Jack Cole (December 14, 1918 - August 15, 1958) was an American comic book artist, and illustrator best-known for his creation of the superhero; Plastic Man and for setting the style for cartoons in Playboy.

Cole apprenticed under the legendary Will Eisner during his early days. In 1940 he had learnt much of the fundamentals of narrative illustrating and was handling the art chores for The Spirit strip. In fact, he created his own imitation of the strip called Midnight which featured wilder adventures of the same kind of hero.

In 1941 Cole created Plastic Man for Police Comics. A few years later in 1943 the idiosyncratic character gained his own title. Plastic Man's offbeat humor and his ability to take any shape gave the cartoonist many opportunities for experimentation in both text and graphics.

Cole continued to work on his wildly popular character for many years. In addition to his mastery of comics style in Plastic Man, his career took on another dimension when he became the premiere illustrator for Playboy magazine. His full-page color Playboy cartoons, many with beautiful dim girls and rich dim old men, were elaborately finished, providing the prototype for all the full-page cartoons in the magazine.

In 1956 Cole left the Plastic Man title. Two years later, Cole took his own life.

Reference

• Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to their Limits by Art Spiegelman and Chip Kidd, ISBN 0-8118-3179-5