Editing Jack Cole (artist) (section)

===Plastic Man===
{{main article|Plastic Man}}
[[File:JackColeMagArt01.jpg|thumb|left|190px|Sample of Cole's original art for ''[[Humorama]]'']]
Cole created Plastic Man for a backup feature in Quality's ''[[Police Comics]]'' #1 (Aug. 1941). While [[Timely Comics]]' quickly forgotten Flexo the Rubber Man had preceded "Plas" as comics' first stretching hero, Cole's character became an immediate hit, and ''Police Comics''{{'}} lead feature with issue #5. As well, Cole's offbeat humor, combined with Plastic Man's ability to take any shape, gave the cartoonist opportunities to experiment with text and graphics in groundbreaking manner—helping to define the medium's visual vocabulary{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}, and making the idiosyncratic character one of the few to endure from the Golden Age to modern times. Plastic Man gained his own title in 1943.

By the decade's end, however, Cole's feature was being created entirely by anonymous ghost writers and artists—including [[Alex Kotzky]]{{citation needed|date=August 2015}} and [[John Spranger]]{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}—despite Cole's name being bannered. One last stint by Cole himself in 1949 and 1950 could not save the title. ''Plastic Man'' was cancelled in 1956 after several years of reprinting the Cole material, and new stories by others.

Additionally, Cole and writer Joe Millard created the lighthearted feature "The Barker", starring [[carnival barker]] Carnie Callhan. Introduced in ''National Comics'' #42 (May, 1944), the feature spun off into a 15-issue comic of its own (Autumn 1946 - Dec. 1949)<ref>[http://toonopedia.com/barker.htm "The Barker"] at [[Don Markstein's Toonopedia]].  {{webarchive|url=https://www.webcitation.org/6b6cHdl9u?url=http://toonopedia.com/barker.htm |date=August 27, 2015 }} from the original on August 27, 2015.</ref>