Old King Cole

This past week has been very hot in Chicago and, unfortunately, a lot of the comics that I wanted to scan and post that had to do with my cover "themes" were in places that would require a lot of lifting and sorting and sweating (things I'm not very fond of, frankly), so I'm going to hold off until Wednesday when the weather man promised it would cool down.

But in the meantime, I wanted to talk a little about one of the most popular romance comic book artist who, frankly, baffles me.

L.B. Cole was in the comic book business for a long time. By his own accounts (and repeated in numerous places on the Internet), he drew more than 1,500 covers, many which have become very popular and collectible. (Others, like Criminals on the Run #7, are just plain odd.) To me, though, they are pretty stiff.

I think, however, at least with his romance work, a lot of his covers would look a lot better today, with better printing processes. If you look at the cover to Confessions of Romance #7 (seen above), it seems that Cole's use of very florid and feathery lines doesn't come through as it probably did on the inked page, especially when you consider that Star Comics (Confessions' publisher owned by Cole) wasn't large by any means and likely didn't either have the best printers or engravers (the printing's even worse on the inside). To make matters worse, the coloring is always particularly garish (I've yet to meet anyone whose skin was the orange/pink that the woman on the cover has).

Popular Teen-Agers Secrets of Love #17 (man, what a mouthful) is another Cole cover from Star, and it has some of the same problems as Confessions. Odd composition, bright, contrasting colors, sup-par printing. There's something complelling about it (as in most of his work), although I'm not sure I can move my opinion of him from compelling to love (or even like).

It's this odd combination of realism and abstraction. I think it would sell a comic, however; much moreso than what was on the inside.

I met Cole once at a convention in New York City in the late 80s. Golden Age comics (and romance comics especially) were the furthest things from my mind then, but Cole was a guest, and he and his wife had a table full of art and lithographs of some of his more recent paintings. I shook his hand and smiled, but I wish I had spoken with him more.