Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits

by Art Spiegelman, Chip Kidd

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and illustrator Art Spiegelman joins forces with designer Chip Kidd to pay homage to the comic book hero Plastic Man and his creator, Jack Cole. Plastic Man is more than just a putty face--with his bad-boy past, he literally embodies the comic book form: the exuberant energy, flexibility, boyishness, and subtle hints of sexuality. And as cartoonists "become" each character they create, it can be said that Jack Cole himself resembles Plastic Man. Cole revealed the true magnitude and intensity of his imagination and inner thoughts as Plastic Man slithered from panel to panel--shifting forms and dashing from male to female, or freely morphing from a stiff upright figure to a being as soft as a Dali clock. With a compelling history, a V-necked red rubber leotard, a black-and-yellow striped belt, and very cool tinted goggles, Plastic Man is truly a cult classic, and this art-packed book will delight any fan.

Genres: Comics, Biography, Art, Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, Comix, Graphic Novels Comics

144 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2001

About the author

Art Spiegelman is an American cartoonist, editor, and cultural innovator whose work has profoundly influenced the perception of comics as a legitimate art form, blending literary sophistication with experimental visual storytelling. Emerging from the underground comix movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Spiegelman quickly distinguished himself with a distinctive approach that combined meticulous craftsmanship, psychological insight, and narrative complexity, challenging conventions of sequential art and the boundaries between personal memoir and historical record. He co-founded the landmark anthology Raw with his wife, Françoise Mouly, which became a platform for cutting-edge, avant-garde cartoonists from around the world, blending surrealist imagery, literary experimentation, and bold visual ideas that redefined the possibilities of the medium. Spiegelman is best known for his groundbreaking graphic novel Maus, a haunting, deeply personal depiction of his father’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor, which used anthropomorphic characters to explore trauma, memory, and identity with unprecedented depth; the work earned a Special Pulitzer Prize and established Spiegelman as a central figure in both literary and visual culture. Beyond Maus, he has contributed influential cartoons and covers to The New Yorker, including the iconic 9/11 cover, demonstrating his ability to communicate complex emotional and cultural truths with economy and symbolic resonance. His artistic sensibility reflects influences from early twentieth-century cartoonists, modernist design, typography, and the visual language of newspapers and advertising, while also incorporating pop culture, surrealism, and abstraction. Spiegelman has consistently experimented with the interplay of image and text, treating comics as a medium that mirrors cognitive processes of memory, perception, and emotional experience. In addition to his creative output, he has curated exhibitions, edited anthologies, and published critical essays on comics history and theory, advocating for the recognition of the medium as serious art and mentoring generations of cartoonists. He has also worked in graphic design, creating posters, album covers, and commemorative stamps, and his visual interventions often reflect his interest in narrative structure, cultural commentary, and the power of imagery to shape public understanding. Throughout his career, Spiegelman has been a vocal advocate for freedom of expression and a critic of censorship, engaging in public discourse on political and social issues, and demonstrating how comics can address profound ethical and historical questions. His pioneering work, editorial vision, and relentless innovation have transformed both the aesthetics and the intellectual reception of comics, proving that the medium can handle grief, history, and identity with sophistication, subtlety, and emotional resonance. Spiegelman’s legacy is evident in the work of contemporary graphic novelists and in the broader cultural recognition of comics as an art form capable of exploring human experience, social commentary, and the complexities of memory and trauma, making him one of the most influential figures in modern visual storytelling.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Chris Browning · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 simmering deeper under the surface. Cole is an extraordinary talent, the bridge - as the book rightly says - between Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner, but also kind of exhausting during the Plastic Man: that his Playboy cartoons were so melancholy and his daily comic strip so much of a wish fulfilment, Spiegelman and Kidd suggest very subtly that this inability to juggle all three may have been the cause of his tragic death. It’s telling they choose the word “snapped” to describe it, that constant sense of mutable joy finally. broken by causes we can never really know

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

way better introduction to plastic man than dc archive

[Rex Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 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.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 post-Plastic-Man crime comix, Murder, Morphine, and Me, is in here (complete with that syringe-into-eyeball frame which helped trigger Seduction of the Innocent , some Senate hearings, and then the daft Comics Code Authority). His response to all this nonsense: joining the new Playboy cartoon team. This was his last clutch at brilliance, a perfect moment (if only this book had the guts to canonize his majestic Playboy output -- just five-odd cartoons, that's all you get here).

Cole's suicide letter to Hugh Hefner (his most indulgent employer) is reproduced here, but not the more relevant suicide note to his wife, Dorothy. All we have from Dot is a statement that "we had an argument before". "An argument before" -- that don't lead to giving yourself a skull-bullet at the height of your success, does it?

But look closer: even Chip Kidd's little tribute graphix at the book's dead-end point toward some clues: Cole was a force of energy, and slightly demented. And he liked sex, but probably not in any ordinary "vanilla" way. I think his suicide related to all that. Look for yourself.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 plastic covers to the wonderfully accurate classic reprints (the stories are on paper that looks and feels like old comic book pages!), this book is a must for every comic book AND pop culture fan. No art book collection would be complete without it.

[Tim Lapetino · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 unruffled, with yellowed pages, poor color registration and weak black levels, the patina preserved. This tends to lend more authority and gravity to the work and the sad end of Cole's life.

The bittersweet discord of the playful Plastic Man stories by Cole and the sad end of his life are well-captured, and the book is very worth reading.

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 layouts, an appropriately "rubbery" cover, and full stories reprinted on brown paper that resembles old comic book pages.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 book interesting enough. But the fact that he died under what some would call mysterious circumstances, made this a great and respectful read.

Wonderful book design. Balanced and attractive.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourite old school comics again.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Ryan Botwinik · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabulous read.

[Daisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[Michael P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 quite the same things) as those of any characters in the history of comics. PLASTIC MAN stories are satisfying to adults if the adults are bright enough to understand them. Spiegelman does a marvelous job of presenting Cole’s talent and his achievement, though more examples are badly needed. This book would be twice as good if it were twice as long.

There are two major defects, and these are defects indeed. Cole’s life is not well covered and some will be curious. His suicide at the height of his success has always been an enigma. Spiegelman thinks he has solved the enigma, and perhaps he has, but the quick way he presents his conclusion did not convince me.

Books designer Chip Kidd is credited as co-author, and should be for the design is the major factor in the impact of this book. That is also the books larger defect: it is over designed, designed as if the design were the point and not the content. This makes it sometimes difficult to read, especially when there is yellow type on a bright red page, though some of the other color combinations are also not easy on the eye. The PLASTIC MAN stories reprinted are reprinted from comic books complete with very yellowed paper, and those pages are also hard to read. The technology exists to restore the whiteness of the paper and the brightness of the colors, so the result is that these stories are treated as museum pieces and not the vibrant and energetic stories that Cole created. Kidd’s designs too often make this book a chore to read.

I hope this will not be the last book about Cole’s work. Spiegelman does a good job showing readers what is special about Cole’s rendering and page design, but the book does not otherwise come close to exposing Cole’s life or talent.

[captain america · Rating 3 out of 5]

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".

[Downward · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a really fascinating biography that mixes biographical prose with examples of jack cole's art and in a couple cases entire comics that defined Cole's career as first the author and artist of the seminal superhero plastic man to the crime stories Cole wrote that helped bring the wrath of Wertham and led to the eventual comics code to his later work at playboy. What's most interesting here is the academic dissection of Cole's use of the form, stretching (pun begrudgingly intended) the medium with the ways that he used art to direct a story and the depth of weird freudian stuff that inevitably makes it in when intelligent adults spend their lives drawing and writing stories that are essentially for kids. I wish more could be said about Cole's personality and what drove him to his ultimate demise; the story is necessarily abrupt with that, mostly because what's known about it has been kept totally private among the parties involved, in a rare case of a person's life remaining their own even after death. still, it makes the story feel incomplete like there is a necessary part of Cole that we're missing - especially because the early history of comics is so dark and Cole is such a towering figure.

[Jamie McLendon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great overview of the tragic Jack Cole, with some fine examples of his work. Chip Kidd's layouts match the zaniness of the Plastic Man comics, down to the plastic cover.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rich text. Cringeworthy at times; has not always aged well. Other bits are still hilarious. A fascinating slice of intellectual history. A woman who looks like Jessica Rabbit holding up a sign that says "A portfolio of Polymorphously Perverse Plasticity." Art by Cole "was enshrined as Exhibit A in Dr. Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, the book that triggered the Senate hearings and thereby toppled the industry."

Cole committed suicide when he was my age. The man who created Plastic Man shot himself in the head after very considerately writing his boss and his wife. An unsatisfying ending.

[an infinite number of monkeys · Rating 3 out of 5]

The text of this book is from an article Speigelman wrote for The New Yorker. It's available for free at the magazine's website. Collages of Cole's work and a reprint of one of his stories in True Crime Comics that made Dr. Wertham apoplectic make up the balance of the book. The article is great, but its availability online (and its brevity) makes this book unnecessary.

[Peacegal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve never been much of a follower of the action hero comic genre, so the comics themselves didn’t interest me all that much. However, I did appreciate the colorful and creative layout of this book, as well as some of the artist’s surrealistic work. The use of comics to decipher the meaning behind the artist’s suicide was also and interesting touch, and that probably intrigued me the most.

[Jeremy DeBottis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty cool little tribute. The mixing of glossy pages with pages in the style of old pulp comics was a nice way to break up the biography portion with Jack Cole's work. It gave me a heightened appreciation and respect for old golden age comics and their campy story lines. Even more so it gave me a much greater appreciation of their artwork, and specifically Cole's work.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short biography of an interesting artist... the inserts and variety of art are fun and add to the mystery.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an entertaining read, but I think it could have been taken care of in a paragraph or two and left the rest of the book for reprinting the comics.