Jack Cole: Colorist - Rare Golden Age Original Art (1941)

You just never know what you'll find when you troll the Web. This image has been up on Comic Art Fans for 5 years, but I just now discovered it! Sheesh! Many thanks to the site, and the art's owner for sharing this extremely rare piece! This is very likely the ONLY known page of 1940's superhero art by Jack Cole known to exist. It's the splash page from Silver Streak #10 (Lev Gleason, May 1941).

Note the "Good Luck" at the bottom. Could that be a note of encouragement to an aspiring comic book artist from Jack Cole himself? It's known that many comic book artists of the time gave pages of their original art to young visitors and fans as gifts. 

Even more interesting is the fact that this page is hand-colored, presumably by Jack Cole himself. Did Cole, before sending this page in the mail to a fan, perhaps take an hour or two and apply some color? I have long suspected that Cole colored at least some of his stories. He liked to do everything on his stories, if possible, from writing, penciling, and inking... and probably in some cases, coloring. At any rate, this page -- if it was colored by Jack Cole -- provides a clue as to the sort of color palette Cole preferred (at least in 1941!). 

A side-by-side comparison of Cole's coloring and the published version  (above) reveals that Cole had a more interesting palette, and a very different vision of the visual impact of the art than what was published. The published page has a lot of red and yellow... more garish primary colors. It is also interesting to note that, while the published page's splash panel treats the US map background as merely a non-distinguished field of light orange, Cole gives it a lighter color, making it an art element in the composition. It must have been frustrating for Cole and other artists of the time to create layouts and have the impact of them reduced by slapdash coloring. 

I've read that most of the stories at Quality Comics, Cole's main home for most of his career in comics, were colored by the color-blind publisher himself. 

The Claw vs. Daredevil story is pretty cool, by the way. We've published it on this blog in black and white, but since we are looking at color... here it is -- in its amazing, bizarre entirety in full, glorious (if sloppy) color, from a recently surfaced nice paper scan. Enjoy!

Five Rare Original Jack Cole Playboy Cartoons Sell at Heritage Auction Galleries – Sixth Cartoon Remains Unsold and Available!

Last week, on Thursday, Feb. 25 and Friday, Feb. 26 the renowned collectibles auction house, Heritage Auction Galleries sold 5 extremely rare pieces of original Jack Cole art for a total of $13,984.50 before auction fees.

Of special interest to readers of this blog is the 6th Jack Cole piece, “Die Hard” (Playboy June, 1957) one of the famous FEMALES BY COLE series, which remains unsold and available for purchase as of this writing for $1,195.00.  Click here for details.

The pieces were part of a large collection of approximately 100 cartoons from the Playboy archives by various artists (the collection can be seen here). By far, the highest price realized in this collection was about $180,000, for a Vargas girl cartoon.

Readers of this blog will recall an earlier posting announcing the appearance of the above cartoon on Heritage’s auction block. This item got the most page views of all the recent Cole auctions, at 825, and sold for $4,182.50. A full study of this cartoon and a scan of the original art can be found in my article, A Moment Frozen In Time.

The prices realized on the Jack Cole cartoons were respectable, but remain a bargain. By contrast, color cartoons by Gahan Wilson sold for about 75% of the highest bids on the Cole cartoons, while Leroy Neiman black and white drawings featuring his black-stocking-clad Playboy girl sold for about 150% more.

The prices paid for Jack Cole’s cartoons do not reflect his status as Playboy’s signature cartoonist and a major figure in American comics history and popular culture, and consequently represent a great bargain for the lucky winners of these auctions.

Playboy Dec 1957
”I dreamed I was removing your Maidenform bra”
Sold at auction for $2,629.00

Many thanks to Heritage Auction Galleries for making large, high-quality scans of this wonderful original art available. Studied close-up, Cole’s watercolor technique is extremely impressive.

Playboy April 1956
FEMALES BY COLE: Indecisive
Sold at auction for $1,195.00

As well, scans such as the one above reveal how loose and free Cole’s brush work was in this series.

Playboy Oct 1957
Sold at auction: $1,792.00

In stunning clarity as well is Cole’s amazing wash technique, which he developed in his “Jake” Humorama digest cartoons of the 1940’s and early 1950’s. Note the use of white paint. It’s also neat to see the various notes on the boards, mostly instructions to the printer.

Playboy Jan 1958
“Well there’s history repeating itself.”
Sold at auction for $4,182.00

The auction included one of Cole’s greatest cartoons (above), a rare instance of Cole making a political statement in this format, but mainly just an inspired gag and a great painting. Look at this one close up and study the wild color palette!

The surfacing of six original pieces of Jack Cole art on the auction block is genuinely rare. In fact, out of over 40,000 lots of original cartoon and comic book art recorded on the Heritage Auction Galleries website, only 10 have been for Jack Cole items.

If only Quality’s publisher Everett “Busy” Arnold had preserved Cole’s original comic book pages! The story goes that he personally cut up every page and trashed it to prevent others from being able to publish the stories. Given that a few pages of original art from Quality comics have appeared in Heritage’s auctions, such as pages from editor Gill Fox, it seems a distant possibility that a few Jack Cole pages may have escaped Arnold’s scissors and been saved by a Quality editor or staffer and we may yet one day be able to study an original page by Jack Cole from a PLASTIC MAN story!

Until then, my dear readers, yours truly will continue to chip away down here in the Cole-mine and emerge, covered in musty pulp, from time to time with lost treasures.

Coming soon: some rare Cole one-pagers and a study of his connection with Quality editor Gill Fox!

Females By Cole (1954-55) - Jack Cole original art!

Original Jack Cole art is as scarce as hen's teeth. Out of over forty thousand archived lots on the Heritage Auction Galleries website, representing several years of buying and selling of original comic art, there are just 3 pieces by Jack Cole.

The bulk of Cole's comic book work was with Quality. Everett "Busy" Arnold, is said to have personally cut up and disposed of Cole's art to prevent others from reprinting it. As far as I know, there are no existing original Jack Cole Plastic Man pages. A heartbreaking thought. Perhaps someday, a newspaper-wrapped bundle will be found in an attic, and we will be able to study Cole's supple linework in all it's glory.

Until then, courtesy of the Heritage Auction Galleries website, we present three lovely pieces of Cole's original art created for Playboy magazine sometime in the mid-1950's. These cartoons were part of a larger series called "Females by Cole." The series was so popular that Playboy printed them on cocktail napkins and sold them as a set, one of the very first Playboy collectables.

These simple but effective line drawings were a departure from Cole's lush, elaborate washes and watercolors from this period. After 18 years in the comic book biz, Cole was a master with ink and brush, and these drawings are a tour de force of his craft, humor, and inventiveness.

Note: you can find a few more originals of Jack Cole's sexy gag cartoons here.