The comic book community lost an icon early this morning. It was reported yesterday by his family that Darwyn Cooke was placed in palliative care due to an aggressive form of cancer and confirmed later that he passed away on May 14 at 1:30 AM at his home in Flordia.
He was a tremendously talented writer and artist that worked for both DC and Marvel along with smaller publishers such as IDW. Cooke received a wide amount of praise from his peers and fans for the work he’d done over a 20-year career.
Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, Cooke always had a love for comics, but had to give up on illustrating in the mid-80s due to a low salary. He only returned to his passion in the mid-90s after answering an ad in the newspaper made by animator/producer Bruce Timm. Cooke then became a storyboard artist for Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series, but it wasn’t until 2000 when his career really took off after DC approached him to write and draw the graphic novel Batman: Ego. His success on that book led him to work with Ed Brubacker on revitalizing Catwoman’s title. His redesign of her suit is iconic to the point that many other artists have based their look after his design and was a big influence in the Batman: Arkham video games and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. After illustrating the initial arc into Catwoman, Cooke wrote and drew his own graphic novel Selina’s Big Score, a prequel to Brubacker’s Catwoman story. During this time he also worked on various Marvel projects, such as X-Force and Spider-Man’s Tangled Web.
Cooke’s art style was very evocative of the Golden Age of comics published throughout the 1940s – 50s. Its no surprise, then, that his next big project was writing and drawing DC: The New Frontier, an alternative look at the Golden Age where members of the DC universe, both old and new, face McCarthyism, racism and political division throughout this period. The New Frontier was a ground breaking book and earned Cooke Eisner Awards for Best Limited Series, Best Colouring and Best Publication Design. Shortly after, Cooke contributed short stories to the artist-centric Solo, an anthology series where artists told whatever story they wanted whether it was superhero-related or not. Again, he won an Eisner Award for Best Single Issue.
One of his other big projects in this period was the crossover Batman/The Spirit followed by an ongoing The Spirit series. Some of his most recent work was on DC’s Before Watchmen books, writing and drawing Minutemen and co-writing Silk Spectre with Amanda Connor, and adapting several of Donald Westlake’s Richard Parker novels into graphic novels.
On a more personal note, I met Darwyn Cooke a few years ago at Toronto’s Fan Expo. I had been a big fan of his for several years with The New Frontier being the very first story I read by him. His work was great as he took the look of the Golden Age and brought serious, thought-provoking content to the story. Since I was a big fan, I bought the Absolute edition of The New Frontier months prior to meeting him and relished the chance for him to sign it. His line-up was, predictably enough, quite long and we were told he would only be giving signatures to a limited number of books due to the high volume.
I had been lugging around my copy of New Frontier for most of the day waiting for this moment, and if you ask anyone who owns an Absolute edition of any DC book, they’ll tell you how heavy and bulky they can be. I handed over my copy for Cooke, we chit chatted a bit and he signed it. I thought it would end there, but then he looked around mischievously, says to me “I’m not supposed to do this so it has to be fast” and quickly drew a sketch of Hal Jordan in the book simply because I carried around the Absolute edition all day. I was awestruck by the moment since he did not have to do that, but it became apparent afterwards I was not the only fan he was bending the rules for that day as he took any opportunity he could to show his fans how much he appreciated them.
Below is the picture of his sketch and autograph and if you’re wondering what exactly he drew, it’s the face of Hal Jordan in the clouds. That’s how seamless a quick sketch is to his normal work; Cooke was deftly talented and could convey so much with so little if he needed to.
Through this experience talking with him and watching him with other fans, my respect and admiration for Mr. Cooke grew by bounds. I already respected him as a writer and artist, but seeing his interactions with fans showed just how kind and generous he could be. The world has lost a true talent with Darwyn Cooke’s passing, but we can at least take some solace in the fact we have so much content of his, whether its through his writing or artwork or both, to cherish. On behalf of everyone here at Flickering Myth, I would like to extend to his wife Marsha and the rest of the Cooke family our deepest sympathies. We are very sorry for your loss.
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Originally published May 14, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
