In tribute to Darwyn Cooke

At the time of this being posted, another legend in the world of comics has passed on.

Darwyn Cooke, best known for his work with DC comics for being the artist behind such titles as New Frontier and some guest runs on Jonah Hex and Catwoman. His first title for DC had him working alongside Ed Brubaker in a one shot called Batman Ego.

His style invokes the golden age of comics. The character designs have a familiar sense of something similar to Johnny Quest or a pulp hero like Flash Gordon. In contrast to the bright tones, his take on Jonah Hex manages to be rugged but with subtle kind of charm.

His style is pretty recognizable, it has that unique feel of being something so familiar but in the back of your mind, you wonder what other characters would look like when he inks them up. In fact, you might already be familiar with his work but for those unaware, here’s my thoughts as I get into some of the stuff that Darwyn Cooke is responsible for creating.

For me, New Frontier is probably the big deal for what his career represented. It was a retelling of the JLA but set in 1953 to 1960 as a transition to the Golden Age into the Silver Age as the trinity of Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman meet up with more notable Silver Age heroes such as Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and Barry Allen as The Flash.

The art style is fairly simple in looks as you can kinda get some hints to Bruce Timm’s work such as Batman. There’s minimum amount of detail, the usage of strong lines to give the characters square like proportions when it comes to their fists or their jawlines.

New Frontier proved so successful that Warner Brothers later on did an animated film loosely based on the series which had Darwyn Cooke as a consultant for the flick. It’s one of my favourite DC animated flicks (second to Under The Red Hood) and it did a pretty good job with dealing with the source material as even the look and character designs were done in homage to Darwyn Cooke’s artistic talents, really bringing it to life.

The other recommendations I could make while I’m not completely familiar with them are Catwoman which started with Trail of the Catwoman in Detective Comics #759 to 762 and later on a prequel to her ongoing at the time which was called Selina’s Big Score. She got a costume overhaul, new cast and Slam Bradley got bumped into the modern era as he investigates Catwoman’s new stance in Gotham.

His more recent work was with the Before Watchmen project which involves writing/artist duties for Minute Men title and writing credits for Silk Spectre. It was actually pretty neat at least with the Minute Men series as the original Nite Owl recounts new details about the group, you get to see him in action and see why they became famous in the first place.

One last thought is that how Darywn got back into comics was through Bruce Timm. He responded to an ad placed by Warner Brothers animation and Bruce Timm was the one that brought him on board in which Cooke became a storyboard artist for Batman: Animated Series and Superman: Animated Series thus invoking the shared connection of similar art styles.

Darwyn Cooke also won an Eisner award for the fifth issue of Solo which once again featured the character of Slam Bradley, awarding him with the Best Single Issue in 2006. His work on the Batman/The Spirit crossover also rewarded him with a Joe Shuster Award of “Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Artists” (shared mention with J Bone) and netting the “Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist” for his own work on The Spirit. Not stopping there, he wrote the first six issues for Superman Confidential which he received another Joe Shuster Award for “Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Writer”, not too shabby.

While I’ve mentioned plenty of DC stuff that he’s done, he also did a brief stint with Marvel working on such titles as X-Force, Wolverine/Doop and Spiderman’s Tangled Web which was the later of the mentioned titles was more focused on villains and cast around Spiderman rather than the character himself as the issue that Cooke did was about The Vulture.

In closing, Darwyn Cooke will be missed by the incredible talented artists and writers of all sorts along with all of his fans. He will live on in his stellar work.

Rest well and thank you for everything.