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LB Cole picture by Jackie Estrada
Hi Gang,
Welcome to the latest artist tribute banner - the fantastic world of L.B. Cole!
Leonard Brandt Cole (August 28, 1918 - December 5, 1995) is wildly popular among comic collectors since the Gerber books. Anything with a Cole cover commands top prices.
Cole's long career started out in advertising and the printing industry working up to art director at Consolidated Lithography by 1943. This was after getting a degree in veterinary science (anatomy & physiology at the University of Berlin) in the 30s. His background in printing helped him immensely when he came to comics. He also had a very strong sense of design and marketing. He knew he had to compete with the hundreds of comics on the stand. Over time Cole would go to a more basic colour palette with less clutter than a typical cover for the era. One could call him the anti-Schomburg! He would frequently use black backgrounds and vivid primary colours. He called it a 'poster effect' used to catch the public's eye. He could handle any genre and seemed to be in high demand. During his career he is credited with over 1,500 covers by his own count! Thankfully for us many of them are now in the public domain so you can enjoy them here on DCM!
In an interview with Comic Book Marketplace from 1995 he said he was working as early as 1939 doing freelance at the Ferstadt and Chesler shops. His first signed work was in Ace Comics' Super-Mystery Comics v3 #5 (1943.07) which you can see HERE ON DCM (https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=30700). Known today for his covers he also created interior pages for Holyoke (https://tinyurl.com/258xm3ac), Ajax/Farrel (https://tinyurl.com/292jzqyh) and Fawcett (https://tinyurl.com/289qwcpc). (you can see them on DCM!) He was then hired as art editor for Frank Temerson's Et-Es-Go/Continental Magazines (Cat-Man, Suspense, Terrific (https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=288)) in 1942 where he took over from artist Charles Quinlan. Here he would oversee all their books, hiring artists and working on their covers in his own studio. His wife Ellen was an editor and letter for the company as well. Continental also packaged comics for several other publishers including Narrative (Power Comics (https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=558)) and Aviation (Contact Comics (https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=552)) that Cole worked on. Continental would be sold in 1946 to Holyoke. Cole went back to freelance work on book covers for Thriller Books and Stork Novels.
He would move on eventually to buy Novelty's back catalogue with partner Jerry Kramer and start Star Publications in 1949. It's here he would produce some of his best and most collectible covers. Star has fallen into the public domain (https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=367) and many issues can been found here on DCM. Star was doing quite well even doing work outside of comics such as puzzle books and novels until the death of Kramer after which it was also sold to Holyoke Magazines.
After Star was sold he worked in magazine publishing with Cosmos, Rod & Gun and Alfred Hitchcock Magazine. Eventually he would land with Dell Publications as an art director in the early 60s working mainly with their youth line like Classics Illustrated Junior. From the mid-60s through the 70s, Cole also created instructional materials and audio-visuals for University Films. The first time I personally discovered Cole was from his 1981 cover and feature inside of the 11th edition of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. That book laid the seed of a lasting love for golden-age comics inside of me still going today. After that Overstreet Cole started to sell cover recreations. In 1989+90, Ernie Gerber published his Photo Journal Guide To Comic Books which featured on its covers a number of Cole comics. Collecting Cole has become even more expensive since! Cole would end his career doing medical art for anatomy books and continue his cover art commissions. He would end up producing 35 cover recreations all highly collected to this day.
LB Cole received an Inkpot Award in 1981, and was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999.
To see a full visual Cole cover checklist in chronological order you can use this GCD link -
https://tinyurl.com/2yjuvr6a
To see many of his comic covers you can try this link -
http://monsterbrains.blogspot.ca/2010/10/leonard-brandt-cole-comic-covers.html
A short Bleeding Cool blog entry on L.B. Cole can be found here. (https://tinyurl.com/25jrqvwg)
To get a look at his much lesser know novel covers try this - but fair warning, these are on the adult side of the ledger. Sorry, this link is dead. I hope to find another example of his novel covers one day.
Very recently Fantagraphics have published the first retrospective art book of all of Cole's covers - "Black Light: The World of L.B. Cole”. Several DCM members were among those that provided material needed to complete the book. To get a look at it you can check out Google's preview PDF - https://tinyurl.com/25jc7xls
Congrats to Bill Schelly and Mike Catron for their hard work on the collection.
You can read a detailed review of the book here -
http://www.comicsreview.co.uk/nowreadthis/2014/12/19/black-light-the-world-of-l-b-cole/
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Cole, Rae Herman (secretary and/or Managing Editor who later was part of Orbit and writer Jack Grogan from CBMarketplace #030 (1995).