Woozy Winks: Four Stories From 1952– Fire, Water, Girls and Suicide

Many issues of the Plastic Man title ran short 4-7 page Woozy Winks stories. Jack Cole appears to have written and drawn about half of these stories, the rest being created by other artists including Bart Tumey, Bill Ward, and Alex Kotzky.

Here’s a quivering quartet of 4-page Woozy stories that display flashes of the genius of Jack Cole.

Overall, the Woozy stories work as lighter fare in the Plastic Man books. Many of the stories have 3 tiers instead of 4, making them breezier. The writing is less complex and bizarre than the Jack Cole PLASTIC MAN stories in the same books. However, even in a light-hearted back-up filler story, Jack Cole could not keep his personal darkness at bay.

Plastic Man #34 (March 1952)

In 1952, Jack Cole changed his art style. Like many comic book artists of that time, Cole moved from a cartoony, screwball style to a more realistic and sober visual approach. This is especially evident in his Angles O’Day stories.

You can see that style in these stories, as well. Cole has a new way of drawing faces and bodies that represents a sort of toned-down caricature style.

Check out the corkscrew-tailed balloon in the splash panel – a sure “tell” that the story comes from the constantly inventive mind of Jack Cole.

Many of the Woozy stories featured Jack Cole babes, usually lusted after and chased relentlessly by the little fat man. In this story, Cole gives Woozy a girlfriend for this one story, but she is as goofy-looking as Woozy!

 

 

Plastic Man #35 (May 1952)

From his earliest days in comics, Jack Cole loved to draw water and fire. The third panel on page one, with the erupting, orgasmic geyser is an image Cole drew over and over in his work, usually as eruption volcanoes or spewing flasks. As are the gracefully waving flames. The middle tier on page two is a particularly great sequence, and contains another “eruption” image.

   

 

Plastic Man #37 (Sept 1952)

Girls, girls, girls! And water again. Cole also loved textile patterns. Woozy’s striped, comically old-fashioned swimsuit works the same visual magic as the prison-striped uniforms of Cole’s early 1940’s Death Patrol stories. But most of all, Woozy in this story resembles Cole’s other great super-hero satire: Burp the Twerp. Check out how Cole letters the word “darrrrling” in the splash panel speech balloon, with shrinking R’s. Wow.  Always growing, Cole began to capture dialects and expressive intonations by varying the size, boldness, and slant of letters in his dialogue ballons.

 

 

Plastic Man #38 (November 1952)

 This 4-page wonder presents us with yet another comically attempted suicide, a device that Cole – who killed himself in 1958 – disturbingly worked into a great many of his comic book stories. In this story, Woozy suffers extreme mood swings and has to find a reason to live. The script almost works as a philosophical search by the author to find an argument for continuing or ending one’s own existence. Did I say the Woozy stories are fun to read? Gulp!

Not Dark Yet, But It’s Gettin’ There: Plastic Man #20

Before Jack Cole’s last noir period of the Plastic Man stories, he created a brief, but glorious series of stories in which he pushed the cartoony aspect of his work to the limits. These stories pre-figure – and even on occasion surpass -- the famous stories by Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, and Wally Wood in the first 20 issues or so of MAD, with dense, crowded panels and numerous extra jokes in the background.

Plastic Man #20 featured the famous Sadly Sadly story. This story has been reprinted several times, but the other two stories in this issue have never before been reprinted.

In this issue, we see Cole heading full speed into his last comic phase. The pages are dense with gags and infused with a manic energy. The brilliant Woozy Winks story in this issue has strikingly similar visual solutions that Wally Wood would develop for his MAD stories.

Lamp that opening panel with 20 different great dogs all drawn by Cole. Each and every dog is infused with a manic obsession. Funny, scary stuff.

 

 

For all the crazy comedy, Cole is also layering on more shadows, and some of the distortions which should be funny, actually come off as grotesque, like gargoyles instead of clowns. The weird black eyes of the villain Ali Badda, in the Oriental quarter story, are disturbing instead of funny. Even Plastic Man’s expressions are distorted in unsettling ways, as though he cannot contain his inner darkness.

Jack’s Back! – A sign of life in a May 1949 Woozy Winks back-up story

 

Story presented in this posting:
Woozy Winks: “Salteen’s Art Gallery”
Story and art by Jack Cole
Plastic Man #17 (May, 1949 – Quality)

 

Continuing our look at Jack Cole’s development in 1949 of his dense, cartoony, pre-Mad storytelling style (see earlier post here), here is the back up story from Plastic Man 17.

Also in Plastic Man 17 was the brilliant story “Plastic Man Products,” which would surely be on most people’s lists of top Plastic Man stories. Since this story has been reprinted, I will refrain from sharing it here. However, if there are folks who haven’t seen this issue, let me know and we’ll publish here!

Starting with Plastic Man #4, Cole had given Plas’ sidekick his own story slot. Each issue that followed had a Woozy story, but sadly, many of these were not by Cole. Bart Tumey seems to have done the majority of these (no relation to me, Paul Tumey). That is, until issue 17.

This is a clever, engaging story. About half-way through, you begin to hope that Woozy and the girl will hook up. The girl is homely in her features, and treacherous in her character, but there is still an air of innocence about her that compliments Woozy.

There are some wonderful gags sprinkled throughout, such as when the girl (who incidentally is unnamed in this story) calls Woozy a “big, strong man” squeezes his upper arms, and they deflate like balloons with a “pooooooo” sound effect. Or the two museum guards speaking and moving in tandem for no good reason.

It’s the great drawings that let you know Jack’s back, though. Such as the windmill punch at the bottom of page 3, first seen in Midnight’s 12 adventure in 1941. Or the return of the pointed-bottom exclamation mark at the end of the “KA-BLOOM!” sound effect (also at the bottom of page 3). Cole was beginning to revitalize his work by returning to some of the techniques and styles of his youth. In short order, he would round up his old bag of tricks, throw in a few new ones for good measure, and invent a new, dense style.