Number 2281: Plastic Man and the art of Artifice

It is now 2019. Instead of looking forward, at Pappy’s Golden Age we always look back. Today it is to 1948, and a Plastic Man story with a va-va-voom beauty, the voluptuous crook, Artifice.

Artifice dresses to distract any man. Her clothing allows us to get a few peeks at a woman who means to seduce, and does. The only males not put into a sexual stupor by Artifice are the crook whose plan to kill her backfires, and of course, that stretchy paragon of a hero, Plastic Man, who is not fooled by her; not like his pal, Woozy Winks, who is under her spell.

Jack Cole could draw pretty girls. Like another artist at Quality Comics, Bill Ward, who went on to a career of drawing sexy women, Cole’s reputation after quitting comic books was in drawing the pulchritudinous “Females by Cole” for Playboy magazine.

This untitled tale is credited by the Grand Comics Database with script and pencils by Jack Cole, and inking attributed to Bart Tumey with a ?, meaning they aren’t sure. It is from Plastic Man #13 (1948).*

*Before you ask me, I don’t know what happened to the coloring in the last panel. A mistake by the colorist or the engraver? Unlikely...probably just a try at an effect that didn’t go well.

Posted in: Pappy Comics