Translate

Monday, January 27, 2014

Number 1515: Little brain, big body

A week ago I showed the Jack Cole story, “Murder, Morphine and Me” from True Crime #2. It featured the “injury to the eye motif” panel in Fredric Wertham’s anti-comics screed, Seduction of the Innocent. A week later I’m showing you more Jack Cole, and one other injury to the eye panel.

Above is the cover of Police Comics #24, which is yet another example. Kids saw this sort of thing every time they saw a Three Stooges film short. Did Jack Cole have a thing about attacking eyeballs? I don’t know, but if you know of any similar panels in other stories of his let me know.

Eyeball attacks notwithstanding, this is a totally screwball story, which has to be read to be appreciated. You know you’re in the middle of something bizarre when you see a panel where the top of a man’s head is blown off and on the ground nearby lies a waiting brain.

From Police Comics #11 (1942):










5 comments:

jim said...

Wow!! Awesome/gruesome story! Thanks!!

Brian Barnes said...

This is probably one of the most panels per page stories I've ever seen, and Cole didn't skimp on a single one.

It does have that strange 40s storytelling where there's a lot of additional elements that could be parred out. Why the mob involvement? It made no difference to the story.

Still, a great read!

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

Many of Cole's earliest comic-book stories seem thrown-together haphazardly; his later stories tend to be tightly constructed. I guess that this is a mid-point in that evolution; but maybe he just felt like writing something utterly goofy.

When Cole wants to depict a woman as attractive, and especially as dangerously attractve, he tends to give her very wide-set eyes. We see that with Shirley, but especially note what happens with Valda's eyes. In the final panels of the sixth page, they are wide-set; in the second panel of the seventh page, they are (amongst other things) no longer so.

Debbie American Hooray! said...

Tha only thing we luv more then Plastic Man is U Pappy OMG!!! Oh & Choklit Beer. OMG WE LUV U PAPPY!!!! XOXOXOXOXOXO Im guna tell peeps on Failbook how badass U R RITE NOW!

Pappy said...

Debbie, you do this old guy a kindness. Thank you.