Untitled - Fantagraphics

BLACK
LIGHT
THE
WORLD
OF
L.B. COLE
BILL SCHELLY
COMICS
BY
DESIGN
THE WEIRD
WORLD OF
L.B. COLE
7
INTRODUCTION:
FEVER DREAMS IN FOUR-COLOR FORM
There is a kaleidoscopic brilliance to the work of L.B. Cole, a master cover designer
for minor comic book companies (including his own) whose work blossomed forth
on American newsstands from the 1940s through the 1960s.
Cole was a practical man who nonetheless chafed at creating art under the dictates of larger companies’ policies. Even when he allied himself with smaller companies that gave him a free hand to deliver the kind of covers he wanted to do, he
still sought greater artistic independence, which he ultimately achieved when he
became his own publisher.
Cole has not received the same recognition as other artists who worked for larger
companies — an artistic injustice that this book seeks to correct — and may even
sometimes be mistaken in casual conversation for Jack Cole, the unrelated creator of
Plastic Man. But L.B. Cole’s art speaks, even shines, for itself and his bold, brash, scintillating work would never be confused with that of his (also brilliant) contemporary.
L.B. Cole used his assignments to illustrate comic book covers as opportunities
to create something more than a mere sales tool: Pop Art, or Aviation Art, or Poster
Art, or — yes, Art.
L.B. Cole’s covers consistently rank as among the weirdest, most bizarre, most
eye-catching of all time. The titles alone vamp for our attention: Startling Terror —
Thrilling Crime Cases — Flaming Western Romances — Ghostly Weird Tales — Jungle
Thrills — Shocking Mystery Cases. And the poster-like images that fill those covers
cavort like fever dreams in four-color form.
Throughout his career, Cole created some of the most extraordinarily weird covers
that ever appeared on any comic book, but that was only one aspect of his work. Cole
was a brilliant designer who produced striking images for titles such as Suspense
Comics, Terrific Comics, Contact Comics, Blue Bolt, Captain Aero Comics, and Catman
Comics. He brought his unique flair for the dramatic, the surreal, and the absurd to
nearly every comic book genre: crime, romance, costumed/superhero, adventure,
teenage, funny animal, and Western. The same hand that fashioned a wigged-out
cover for Terrors of the Jungle also drew insufferably cute funny animals for Holiday
Comics and Mighty Bear. Whatever the subject matter, his covers seem to reach out
and grab the eye — which is exactly what he created them to do.
Cole was rediscovered by contemporary comic art fans when those covers and
many more were showcased in a landmark book about comics, Ernst and Mary
Gerber’s Photo Journal Guide to Comic Books. Published in 1989 and 1990, the Photo
Journal Guide came in two massive volumes totaling 806 pages and contained almost
22,000 reproductions of comic book covers from the early 1930s to the mid-1950s.
That monumental work showcased many of the weavers of the fabric of comics’ rich
four-color history.
Exposure in the Gerber books — and the emphasis the Gerbers placed on Cole’s
covers in their advertising — led to a sudden surge of interest in L.B. Cole’s work
and career.
I.
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Leonard “L.B.” Cole, 1979. Cole was a guest of
honor at that year’s Comic Art Convention, held
at the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York City,
June 30–July 1, 1979. Photo by E.B. Boatner.
INTO COMICS
Leonard “Len” Brandt Cole was born August 28, 1918, in New York City, the only
child of William and Jean Cole. Both his parents possessed artistic talent. Bill Cole
was fascinated by architectural design and could have been an illustrator, but his
talent for selling and developing real estate took precedence. He was on the board
of directors of both Tishman Realty, a firm with large real estate holdings in the city,
and Brown Harris Stevens, a prominent management company. Jean Cole worked as
a professional illustrator in a style reminiscent of Nell Brinkley, a popular comic artist
of the time. Dubbed the “Queen of Comics,” Brinkley’s work appeared in William
Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal American.
The Coles resided on the Upper West Side at 96th Street and Central Park. Little is
known about Leonard’s childhood. He was a voracious reader: “anything that was in
print” was how he later described his reading habits. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan
of the Apes was one book that captured his imagination. He loved Burroughs’s Mars
series too. Science fiction struck a chord with the boy, and he regularly read Hugo
Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, the first SF pulp magazine; cover illustrator Frank R.
Paul became an early idol. Len avidly read the colorful Sunday newspaper comic
strips. He loved to draw and was encouraged by both parents.
The separation of Cole’s parents in 1932 marked a major turning point in Cole’s
young life. “My parents were divorced and I was alone,” he remembered later.
“I lived by myself from the time I was 14.”
It was almost as if Leonard’s parents had abandoned him. Given the times, it’s possible
that William Cole suffered economic reversals with the Wall Street disaster of 1929 and
the onset of the Great Depression, and that those events took their toll on the marriage.
In any case, young Len was sent to live with an aunt in Lexington, Kentucky. This began
a new kind of life for the boy, one that had a dramatic effect on his artistic development.
Lexington, in the heart of Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, was known as the “Horse
Capital of the World.” Horse farms ringed the city, giving Lexington its identity.
Cole’s exposure to the beautiful animals awoke a fascination and love of horses
that would appear throughout his life’s work as an illustrator and painter. “I guess I
found love that was missing from my family in animals,” he said. “Animals are very
giving. I would like to have drawn pictures of my mother and father. Instead I drew
pictures of dogs and cats and horses, and I found I was doing pretty well. My intense
love for animals paralleled my love of drawing them.”
While in Lexington he had the opportunity to live for a time at Faraway Farm,
where the champion thoroughbred racehorse Man o’ War was stabled, and was able
to draw the famous horse many times. He drew mainly equine subjects for the next
two or three years.
Between his love of horses and his concern over his ailing German Shepherd
Gin-Tin-Tin, Leonard felt the call of veterinary medicine. He immersed himself in
the reference books at the library of the University of Kentucky, partly to help GinTin-Tin, but also to learn about animal anatomy. He would pursue this interest over
the next decade, though the route was circuitous. “I was all over the country, did
all kinds of things,” he explained. “Suddenly something would come up, and in any
six-month period I might have been anywhere in the world.”
Nevertheless, his quest for knowledge of animal anatomy helped him immeasurably as an artist. (Later in life, he would specialize in wildlife illustration.)
His first job — later he would claim it was his only job as an employee rather
than as a contractor or an owner — was in the art department of the Consolidated
Lithographing Corporation, located on Grand Street and Morgan Avenue in
Brooklyn, New York. Consolidated designed and printed various kinds of labels,
notably cigar bands, cigar box labels, and liquor labels. There he gained vital
knowledge about printing methods and techniques, which would serve him in
good stead later.
“I designed a Three Feathers label for Calvert, Ron Rico Rum labels, and the West
Point hairdressing labels,” he recalled.
9
Perhaps due to his self-reliant teenage years, Cole exuded a great deal of selfconfidence as an adult, and he possessed the design skills to back it up. Within a short
period of time, he moved from apprentice to art director, thus also demonstrating
a skill for using his talent to advance himself into management. (The starting and
ending dates of Cole’s employment at Consolidated are unknown.)
As for his pursuit of higher education, Cole completed what he described as “premed” work at the University of Kentucky, then became disenchanted with education
in America. He decided to attend the Humbolt University of Berlin for postgraduate
work, even though World War II in Europe had begun.
“I was in what was called the Anglo-American enclave in Berlin,” Cole recounted.
“We were sacrosanct, even if there was a war going on. I was doing most of my work
at the German zoo.”
His ancestry was at least partly German, which might account for his comfort in
being in Berlin during that tumultuous time. It appears that he wasn’t there very
long before hightailing it back to the United States sometime in 1941.
Next came a hitch in the military. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1941, all able-bodied men were either enlisting or being drafted. Apparently Cole
got a special assignment involving logistics that took him to the Kasserine Pass in
Tunisia, where a major battle took place in early 1943. He described his involvement
this way:
LEFT: Cole’s original painting for the cover
of Gilberton’s Classics Illustrated #159, The
Octopus, adapting the 1901 novel by Frank
Norris about a conflict between wheat growers
and a railroad in Old California. 14 1/2˝ x 21˝.
RIGHT:
Three undated horse sketches by Cole.
Cole loved horses and lived and worked on a
horse ranch in Kentucky in his teen years.
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“I was on a special commission from President Roosevelt to work with the British
on their logistics tables at Kasserine Pass. There was a 90 percent casualty rate. We
were changing from a horse cavalry to mechanized cavalry. The U.S. government
knew the change was coming, and [asked me to] come up with some logistics tables
that made sense of the switchover. I saw animals killed, and I was devastated by it.
There was no place for animals in modern warfare.”
“I caught my present there, and I got out,” Cole concluded.
Presumably, this meant he was wounded seriously enough to be transported
home and given a discharge from the service.
On April 25, 1942, Leonard B. Cole married Ellen Kovack, a figure skating instructor. They had met on a double date at the Columbus Circle Skating Rink. She was
his friend’s date, but their attraction was mutual and immediate (and his friend was
married). Ellen was from Pittsburgh and had majored in English in college. She possessed an ingrained work ethic that Cole would call upon in nearly all his publishing
endeavors in the coming years.
The stage was set for his comic book career.
L.B. Cole entered the comic book field during the apex of the golden age of comics.
Those were the original glory years of Superman, Captain America, Batman, Captain
Marvel, the Justice Society of America, Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch, and all the
other colorful heroes whose popularity established the comic book reading habit
with millions of readers. Superman was selling almost a million copies per issue by
1943, and Captain Marvel was topping that. Just about every comic book printed was
sold; there were very few returns from newsstands. Comics’ golden age was fueled
by tremendous demand for reading material at military outposts around the world,
as well as a great hunger for diverting entertainment on the home front. But just as
comic books were peaking in popularity, much of the talent needed to create and
sustain them was sapped by military conscription.
Cole saw opportunity. He was just 25 years old and full of moxie. Some initial
forays into commercial art had proven lucrative, but he wanted to be his own boss.
He couldn’t take advantage of his higher education yet because he hadn’t been able
to complete his doctorate in Berlin. Besides, he had become disenchanted with the
earning potential in the veterinary profession.
“I looked around for something that wouldn’t take a million dollars,” he explained.
Cole wasn’t interested in becoming a garden-variety comic book artist, churning out pages for a piece rate, never getting a chance to make any real money. He
was ambitious and confident in his ability. He wanted to be an owner, or at least an
independently contracted art director and editor, and so sought a publisher who
would entertain that type of arrangement.
First, though, there was the little matter of learning something about the business. He got his grounding in comics while penciling and inking in the Lou Ferstadt
shop, one of several comic book production shops that supplied finished comic
book stories to publishers. Using the shop system, publishers could lighten their
costs and their editorial burden by hiring a minimal staff and working with fewer
freelance writers and artists.
Louis Goodman Ferstadt was a comic book writer, artist, and editor who had
worked in the Eisner/Iger, Funnies, Inc., and Demby shops, among others. (He was
also a dedicated Communist who did a regular strip for The Daily Worker.) From 1942
to 1945, his shop supplied features to Quality Comics, Fox, Timely/Atlas, National/
DC, Harvey, and Ace Magazines.
Cole did his first work in comic books assisting Ferstadt on the Flash at National/
DC. He then worked on the features Lash Lightning, Unknown Soldier, Captain
Courageous, and Magno in Ace’s Four Favorites in early 1943.
His first signed work appears in Super-Mystery Comics v.3 #5 (July 1943) from
Ace Magazines. For that issue, Cole penciled and inked an eight-pager starring Paul
Revere Jr. In the following issue, he handled The Sword in a 13-page story.
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THIS PAGE:
Louis Ferstadt works on a mural at
66 Second Avenue, New York City, for the WPA
Federal Art Project, January 25, 1939. Ferstadt
set up a “shop” — an assembly-line operation of
writers and artists who churned out comic books
for small publishers who couldn’t or wouldn’t
hire their own staff. L.B. Cole got his start in
comics in Ferstadt’s shop. Photo by Sol Horn.
OPPOSITE:
Cole drew this Paul Revere Jr. story
for Super-Mystery Comics v. 3 #5, July 1943
(Ace Magazines).
TOP:
The opening spread for Unknown Soldier
by L.B. Cole from Four Favorites #12, November
1943 (Ace Magazines). Note the Satanic Hitler, his
zombie army, and the crucified American soldier.
BOTTOM: Harvey Kurtzman’s splash page for Mr.
Risk, Super-Mystery Comics v. 3 #5, July 1943
(Ace Magazines). Cole’s Paul Revere Jr. story
(P. 10) appeared in the same issue, interrupting
Kurtzman’s brief run on the Paul Revere Jr. feature. Cole and Kurtzman worked side-by-side
at the Ferstadt shop until Kurtzman entered
the military in June 1943.
These features, both signed by Cole, make for an interesting start. The first, a
patriotic kid strip, is the work of a rank beginner. The story is constructed mostly
of eight-panel pages with four two-panel rows, and the action is portrayed almost
solely in long shots. The characters move and react to events in a rudimentary,
puppet-like way. Only a five-panel sequence of a rescue from a moving car really
shows Cole applying himself, especially noticeable in the details of the car. It hints
at rapid improvement to come.
Indeed, The Sword, presumably drawn just weeks after Paul Revere Jr., represents
a leap ahead. Suddenly the figures aren’t just two-dimensional cutouts. They are
three-dimensional people, with liberally applied shading. Cole had tumbled to the
fact that he needed to spot blacks into the work to enhance the depth-in-panel
illusion. Clearly, Leonard Cole was a quick study. The Sword is far from polished,
but the artist is on his way.
In the Ferstadt shop, Cole met a younger cartoonist named Harvey Kurtzman,
who showed flickerings of real potential. According to Cole, he and Ellen spent a
considerable amount of time with 18-year-old Kurtzman in the period before the
younger man left for military service in June 1943. Kurtzman’s work appeared in
Ace’s Four Favorites. In the ninth issue, he drew Lash Lightning and Mr. Risk, signing
his work “H.K.” Several other artists worked side by side with Kurtzman and Cole in
the Ferstadt shop, including Martin Taras and Earl Da Voren.
Wanting “a piece of the action” as an art director, partner, or editor, L.B. Cole
realized there was no point in approaching the major comics houses such as National/
DC, Timely, All-American, Dell, Quality, or Fawcett. Instead, he set his sights on the
lower-rung players, the ones who might be amenable to the kind of arrangement
he wanted. He found what he was looking for when he met a former city attorney
of Birmingham, Alabama, named William Z. Temerson, who was publishing some
mediocre-to-poor titles under the Et-Es-Go banner. (Et-Es-Go was named after
Temerson’s three sisters, Etta, Esther, and Goldie.) Temerson was impressed enough
13
with Cole to take him in as art director and editor. Their exact arrangement isn’t clear.
Cole later described himself as vice president of the firm, which changed its name to
the more euphonious Continental Magazines. (Often the publisher of these comics
is identified as “Holyoke” because they were printed in an aging plant in Holyoke,
Massachusetts, which was at least partly owned by Temerson.)
At Continental, Leonard Cole began looking for ways to breathe new life into
stagnant titles such as Captain Aero Comics and Catman Comics. It’s possible he
was behind the launch of the seminal title Suspense Comics, which is considered a
precursor to the horror comics genre. It was inspired by (and licensed from) the popular radio show of that name. Cole’s first work for Continental appears in Suspense
Comics #1 (December 1943), a seven-page mystery story titled “The Cellini Dagger.”
He drew similarly spooky tales in most of the subsequent issues of the title’s 10-issue
run. Cole also contributed covers and stories to Suspense’s sister title, Terrific Comics,
launched just one month later.
The Continental staff consisted of Bill Temerson, his assistant Ray Hermann,
L.B. Cole, and perhaps a production artist or two. They kept overhead low by using
only freelancers. Most of Cole’s time was devoted to working with the freelance
artists who produced all of the work he could not. Continental’s freelancers at that
time included Don Rico, Nina Albright, Ed Wheelan, Carmine Infantino, Eli Katz (Gil
Kane), Rudy Palais, George Appel, and Tom Van Buren. Jack Grogan was one of their
most prolific writers.
Charles Quinlan was the art director before Cole came aboard, but Cole recounted,
“When I came in and took over part of the company, [Quinlan] left. He was tired,
anyway, the poor man … he really was. Charlie worked so hard drawing that he had
problems. He was a fine artist but a very stubborn guy.” [Moore]
While some of the freelance artists possessed genuine, if nascent, talent, Leonard
Cole was already in another league. He was not always technically better, but that
didn’t matter — he was marching to the beat of his own drum.
THIS PAGE:
The staff of Continental Magazines
in 1944. Standing, l-r: Chris Schaare, Mark
Bogardo, Frank Temerson, George Harrison,
Jack Alderman, Leonard B. Cole, Jack Grogan,
Charles Quinlan. Seated, l-r: Lucy Feller and
Ray Hermann.
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TOP:
L.B. Cole’s cover for Four Favorites #13,
February 1944 (Ace Magazines). Believed to
be Cole’s first comic book cover.
BOTTOM: A printer’s proof of Cole’s cover for
Suspense Comics #4, June 1944 (Et-Es-Go
Magazines, Inc.). The ghostlike figure looming in the background is Mr. Nobody, but Mr.
Nobody did not debut in his own stories until
the following issue.
OPPOSITE:
Cole’s cover for the following issue,
Suspense Comics #5, August 1944 (Continental
Magazines, Inc.). This time, Mr. Nobody appeared
on the cover and in his own story inside.
For example, Cole eschewed one of the primary implements in an inker’s
toolbox: the pen.
“I never used a pen in my life,” he said. “Never. I can draw a line as thin
as a spider web or as thick as a pipe with a No. 3 Winsor-Newton brush.
I’ve driven guys crazy giving them what I called ‘brush drills.’ They’d say,
‘How did you do that?’ and when I’d say, ‘With a Winsor-Newton,’ they’d
ask, ‘What kind of a pen is a Winsor-Newton?’ I put my middle finger
down on the board and the brush will go no further than that finger, so
I can whip around into all kinds of beautiful stuff if the brush is good. In
those days, a No. 3 brush cost 37 cents. I feel there’s nothing a guy can
do with a pen that I can’t do with a brush.”
In John Benson’s 1965 interview with Kurtzman (published as A Talk with
Harvey Kurtzman), Kurtzman was obviously referring to Cole when he said,
“In that particular period, the technique of the brush, the #3 Winsor-Newton
sable brush, was a world unto itself. The artist would actually, including
myself, thrill to the manipulation of the brush, which had nothing to do with
the idea of the cartoon, but had everything to do with technique. It was just
a cosmetic part of the cartoon. Naturally, the heart of the cartoon is the idea.
But we were fascinated by the technique of the brush.”
In early 1945, while Kurtzman was on furlough from the Army, Cole
recruited him to draw Black Venus, a costumed hero feature of sorts, for
Contact Comics.
Cole was coming from a different mindset than many of his fellow
artists. Unlike other artisans in comic books, he didn’t try to absorb the
style and techniques of newspaper strip artists Alex Raymond (Flash
Gordon), Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates), and Harold Foster (Prince
Valiant) — or any other comics artists, for that matter. Instead, he looked
to fine art and focused on fundamentals.
“I went to the old masters,” Cole explained. “I went to Rembrandt
because he was a master of shadow. I went to a man called W. Frank
Calderon, who did a book called Animal Painting and Anatomy. There
were no other illustrators of the modern school who influenced me. I
studied at the Art Students League under George Bridgman who, to me,
was a master of anatomy.”
Leonard Cole wasn’t in comics because he yearned to work in the
medium, but because it was a way to make a good dollar from his drawing
ability. More an illustrator than a storyteller, he made his mark in comics
not for his skill at sequential storytelling, like just about every other top
artist, but for his striking, poster-like covers.
Cole’s first documented comic book cover, Ace’s Four Favorites #13
(February 1944), depicts the Unknown Soldier punching a Nazi, a standard
shot for the time. The artwork is fine for its day, but unspectacular. Only
its solid, all-white background is a sign of things to come.
His second cover, which appears on Suspense Comics #4 (June 1944),
is a not-too-exciting shot of a maiden about to be sacrificed on an altar by three
hooded villains. It could have appeared anywhere, except for a trench coat–clad
figure named Mr. Nobody looming in the background.
Mr. Nobody, probably a creation of writer Jack Grogan, somewhat resembles
the Shadow and tends to make sonorous, self-important pronouncements such as:
“Whenever crime takes root and starts to flourish … remember this … that even if you think
that nobody is watching you … you’re right … For I am there — in the shadows alone!”
Despite his appearance on the cover of Suspense Comics #4, Mr. Nobody didn’t
appear inside until the following issue.
Suspense Comics #5’s well-designed cover is worthy of special attention. The
hero is threatened by African archers on either side, but what makes it remarkable
is Cole’s use of bold, primary colors and the way the background shading goes from
bright red at the top to yellow-orange at the bottom.
Cole later explained, “Being perfectly practical as a businessman and a publisher,
for me there was no other motive than to create a poster oriented to newsstand sales.
15
16
The covers were mostly designed as posters, and when I speak of the poster effect
I mean that they should be seen. If they’re not seen, they’re not picked up, and if
they’re not picked up, obviously they’re not bought.”
Cole often used what he called “poster colors” as solid backgrounds. He was able
to experiment with them because he didn’t have to get anyone’s approval. This is
a key idea that emerges from Cole’s story: independence and creative control led
to innovative ideas.
“Others were very stubborn about it because they had editors who had to justify
their jobs,” Cole commented. “Their biggest claim to fame and fortune would be
to say no to an idea. It’s much easier to say ‘this won’t sell’ because they would be
right more often than wrong. I had the great advantage of not having to show it to
anyone so I could take a shot at it.” [Moore]
Those vibrant poster colors are a result of Cole’s days at Consolidated Lithographing, when he learned about ink and the effects a printer could achieve. Solid
backgrounds are used on the remainder of the 12 issues of Suspense Comics, with
a special blue-and-yellow pinwheel effect on #9 (August 1945), which was quite
inventive at the time.
“My decision for designing successful covers evolved into the use of eye-arresting
blocks of vibrant, solid colors and/or a unified use of lines, all pointing toward or
encompassing a single theme,” he said, and then explained further:
Maybe I’m just an inherent salesman, but I was always oriented toward newsstand
sales, and these stylized covers drew readers. There was a riot of color out there on
the stands and I figured something had to be done to catch the buyer’s eye. Take a
look at most of the other books: they’re all done in linear technique. All of the superheroes … were a mass of figures kicking and punching and they all looked the same.
A rather simple solution occurred to me one day while passing a magazine
dealer who carried virtually every one of the hundreds of titles being published at
that time. My thought upon viewing this riot of color confronting me was “What
would happen should a blank space seem to appear by virtue of a … predominately
black [cover] being placed amidst this kaleidoscope of brilliance?”
Cole had a special fascination with the color black. He said, “The value of black
is what the viewer will read into that black space. If it’s a horror cover and you have
a big black background, just put in some squiggly line and the reader will see it as
a fang, or claw, or staring eye, and will read the most horrible aberrations into it.”
He described the sales of the issue with his first cover with a solid black background as “astounding.” That was Power Comics #3 (August 1944), done for the
Continental imprint Narrative Comics. His next black background covers appear on
Contact Comics, the air-fighter title created by Cole. Issues #3, #6, and #12 feature
this effect, and they are among the best of the covers Cole drew before 1947. Solid
background colors make them look like mini-posters.
His second favorite background color was red, and, after that, white. The deliberate poster effect continued to make the covers for Continental (and its imprints)
distinctive. They became a Cole trademark over the next 10 years.
Those who prefer the kind of detailed anatomy found, for example, in the work of
Lou Fine might object to Cole’s renditions of the human body. Indeed, Cole’s work
often features figures that appear slightly warped or distorted. Cole chose to draw
people in an abstract, expressionist manner — just the opposite of his passion for
accuracy in his animal artwork. Eschewing a strictly realistic approach, Cole blazed
his own way to a more offbeat and, at times, disturbing vision. The man behind
most of the covers for a “pre-horror” comic book had a dark side to his imagination.
That dark side is on display in the quartet of his covers for Suspense Comics #8
through #11: clutching hands against a red background on #10, the devil on #11, and
the aforementioned blue-and-yellow radiating pinwheel — with a baleful eyeball at
its center — on #9.
Arguably, the most memorable of the run is Cole’s cover to Suspense Comics #8,
with a male and a female victim in the foreground — caught in the web of a giant
spider sporting a human skull for a head — with the implacable visage of Mr. Nobody
OPPOSITE:
Power Comics #3, August 1945,
cover proof (Narrative Publishers).
17
18
THIS PAGE:
Patches #3, July 1946, cover proof
(Orbit). The signatures were removed on the
printed cover.
OPPOSITE:
Contact Comics #12, July 1946
(Aviation Press).
in the background, observing their torment. It is as fine an example
of a symbolic cover as one can find in an era with many such covers.
“It was the first time that newspapers had really played up
the advance of crime in our society,” Cole explained years later,
offering insight into his process. “It occurred to me that we were
… enmeshed in violence at the time, almost entrapped by it. I illustrated ‘enmeshed’ by using a spider web. The spider was the menace,
death, which was indicated by the skull, and Mr. Nobody represented
the public. It was one of the few times I had a theme in mind, rather
than just designing something that I thought would attract the eye
and sell the book.”
Cole’s striking imagery and design sense put him in the same
league with such outstanding cover artists as Alex Schomburg and
Jack Burnley. Schomburg excelled at scenes of heroes versus mad
Nazis. Burnley’s covers emphasized the heroic aspect of the characters. Cole specialized in aeronautical covers.
Charles Lindbergh’s historic solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean
in 1927 had ignited widespread fascination with aviation. Aerial combat in World War II fueled further interest and the “air fighter” genre
became popular. Boys commonly wore aviator caps and goggles, just
like they wore cowboy hats. Tailspin Tommy and Scorchy Smith brought
high-flying adventure to newspaper comics. Continental’s Captain Aero
and Contact Comics were right at home on newsstands that also carried
Wings, Airboy, and Captain Midnight from other publishers.
Each of the dozen Contact covers is a gem, a masterwork of intersecting angles and primary colors. Cole details the planes and warships as accurately
as possible. The cover design to #9 is one of several derived directly from the squadron patches of Air Force and Marine Corps units.
The cover art on Contact #12 (July 1946) hardly fits a book about contemporary air
warfare. It’s a science fiction scene with rocketships attacking an alien city. Perhaps
it was a miscellaneous piece that got used simply to finish off the last issue of the
title’s run. It shows a more fanciful, if somewhat simplistic, side of Cole’s imagination, with primary colors (again) against a solid black background. The same thing
happens on Cole’s cover for the final issue of Captain Flight Comics, though it is a
bit more complex. Cole’s seven covers for Captain Aero Comics (#17, 21–26) are of
a piece with the Contact covers, and equally effective.
A coincidence occurred with Captain Aero #24, cover-dated November 1945.
Cole was reviewing a proof of the book, which featured a flight of P-51 Mustangs
dropping bombs on Japan, on August 6, 1945 — the day the U.S. dropped the atom
bomb on Hiroshima.
About 50 pre-1947 covers by L.B. Cole have been identified. The majority of them
are for Continental, the rest for other imprints and companies. These include covers
for Power, Mask, Eagle, Patches, Great, Bingo, and Tailspin Comics, among others.
Nearly all are first-rate. The Mask #2 cover, with its depiction of the devil surrounded
by suffering faces, was Cole’s favorite among them. Had the artist done no more,
those covers by themselves would be enough to stand as testament to his talent and
to secure his place as an important figure in comics’ golden age.
It was probably fortunate that Cole didn’t get into comics in 1941 and 1942, for
that was the era dominated by costumed heroes, a genre that didn’t seem to excite
him. Not that the hero boom was over by 1943 and 1944. The superhero titles hit their
peak circulations in 1944, according to Mike Benton in The Comic Book in America.
But publishers were also trying different genres, and that suited Cole.
Nevertheless, when called upon to handle costumed characters, Cole was able
to acquit himself reasonably well. His work on Boomerang in “The Duke of Terror
Castle” (Terrific Comics #5, July 1944), produced just a year after The Sword in
Super-Mystery, is the best to be found in any of the Continental books. The use of
blacks as shadows and backgrounds, and the variations in panel shapes to suit the
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