by
Art Spiegelman & Chip Kidd
Publisher:
Chronicle Books; First Edition (August 1, 2001)
Softcover,
144 pages
This is not a collection of Plastic Man comics drawn during the
Golden Age by his creator Jack Cole - however there are a few included,
along with the Cole story from True Crime, an infamous piece called
“Murder, Morphine, and Me”. The last is a story so notorious in over-the-top
violence masquerading as a morality tale, that it became exhibit number one
presented by Frederick Wortham in his anti-comic book, Seduction of the
Innocent, and at the Congressional hearings on comics. One panel, where the
protagonist is having a needle shoved into her eye by a junkie, stood out for
particular attack. In a sense, Jack Cole really did help bring down the comics
industry and ushered in the creative desolation of the Comics Code
Authority.
Instead, it is a rather odd biography of the
man’s albeit short life. He successfully remade his career twice over. Unable
to find work in the larger magazine mediums, Cole started out in comic books -
the gutter slums of the print world at the time. Unlike his counterparts
however, he attacked the medium with all his skill could muster, going out of
his way to refine his technique.
He created some of the best events of the Golden
Age. Specifically the multi-issue battle between the Golden Age Daredevil and
The Claw - catapulting both characters to among the most popular of the 1940s.
His most notable works being the creation of Plastic Man, the first
super-stretching hero. And it has been pointed out that no one ever did Plastic
Man as well as Cole did, or in the same vein. Mostly because he was eventually
included in an expanded universe of superheroes, while he was supposed to be
mostly a parody of them.
After the comics collapse, Cole became one of
the lead artists for a start-up magazine called Playboy, filling the
pages with his distinct style. These are so different and iconic from his comic
material that I had no idea they were from the same hand. His third successful endeavor
was a unfortunately short comic strip called Betsy and Me, which
would’ve been well had not Jack Cole killed himself. The reasons for this are
up in the air, so I won’t even attempt to speculate why.
The format of the book is rather odd, because
most of the prose text is printed on plastic sheets and inserted with a lot of
Cole’s reprinted art. Additionally, the comics sections are printed on old quality
cheap brownish pulp paper, just as they were originally sold back in the
forties. This was a mistake. Maybe those who were used to reading old-time
comics wouldn’t have a problem, but so many of the modern reprints are much
cleaner than the original printings, the revert back to the 40s style made it
slightly difficult to read and thus lowered my enjoyment of the material.
For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.
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