Art | Through the Shattered Lens

L.B. Cole, who was born Leonard Cohen in the Bronx, New York, ended his formal education when he was 13 years old. That was when he dropped out of school and went to work in his uncle’s cigar factory. It was while working in the factory that Cole first noticed all of the work that went into designing the labels and the packages of his grandfather’s cigars. This was the start of an interest in illustration that would lead to L.B. Cole becoming one of the busiest and most prolific artists of both the pulps and the Golden Age of Comics.

Cole left his grandfather’s factory in 1936 and, at the age of 16, joined the art staff of the company the designed the factory’s cigar box labels. Cole spent three years working as an apprentice and learning the ins and outs of graphic design. By the time that Cole turned 21, he had already begun his career as a commercial artist.

Cole apparently did his first paperback covers in 1942, for Phoenix Press. He would go on to work in both the paperback and the comic book industry, dabbling in every genre and making a name for himself with his bold and colorful work. Cole even briefly made the transition from artist to publisher when, in 1949, he founded Star Publications. L.B. Cole was also one of the few commercial artists of the era to sign his name to almost all of his covers.

Cole worked regularly through the mid-60s. After his retirement, he was rediscovered by collectors and continued to contribute occasional illustrations to fan publications. After his death in 1995, Cole was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame.

Here’s some of his work:

Usually, I only share trailers but I simply had to share the first official movie poster for the MCU’s Black Widow, which will be coming out in May of 2020.

Seriously, this is so kickass!

Now, before you read any further, I guess I should say that I’m about share a spoiler from Avengers: Endgame. I think everyone in the world has seen that movie by now and, if you haven’t, you probably don’t care about the MCU or any of that other stuff. But still, just in case, consider this to be your SPOILER WARNING:

I really liked Avengers: Endgame but I do have to admit that it really pissed me off that they killed off Natasha. Storywise, there was no reason to kill off Natasha. If anyone in that scene needed to redeem themselves by sacrificing their life for the greater good, it was Clint! After all, Clint’s the one who spent the past few years going around the world and killing anyone who he felt didn’t deserve to still be alive. (And yes, Clint killed a drug lord at the start of the film and drug lords are evil but he also killed everyone who worked for the drug lord and some of those people were probably decent people who were doing what they had to do to survive or provide for their families.) The whole movie felt like it was set up for Clint to finally prove he deserved to be an Avenger by sacrificing his life. Instead, they killed off Natasha and it just felt totally wrong.

(It also felt rather cynical. Of course, they couldn’t kill Clint. They needed Jeremy Renner around to appear in the show about Hawkeye’s daughter that’s going to be on the new Disney streaming service.)

As the first woman to be prominently featured in multiple MCU films, Natasha was always my favorite Avenger and killing her off before she even got to star in her own movie just felt totally wrong to me. (The fact that Brie Larson’s dull Captain Marvel got her own showcase before the Black Widow will always bug me.) Still, I did take some solace from the fact that, even after Natasha’s death, there was still a Black Widow movie scheduled to come out and Scarlett Johansson would be starring in it.

Of course, then I found out that the Black Widow film is a prequel and it also sounds like the film’s ultimate goal might be to introduce Florence Pugh as the new Black Widow. Don’t get me wrong. Florence Pugh is one of the best actresses around but still, Scarlett Johansson will always be the Black Widow to me and the character’s pointless death will always bother me. So, up until a few minutes ago, I was not quite as enthusiastic about seeing the Black Widow film as you might normally expect me to be.

But, seriously, this poster is freaking perfect. It’s everything you would want a poster for a Black Widow stand alone film to be. I hope the movie itself lives up to fierceness in Natasha’s eyes.

I guess I’ll find out in May!