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.

Manhunters (1940) - Second story in Jack Cole's early crime series

Story presented in this post:
"California's Kidnap-Murder Mystery" (Story and art by Jack Cole)
Top-Notch Comics #2 (Jan. 1940, MLJ/Archie)

Jack Cole's second MANHUNTERS crime story is perhaps the weakest of the three. The writing doesn't sell the co-incidences, breezing over just how a gun was found lying untouched, on a busy street, for example.

Top-Notch Comics #2 cover. Not by Cole

In the course of his career, Jack Cole would periodically turn in a very engaging story about child abuse. Police Comics #22 had the affecting and sad story, "The Eyes Have It," for example. The story here may be the first incidence of abuse of a child in Cole's work. The child here is "spunky" enough to fight back, but one still feels sympathy for the kid when she is ditched by the cop-killing kidnapper and is lost and traumatized.

As in the first story and in much of his 1939-41 work, Cole inserts an enagging information diagram:

Cole's obsession with movement and speed, another characteristic design theme in his comic book work, crops up in this story in a beautifully designed car/motorcycle chase sequence on page 2. In one panel, the speeding car is moving so fast, it even breaks out of the panel.

The pages below are the only scans we've been able to locate of this rare story. Unfortunately, the original images were quite distorted with curling. We have retouched the artwork to make it more readable and minimized the distrotion as much as possible. The curved edges of some of the panels in the scans below are due to this, not to Cole's design.

As with nearly all of his comic book stories, the story opens with a visually compelling splash page.

Manhunters (1939) - First of Three Early Jack Cole True Crime Stories

Stories presented in this post:

"Master Forgers" - Story and art by Jack Cole

Top-Notch Comics #1 (Dec. 1939)

Reprint - "Master Forgers" (Manhunters)
Story and art by Jack Cole
Authentic Police Cases #5 (Oct. 1948, St. John)

Before he strirred up a sensation with his 1946 True Crime comics, and before he stretched the comics medium to make one of the great comic book superheroes (Plastic Man), Jack Cole created a handful of gritty crime stories early in his career.

Surprisingly, these noir-ish police procedurals, with their grim sense of justice and off-color details mostly appeared in comics published by MLJ, soon to be renamed for their star character ARCHIE, and mostly known today for publishing an seemingly infinite stream of wholesome comics about all-American teens.

Concurrent with his two- story CRIME ON THE RUN series in Archie's Blue Ribbon Comics (see our post here), Jack Cole created MANHUNTERS, a three-story crime series that ran in the first three issues of Archie's Top-Notch Comics

Top-Notch #1 Cover. (Not by Cole)

The first MANHUNTER story appeared in Top-Notch Comics #1 (Dec. 1939, Archie). The story presented an involved, blow-by-blow account of how police cracked a ringer of check forgers. In the story, Cole began to employ information diagrams, such as this one:

These information diagrams added to the story's realism and amped up the interest level for any curious young boy. Jack Cole would insert information diagrams into several of his 1939-41 stories, including his famous anti-hero CLAW stories.

This first MANHUNTERS story ends on a harshly vengeful scene, as one of the criminal gang faces an angry mob. In an extraordinary panel, Cole draws 21 people filled with blood-lust, encircling the criminal, as police officers strain every sinew to keep them at bay. Despite the story's straight-arrow narrative, Cole's compostion tells another story, in which the criminal becomes a victim of society's unregulated rage. In this way, "Master Forgers" prefigures some of the moralistic EC Shock SuspensStories, created over a decade later, in 1952-54.

The story opens with a stylish splash panel, a hallmark of nearly all of Jack Cole's comic book stories.








Curiously, this 1939 story was reprinted almost 10 years later, in Authentic Police Cases #5 (October 1948, St. John).

The MANHUNTERS tag was changed to the limp and less visually interesting header "Science Corners Criminals." There were no other alterations in the reprint except a better recoloring, which breathed new life into the artwork. Here is a comparison of the 1939 and 1948 versions:

The next issue of the comic, Authentic Police Cases #6 (Nov. 1948, St. John), reprinted Cole's CRIME ON THE RUN story from Blue Ribbon #1 (Nov. 1939, Archie), showing the same knack for blandness, renaming it "Crime Clean-Up."

In it's first year of publishing, St. John must have bought the rights to the Cole stories from MLJ. They fit in perfectly with the theme of the comic, which shows that Cole was a bit ahead of his time with these early crime stories.

By the time of the 1948 reprints, Jack Cole's work had become infinitely more sophisticated -- some of the best comics ever done. It must have seemed puzzling to readers at the time who were following Cole's mind-boggling PLASTIC MAN stories to see these comparitively crude, and radically different comic book stories signed by Cole, with no indication these were reprints.

St. John must have liked "Master Forgers," because they ran it a second time, two issues later, in Authentic Police Cases #7 (April, 1950)! Here, then, is the St. John version, better colored, and better printed, still proudly bearing Jack Cole's name.