comic books often ran stories that looked and read a lot like Jack Cole comic book stories. Are they actually by Jack Cole, or do they represent his strong influence on a handful of artists who worked with him as assistants? It’s up to YOU, dear readers to help settle this mystery… so please comment and share your thoughts!

The most striking example of the Cole-like  stories are a series of 5-page stories from Hit Comics featuring Naval anti-heroes BOB AND SWAB. Here’s one from Hit Comics #51 (March, 1948):

As you can see, these pages are filled with Cole-isms. The page layouts feature panels that are artistically rotated, “curl” up around the corners, and are circular and even jagged. These are all devices that Jack Cole invented and mastered as early as 1941 in his early MIDNIGHT stories.

The figures, both in the way they are inventively posed, and in the way they are arranged in the panel also seem very Cole-like. Many of the “supporting actors” are also physically exaggerated in one way or another – not unique to Cole by any means, but certainly part of his art.

Then there’s the treatment of sound effects as a visual element integrated into the design, something you can find in virtually every comic book page Cole drew.

The pages are delightfully dense, and represent kind of a virtuoso feat in the way they integrate so many people, objects, and backgrounds into a cohesive whole that drives the narrative forward.

BOB AND SWAB were created by Klaus Nordling, who wrote and drew most of the stories, and is probably best known for his LADY LUCK stories. The series name is an in-joke, as “bob and swab” is slang for receiving a blowjob while cleaning ones ear. The cough/sneeze from the swab (apparently) creates a more intense orgasm.

Whatever it’s intended secret meanings, the series was a fun-packed, red-blooded, two-fisted, woman-appreciating kind of adventure, something that would easily accommodate Jack Cole’s style of story.  In fact, there are a lot of similarities between the work of Klaus Nordlng and Jack Cole. For one, Nordling was also a writer as well as an artist. Like Cole, he tended to do everything on his stories. He also was a master caricaturist, and had a great sense of humor. However, his work is not nearly as filled with shadows and obsessive themes relating to sex and death, as one finds in Jack Cole’s comic book stories. Nordling’s stories are great fun, but somehow, there’s much less at stake than one senses in a Jack Cole story.

For comparison, here is a typical (signed) Klaus Nordling BOB AND SWAB episode from around the same time as the maybe-Cole episodes, from Hit Comics #64 (May, 1950):

As you can see, while very distinctive and similar in some ways to Cole’s work, Nordling’s work can be clearly identified from Cole’s. (Klaus Nordling’s comics are quite enjoyable and I recommend them to anyone who likes Jack Cole’s work).

The Grand Comics Database credits the first story in this blog, from Hit #51 as being by Nordling, by clearly it’s not, as you can see when you compare the two stories. The GCD lists all the 1948 BOB AND SWAB stories as being written and drawn by Klaus Nordling. Clearly, these were made by other talented folks and the GCD, a wonderful resource, is incorrect. I haven’t emailed them a correction, however, because I cannot conclusively say WHO did these marvelous stories.

If Nordling didn’t write and draw the Cole-like 1948 BOB AND SWAB stories, then who did?

As you study the other three examples below, you’ll see the stories very much feel like Jack Cole, especially when the sexy women enter the story. It’s hard to look at the lovely mermaid splash page for the BOB AND SWAB story from Hit Comics #54 (see below) and say that Cole didn’t have a hand in the art. The females in these BOB AND SWAB episodes look strikingly like the “Cole Woman,” and that is what first drew my attention to these stories.

But even with the mouth-watering women, the great layouts, and all the Cole-isms, these stories somehow don’t quite feel like pure Cole.

It’s my guess, and I could be wrong, that these stories are the work of one or more of the talented artists who worked with Cole as assistants on Plastic Man. There is such gusto and exuberance in the art of these stories that they feel to me like new talent showing what it can do on it’s own, and also drawing (no pun intended) on the genius innovations they learned from Jack Cole.

As to who the writers and artist(s) could be on these stories could be, I’d welcome your thoughts, dear readers. Could they be written and penciled by Cole, and inked by someone else? Or do they represent someone like Cole’s assistant on Plastic Man and the True Crime comics Alex Kotzky really going to town and reaching deep to make some great little stories?

Here are a couple of pages from the great “Mr. Cat” story in Police Comics #72 (November, 1947) by Jack Cole and Alex Kotzky that, in their exotic setting and page layouts, feel very much like these BOB AND SWAB stories:

Or perhaps these stories are collaborations between Jack Cole and John Spranger, who had worked in the Eisner-Iger studio and who was generally thought to be able to the best Cole-like Plastic Man. Here is an example of his work on THE SAINT comic strip that shows he had great design talent:

In any case, who ever did write and draw these stories, it is clear that a fresh, post-war crop of writers and artists in the late 1940’s were being heavily influenced by Mr. Cole. And, whoever the credit belongs to – Jack Cole, or one of his talented assistants, these are wonderful stories with some great artwork, and I am pleased to share them with you!

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on my latest entry of IS THIS COLE?

Hit Comics #52 (May, 1948)

 

Hit Comics #54 (Sept. 1948)

 

Hit Comics #55 (Nov. 1948)

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.