[3][4] Joseph Clement Coll began his professional career working for the New York American as a newspaper artist apprentice at age 17.
[5] At this time, his position would be similar to a modern-day news photographer, as his job was to illustrate current events each day within the daily deadline.
In 1901, he came back to Philadelphia to work on The North American and soon drew the eye of his editor, J. Thomson Willing, who sent him on special missions to procure his skill.
[5] Coll was also a painter and he often did paintings for the cover or frontispiece of books which were reproduced in color and then pen & inks to illustrate the text.
[6] His illustrations for books such as Talbot Mundy's King of the Khyber Rifles and Sax Rohmer's The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu were widely reprinted for many years.