Jack Cole and Plastic Man

I found this read very interestingly placed so early in our trip through the comic’s world. It feels kind of “grown up” in a way. The way that every image tells more than just one action or event, the dialogue, the type of scenarios that take place. What I'm trying to say is that Plastic man doesn’t really seem to be for the children. Which is something I thought comic books were geared towards. It seems that I couldn’t be more wrong.

I think Jack Cole was a classic case of an artist who put his entire heart and soul into his work. Which made his suicide not much a surprise to me. To me Plastic man seems like a Jack Cole autobiography. What a perfect way to express all of ones thought, beliefs, and ideas. No matter how off the wall or crazy. What man wouldn’t want to speak in third person about “himself” as a chemically induced super hero? No really I want an answer. A person who has the ability to at will see the world Jack Cole saw it I’m sure many would agree probably wasn’t much of a happy existence.

I do not want to make it seem like I'm not interested in the actual work of Jack Cole, but his life story is what’s so intriguing. What little information that is given to me in the writing about his personal life makes me think of what kind of life Jack Cole really lead. I’m not implying that the author isn’t giving enough info. Just that I wish to hear Jack Cole talk about what events in his life he thinks made him think of the stories and characters that he created. The way Jack dialogues everything kind of dry and straight to the point, yet spends so much time in rendering the images has to correlate with his psyche. Our psyches are formed through experience and simply data collection, then our creativity kicks into action. So what I'm really trying to say is that I want to know where Jack felt that line was between a man who can literally stretch his arms out a mile each way and a priest Or what real event in his life lead to the ideas for Murder Morphine and Me. How such a seemingly normal small town man can think of the crazy shit that he did.