Eye-popping collection/biography on Plastic Man and his creator, Jack Cole. The book celebrates his work while investigating the reasons for his suicide by reprinting several disturbing images and stories that this seemingly happy-go-lucky cartoonist created. The book is printed on slick paper while the comics are printed on crude pulp stock. Cole's suicide is made all the more disturbing by Chip Kidd's creepy collages. Highly recommended, and Hugh Hefner's thoughts of him are genuinely touching...

I knew nothing about Cole before I read this but I actually found it quite fascinating. Because I didn't know anything about his life, I found the tragic ending quite surprising and intriguing. I appreciated the healthy helping of Cole's work throughout. I feel as though I got to understand his style and career progression through these examples. Spiegelman's admiration for the man is clear in this biography of not only Cole but also the era of comics he was involved in.

This is a great book. Effective writing skills. Just love it

way better introduction to plastic man than dc archive

Apparently most comic artists draw the same way for their whole career, at some point their art loses some of its clarity, and eventually the guys are put to pasture and die of old age or crawl inside a bottle. Not this guy, though. This was my first introduction to the classic Plastic Man art (having only seen him on a sanitized and simple ABC cartoon previously). Just the fact that this guy changed his style, his medium, and had a second career as a Playboy cheesecake cartoonist makes this boo...

When Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman writes a book about another cartoonist, people should pay attention, so pay attention. Jack Cole was a genius, especially in his best known creation PLASTIC MAN, the first of the stretchable comic book characters. Cole realized the concept was ridiculous, something that Stan Lee and Julius Schwartz did not know, and blithely gave-in to the absurdity resulting in stories that are not just genuinely funny, but as intelligent and clever (not qui...

Plastic Man was one of the most unique SH to come out of the plethora of 'Super/Bat' characters that seemed to be popping up in the 'garden of imitation' that was the comic industry in the 40's. The tragic story of Jack Cole is told here for the first time. Wonderful reproductions of his art.

Designed exactly as one would expect, for a book about Plastic Man. And that’s part of the problem, if you really intended to read (and not just look at) it. But a compelling story of an under-appreciated artist if you can make the extra effort.

See how and why Jack Cole created one of the greates superheroes. Plastic Man pushed the envelope during pre comics code world. Cole's work with E.C. horror comics and his Playboy work.

This book is beautiful in its design, and works hard enough editorially to tell the unusual and tragic story of Jack Cole, the creator of Plastic Man.The background and bio of Cole is told well enough, but it's really the book design and the curated reprints of Plastic Man tales and other strips that makes this worth reading. The Plastic Man issues are tons of fun, and visually treated in an intriguing way -- the artwork isn't cleaned up or retouched. Instead, the books are presented nearly unru...

A pithy combination of biography, essay and celebration of the tragic life of Jack Cole. It’s beautifully judged, deftly moving between thoughtful consideration of Cole as an artist and writer and quite carefully dealing with the issues of his suicide without dipping into prurience. It’s also a genuine collaboration between Spiegelman and Kidd, a chaotic visual feast that celebrates the extraordinary kineticism of Cole’s greatest art whilst also nicely hinting at something of the turmoils simmer...

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. Instead, it is a...

I wish Art Spiegelman were more of a psycho-sexual nutcase: that would have informed his (relatively dry) fanboy narrative here, and possibly given more light to Jack Cole's phony sobersides life, freaky creations, and mysterious suicide. Yet the Chip Kidd visuals make an enthusiastic argument that Cole was a total original, and Plastic Man (plus scrotum-faced sidekick Woozy Winks) were oddball tricksters: shifting moral agents enlarged by lots of rough play (and rubbery flesh). One of Cole's po...

During the Golden Age of Comics, Jack Cole exploded onto the scene with the creation of one of the seminal super-hero creations Plastic Man. Not just the first pliable hero, Cole’s creation was an artist tour-de-force and ranks up there with Eisner’s Spirit and Kane’s Batman as the most influential comic book creations of the 1940's. Jack Cole and Plastic Man by Art Spiegelman (a modern comic book legend himself) and Chip Kidd celebrates and honors the kooky character and his creation. From the

I would love to read about the joyful life of a cartoonist someday but I guess I'll have to keep looking. Cole's Playboy cartoons were amazing, by the way.

An interesting look at an underappreciated genius of the golden age of comic books. Though not quite the storyteller that Will Eisner was, Jack Cole wasn't far behind him in terms of art and his ability to look beyond the conventions of the typical '40s super hero. Spiegelman writes a brief (maybe too brief) biography of Cole's life, including his senseless 1958 suicide, but the majority of the book is given to Cole's work. Chip Kidd gives the book several nice touches including innovative layou...

Fabulous read.

Short but interesting biography of Jack Cole - creator of Plastic Man who later became one of Playboy's top artists. It's a tragic tale punctuated with images from Plastic Man comics. The best parts are the Plastic Man tales reproduced on pulpy paper interspersed throughout the book.

My favourite old school comics again.

everybody loves chip kidd's graphic design, chopping the hell out of images when the entire picture could speak for itself. me, i don't get it. still, its good to see jack cole's classic hero from the time when comic books could get away with being really comic instead of dark and disturbed and "relevant".