DICKIE DEAN BOY INVENTOR - Episode 3 - Cole's First Speedboat Story

Story presented in this post:
Dickie Dean (story, pencils, inks, and lettering by Jack Cole)
Silver Streak Comics #5 (June 1940, Lev Gleason)

We've looked at some memorable early stories Jack Cole created in which the action centered around speedboats. There's Cole's single Quicksilver story, his landmark fourth Midnight story, and in our previous post, we saw a mind-blowing Midnight story involving a speedboat that traveled on land. Having established Cole's fondness for speedboat stories, here now is, as far as I can tell , his very first speedboat story: the third episode of his highly entertaining DICKIE DEAN series.

I'm not sure why Cole was so fond of drawing speedboats and water. Perhaps there was a flood in his hometown of New Castle, Pennsylvania when he was a child, or perhaps his Dad had a speedboat. In any case, there is a strong sense of place in this story, which makes it even more vivid than ever. This story reminds me of the more recent, but equally entertaining story, Won't Be Licked; The Great '37 Flood of Louisville, by one of my favorite modern cartoonists, Dan Zettwoch (the story appeared in The Best American Comics 2007, Chris Ware, editor).

Perhaps Jack Cole's interest in speeboat stories was purely graphical. If you study these stories, you can see that he used the boats as pointers on the page layout, directing the eye effortlessly to the next panel. The result is a sense of movement that is often exhilarating.

This story stands alone in the DICKIE DEAN series. It's the only one of the eight that Cole did in which Dickie's friend/sidekick doesn't appear. Instead, there is a genial, faintly Dad-like newspaper reporter named HAP who joins Dickie on his adventures. I like the chemistry (if you'll pardon the pun) between these two characters and I wish Jack Cole had explored this duo more. Alas, this is the only story in which HAP appears.

Like many of Jack Cole's comic book stories of 1940-42, there is a way cool information drawing, explaining the main invention, a boat that can make water disappear by running through it:


There are also several other fun inventions in this story, including an automatic apple dispenser, an accordion hat retriever, and an acid-spewing fountain pen. Cole also speaks directly to his boy readership at the start and end of this story, proving no small amount of enthusiastic encouragement to invent. Cole's words are so compelling, that I felt myself growing keenly interested in inventing something as I read the story!

Another hallmark of Cole's work is an interest in using decorative patterns to provide visual richness (such as Woozy Winks' polka-dotted blouse). In this story, he uses the diffusion of the water molecules as an excuse to populate several panels with wonderful arrays of floating spheres of water. The effect is magical, like something out of LITTLE NEMO:

In addition to the Dickie Dean story in this issue, Jack Cole also delivered the lead feature, a ripping Silver Streak adventure (which I'll share at a future posting). Cole was the editor of this title, and in addition to his two stories in this book, he also turned in a wonderful cover:

Note Dickie Dean in the lower right-hand corner, the only time Cole drew his full figure on a cover.

By the way, have you checked out my pal, Frank Young's superlative articles and reprints of some great Jimmy Thompson ROBOTMAN stories at Cartoon Snap? If not, be sure to hop over there once you've finished reading this amazing DICKIE DEAN story... you'll be glad you did. Thompson is the most under-appreciated artist of the Golden Age, and Sherm's Cartoon Snap blog is one of the best out there!

Just an aside: if you happen to be enjoying a scan blog and see some links to ads posted, clicking on a few is an easy way to help support that blog, since the blogger will get a little dinero for each click. Just a suggestion. We're not supposed to solicit clicks for ourselves. I just wanted to raise general awareness of this issue. For example, out of 15,000 page impressions on this blog there have been only 8 clicks on the advertising links! I always make it point to click a few times to help the blogs I like... it's the polite and helpful thing to do!

Here then, is the third Dickie Dean episode, another lost gem, excavated for your reading pleasure from the Cole-mine!

Is This Cole? (Spirit Section, Feb. 6 1944)

Story presented in this post:
"Radio Burglars"
Spirit Section 193 - February 6, 1944

I'm delighted to share with you this wonderful story, recently sent to me by fellow comics scholar and Jack Cole-miner, Darryl Aylward. Darryl writes that he strongly believes this story was drawn and perhaps written by Jack Cole.

I tend to agree, and will share some thoughts on that. But first, take a look for yourself:

Welcome back.

Jack Cole ghosted for Will Eisner while he served in the military during World War II. It's known that Cole wrote and drew the "Fannie Ogre" sequence in the mid-1943 daily SPIRIT comic strip (which we'll publish in a future posting on this blog!).

According to comics publisher, scholar, and SPIRIT expert Cat Yronwode's research, Jack Cole wrote and pencilled some of the Spirit Sunday Section stories from December 19, 1943 (section number 186) to Aug 13, 1944 (section number 220). See Yronwode's checklist, here.

The date of the SPIRIT story posted above, February 6, 1944, fits within this framework, increasing the probability that Jack Cole wrote and pencilled this story.

I shared this story with my lifelong friend and fellow comics scholar, Frank Young (check out his groundbreaking blog on John Stanley, Stanley Stories), and here's what he had to say:

Just read this... it's definitely Cole's writing... looks like his pencils. The crook characters have that kooky Cole look. The second panel on page one, the frantic physical action in the splash page, Dolan's fatalism at story's end, Ebony's Woozy Winks-ish actions, and the fact that the story is actually clever, readable and amusing all point the way to Mr. Cole's involvement.

I wish he'd done the finishes on the pencils. Robin King and/or Joe Kubert probably provided the inks. The look is just too slick--it takes away from the vitality of Cole's artwork. Still, it's a fine story. Eisner could have done no better.

I totally agree with Frank's points, and sentiment. I've read (and re-read) most of the Eisner SPIRIT stories, and I must say this one ranks as one of the funniest and most enjoyable SPIRIT stories I've ever read, to my surprise. Giving one of the crooks a gourmet obsession with stolen food spices up (pun intended) the standard generic SPIRIT petty thief.

And this panel made me laugh out loud:

It's genuinely funny that the sanguine criminal mastermind who has just pulled off a sucessful crime is kicked back reading a book called "Crime Doesn't Pay." This could also be a rare in-joke by Jack Cole, as this was also the title of a popular comic book, edited by his old pal from the Harry Chesler shop days, Charles Biro.

This story is filled with Cole-isms. For instance, the last panel of page 5 features our heros silouhetted in a profile of left-to-right movement against an enormous full moon, a visual motif Cole often used.

The panel also shows THE SPIRIT and EBONY's shadows on the grass, also a farily common visual device in Cole's pre-1945 work.

The similarity in brushwork between the 1941 Midnight panel and the panel from this 1944 story seems to suggest that perhaps Cole had a hand in inking part of this story, as well. It would be difficult to indicate this effect in pencils, which is mostly achieved through short brushstrokes.

Another tip-off that Jack Cole pencilled this story is the expert use of bold pattern as a design element. Jack Cole loved to visually enrich his comic book pages with colorful, high-contrast patterns. Perhaps his most famous use of this visual trope is the black polka dots on WOOZY WINKS' green shirt. Here is an almost random selection of stories from early 1944, when this story appeared:

This concludes my own thoughts about this story. Thank you, Darryl, for finding and sharing this story. What do YOU think about the SPIRIT story in this post, dear reader, is this Cole?