PLASTIC MAN Jan 1950: The Return of the Pointed Exclamation Mark!

 Story in this post:
”Kra Vashnu”
Story, Pencils, and Inks by Jack Cole
Plastic Man #21
January, 1950
Quality Comics

 

For a 13 issue run of Plastic Man (issues 17-29), Jack Cole wrote and drew almost all the contents in these issues. In the first story in Plastic Man #21 (Jan. 1950) most of the sound effects are punctuated with a “flat” exclamation mark (on left in illustration below).

 

But somewhere in the middle of the story, Cole draws a BAM! with a “pointed” exclamation mark (right side of illustration above). It’s even artfully arranged so the “M” breaks it up.

I believe this is important because it is a sign that Jack Cole was re-connecting with his original, pure source of inspiration after a few years of dampened enthusiasm brought on most likely by having other writers and artists forced on him to produce the large number of Plastic Man stories his publisher wanted.

The pointed exclamation mark populated almost all of Jack Cole’s comic book work for the first 6 or 7 years. This was when he wrote, drew and often even lettered his own stories – a highly unusual practice for the time and one which, I believe, allows us to consider his graphic stories as the developing work of a master of the form. In 1950, Cole began to flow the magic of his early work back into his stories, but this time – instead of a talented newcomer – here was an accomplished master employing numerous techniques with an almost casual virtuousity.

 

As Cole re-connected with his vitality and vision, his work in 1950 became became richer and more complex, developing into what could be called Cole’s “baroque” period. Plastic Man never stretched so outrageously and comically. I can think of no other comics that are as dense with humor and invention as Jack Cole’s 1950 Plastic Man stories.

Reading these stories is a jaw-dropping experience for any comics person. In just one page, Cole delivers a dazzling array of brilliant graphic design solutions. His stories have some much kinetic energy they almost vibrate on the page. There is often more than one thing happening in each panel so that it’s necessary to re-read the stories in order to fully engage with them (similar to the way the film Playtime by the inspired filmmaker and comedian Jacques Tati works).

In the “Kra Vashnu” story, the sudden and abrupt single appearance of the pointed exclamation mark heralds a new phase of focus and passion by Cole. The story certainly reflects this, with some astonishing panels and art, such as this one (with dialogue removed):

which shows quite well Cole’s uncanny ability to draw the less defined “in-between” poses – almost as if he was able in his mind’s eye to freeze the frame of a movie and then draw that. In so doing, Cole’s “freeze-frame” technique delivers some of the most abstract and beautiful art seen in comics.

The “evil magician” plot of “Kra Vashnu” is one that Cole used over and over, starting with his third MIDNIGHT story in March, 1941. Cole revived his first evil magician, CHANG-O, in December, 1941 with “The Return of Chang-O.”

Still, Kra Vashnu is quite a diabolical foil, and his appearance is pleasingly bizarre, with his tattooed forehead, cape, platform shoes, and – strangest of all – his long, unclipped toenails (in one sequence, Woozy tries vainly to clip them).

The story does contain some of Cole’s trademark themes, including doubling (doppelganger) and identity shifting. There is also a vivid misogynistic murder and attempted suicide. In the story’s climax, Plastic Man is seemingly murdered, his corpse resembling a deflated, punctured balloon. All of these violent themes are surrounded with non-stop gags and brilliant art, making it a Jack Cole classic.

Plastic Man’s stretched poses and transformations are particularly brilliant in this story, as well, and worth paying attention to as you read this amazing story, which I have painstakingly digitally restored for your reading enjoyment:

 

MIDNIGHT RETURNS! Atomic Dice and Exquisite Layouts – Episode 1 (second run)

 Story This Post:
Midnight - “Atomic Dice”
Story and art by Jack Cole
Smash Comics #68
Dec., 1946

 

Before he invented PLASTIC MAN, Jack Cole created and lavished attention on MIDNIGHT, his first feature series for Quality comics. When the rubbery madness of PLASTIC MAN’s world caught on, Cole left MIDNIGHT to devote most of his energy to his breakout creation, which was granted an unusually generous 15 pages per story in POLICE COMICS.

After a four-year stretch (if you’ll pardon the pun), Jack Cole returned to MIDNIGHT for a glorious run of 19 stories that have been unseen and uncommented upon for over 60 years. I’m pleased to excavate these from the Cole-mine for you over the next few months. (If you’d like to read the earlier MIDNIGHT stories, look here.)

Many of Jack Cole’s second-run MIDNIGHT stories feature eye-popping art and design, convoluted stories, and regular touches of brilliance.

In terms of character, not much changed in the four years that PAUL GUSTAVSON owned the series. GUSTAVSON added a new character, the Woozy-Winks-like Sniffer Snoop, which Cole embraced and wrote as if he were Woozy Winks.

Cole returned triumphantly to his series with, “Atomic Dice,” a three-ring circus of a story – there seems to be more than one thing happening in almost every panel. In the four years he had been away from MIDNIGHT, Cole had matured into a master graphic storyteller. Many of the innovations he piloted in the early MIDNIGHT stories return here with polished flourishes, like the act of a seasoned magician.

For example, just look at the splash page and study how Cole positions groups of figures in the background and foreground in a strong diagonal to emphasize the movement. And, for the flourish, just look at the graceful, swirling, speed lines of the dangerous dice…

For this story, Cole returned to his tried and true formula of crazy inventions. But, this time, there are no rays that melt the ground, or freeze people into flavorful popsicles. There’s not even a vacuum gun. The invention this time reflected reality, perhaps indicating the more serious turn Cole – and the country – would take at the end of of the 1940’s and early 1950’s.

Just as PLASTIC MAN was a covert satire of American life, this MIDNIGHT story reflects the onset of the Atomic Age in the “real” world. About a year earlier, the United States had unleashed atomic explosives on two cities in Japan, ending World War II.

Three years earlier, in 1943, Cole used dice as a design element in the splash of his lead story in PLASTIC MAN #1.

Cole’s art on this story is amazing. Consider this panel from page four, which already has a stunning layout without this elaborately-rendered house:

There’s the graceful plume of smoke again, by the way. But what really excites me about panels like this is how Cole breaks up time and space. Cole has shifted the camera angle to allow us to see one man entering while another is leaving, throwing the plot into high gear.

There are wonderful touches in the art throughout, such as the way Cole indicates the buildings with a field of white defined by a dark sky and shadows on the windows.

By the way, there’s 7 characters in this panel, each with distinctive body language. In fact, this is a classic Jack Cole panel, with speed, comically distorted bodies (as though the scene had been filmed with a high-speed camera and then freeze-framed for this one panel), graphic brilliance, and great dialogue, expertly lettered.

The playwright George Bernard Shaw once said that if you have a gun on the mantelpiece in act 1, it must be fired before the play ends. Thus, being a master storyteller, Cole knew that if he introduced a devastating explosive device on page 1, he would have to have a massive explosion on the last page. Here’s the explosion, with the surrounding art removed.

 

Cole literally splits the page in half with one of his biggest sound effects ever (note the patented Jack Cole pointed exclamation mark). Even the letters in KABOOM! are cracking from the force! The explosion rocks the panel and throws the characters to the ground. Cole draws them as anonymous shadows… did he have Hiroshima and Nagasaki on his mind?

The wiggly panel borders were another Cole invention, used most famously in the needle-in-the-eye panel from “Murder, Morphine, and Me” (True Crime Comics Vol.1 #2, May 1947).

The Pirate Prince – Cole’s first sexual politics story, and his 24-hour comic?

In January, 1940 Silver Streak Comics #7 hit the stands and featured a whopping 38 pages of story and art by Jack Cole. For good measure, Cole also did the cover for this issue, one of the great iconic covers of the early Golden Age of comics.

Buried among the famous Claw, Daredevil, and Silver Streak stories was a little treasure – a  battle-of-the-sexes story disguised as a pirate yarn. Due to the large amount of pages that Cole created in this issue (which he also edited, by the way… which suggests why Cole was never an editor at Quality – because he probably would have written and drawn most of the books he edited!), the story is clearly tossed off, possibly in a single day.

If so, this would make The Pirate Prince perhaps Cole’s only 24-hour comic book story. Like 24-hour comics, this story (even sloppily signed by Cole in a signature that looks very similar to the signature he would use almost 15 years later in his Playboy cartoons)  is loose, revealing, and has an immediacy in both the art and storytelling.

 

 

Given how largely women would figure in Cole’s later work, this story is significant in that Cole has clearly tossed aside the tropes of pirate stories to unreel his own battle-of-the-sexes.

True to form, even in this rush job, Cole packs in a wealth if ideas, including the wonderful concept of a pirate that preys on pirates, setting free slaves…. Robin Hood on the seas.

Cole was fond of creating new series that he then left to others (Daredevil, Silver Streak, The Barker, Death Patrol, Midnight, etc.).  He only made one episode of The Pirate Prince before turning it over to  another great writer-artist, Dick Briefer, who would continue the series for several years.

Here’s Briefer’s first entry in the series, which appeared in Silver Streak #8:

 

Note Briefer has seized on Cole’s “good pirate” concept and totally abandoned the sexual tension Cole set up. The stories didn’t amount to much, but they were entertaining for the liveliness of Briefer’s line and compositions. Here’s one from a few issues later, in Silver Streak #12:

 

Briefer’s art soon coalesced into a wonderful, tight cartoony style. Check this post at the fun Mippyville blog for a nice later-period Briefer Pirate Prince story.