Excerpt from “Jack Cole and Plastic Man” by Art Spiegelman and Chip Kidd.

Plastic Man was a stream of consciousness, allowing Cole’s id the license to ooze freely, and in its bounces and lurches Cole found grace and balance. When he traded in Plastic Man’s silly putty for Playboy’s silicone, he also traded away the innocent and omnidirectional sexuality of infancy for the mere heterosexuality of adolescence. Sublimating further, he squeezed his creativity into even smaller boxes: his two-dimensional newspaper strip is as sexless as any other 1950’s sitcom. Cole’s heartbreaking “fantasy” about a loving couple doting on their brilliant little boy— it reads like a suicide note delivered in daily installments! As he climbed his ladder of success, up from the primal mulch of the comic books, he finally arrived at air that was too thin to breathe: Jack Cole, a comics genius, died of growing up.

I go back to this book and especially to this part of it quite often. Every time I read it, it shakes my entire way of thinking. I like sharing it with people. Maybe it’s a bit dark/morbid (considering Cole commited suicide at age 43), but helps me, in a creative/life manner, to earn perspective on where I’m going and what I’m doing.