Darwyn Cooke: Multiversity Remembers One of the Greats

Early Saturday morning, the world lost Darwyn Cooke.

Typing that now, two days later, it is just as sad, surreal, and shocking as it was when I first heard the news. The comics community has been sharing memories, stories, and art from Darwyn since he passed, and we offered our staff the same opportunity. We asked our staff to pick an image that was indicative of why we loved his work, and to share why. As always, our pal/podcaster Chris Thompson went above and beyond the call of duty and shared his personal reflections of the man he knew, not just the creator whose work he read. We invite all of you to share your memories in the comments.

Also, if you would like to make a donation in his name, his family recommends the Canadian Cancer Society and the Hero Initiative as worthy charities.

Fare thee well, Darwyn – we’ll see you in the New Frontier.

Jess Camacho

I’m sure in this piece you’ll see a lot of DC work pop up but this is my favorite DC image Cooke created. This was used for a Darwyn Cooke variant theme month and of all the images, it was the one that spoke to me the most. Cooke created enthusiastic superheroes who spoke to fans but this Aquaman and Mera image is the most romantic piece of comic book art I’ve ever seen. The scene is fairly big in scale but it’s such an intimate moment of love and trust. The positioning of the hands is sensual but tame and the way Cooke draws the world around them speaks volumes. They are the King and Queen of the sea and despite the ocean around them being turbulent, they are lost in just each other. I’ve had this as my wallpaper on my laptop since the variant was revealed and it makes me smile every time I turn it on.

Darwyn Cooke’s “Parker” adaptations are something very dear to me. When I first started writing about comics in the fall of 2013, they were one of the first graphic novels I wrote about. The piece itself is pretty rough but I was so excited to have a place to say how much I loved this series. Cooke is always praised for his superhero work because of how fun it is. He broke convention in this regard but I always found it so interesting how his style translated to darker stories. The Parker series is not exactly the most happy thing to read and Cooke was able to capture such a mood and tone with his pencils but especially in his color work. This was crime noir of old and a set of books I’ve read more times than any other comic. He was on a different level when he adapted these novels and is still the only one who did them right.

Greg Matiasevich

This isn’t the first image I think of when I think if Darwyn Cooke. Or even in the top ten, to be honest. But when I do think of it, it really encapsulates my thoughts of the artist & the man. For starters, it’s a very striking cover; great composition, nice use of light/dark contrast, and gets a little extra weight by the slight brushiness of how the colors are applied (if I can throw on my faux art critic cap for a second). “Elk’s Run” is a horror story and this cover really nails the essence of the series and the broader threat the lead protagonist faces without being a direct lift of a specific scene. So there’s that…

But more important is HOW this cover came to be. When it launched in 2005, “Elk’s Run” was Joshua Hale Fialkov’s second comics series, launched after the success of his first: the “Western Tales of Terror” anthology. “WTOT” got a huge boost right out of the gate by having a story from writer Steve (“30 Days of Night”) Niles in the first issue. Fialkov had met Niles the year before after realizing they shopped at House of Secrets in Glendale, CA. When Niles was bemoaning the then-state of mainstream comics, Fialkov pulled an issue off the shelves and stuck it in Niles’ stack with the recommendation that it would show Niles there was still life in the mainstream. That issue? “New Frontier” #1. Niles read it, loved it, and the two Cooke fans became friends.

Fast forward a year. Fialkov was at Wizard World Los Angeles with three self-published issues of “Elk’s Run” out in the world. He took a copy of issue one up to Darwyn Cooke just to tell him how much his work has meant to him. Cooke thanked him in his humble, Canadian way… then proceeded to read that entire issue…right in front of him. He loved it, and asked how many thousands a book that good was selling. Fialkov told him initial orders were barely over a thousand copies, despite lots of critical buzz. Cooke’s smile turned to anger, and his furious response was (quoting from the afterword of that bumper edition): “You see? This is what’s wrong with this fucking industry! Books like this get ignored!” He then took Fialkov by the hand over to Speakeasy publisher Adam Fortier, presented Adam with the order that they “needed to save this book”. Speakeasy did end up publishing not only this bumper collection of those first three “Elk’s Run” issues (with the Darwyn Cooke cover and the Steve Niles intro), as well as a fourth issue. After that, things got … messy … for Speakeasy in general. But it was definitely enough to keep Fialkov’s career going in those early days and on the road to being the writer & creator we know and follow today.

So while I love all of his work (almost as an extra law written into the universe, like the law of gravity), it’s this cover that, to me, says Darwyn Cooke was not only an exceptionally gifted & talented artist who brought people together through a shared love of his work, but also someone who went out of their way to help those he saw in need. And when you remember Darwyn Cooke from now on, make sure you remember that part of it as well.

Mike Romeo

It’s really difficult for me to pin down what I’d call the Darwyn Cooke image. I mean, yes, it’s partly due to the fact that the guy’s been so good for so long, but only partly. I think, if I boil down why it is that I think Cooke was so important, it comes back to how he did what he did. Take this variant cover as an example. At the height of DC’s doubling down on The New 52, here came Cooke with a nearly line-wide run of variants that felt like a total dismissal of Jim Lee and his affinity for piped seams and high collars. These covers were everything Cooke’s art aimed to be: simple, polished, and brimming with reverence. These covers were a glimpse at a DC Comics that could have been. Of them, I think “Batman/Superman” was the absolute best.

Matt Garcia

“DC: The New Frontier” isn’t my favorite book by Darwyn Cooke. Don’t get me wrong, I like it a lot, though I feel Cooke was never as strong with the epic sprawl as the tight, sustained narrative (think “Selina’s Big Score” or his Parker adaptations). But when I think of an image that so epitomizes his work, I always come back to this three-page sequence from “New Frontier.” It appears in the fifth issue as Batman and Superman decide to reenter the fray, and Batman brings along his new sidekick, Robin. What gets me so much in this scene is how Cooke uses Robin. He treats him like a kid — starstruck at meeting Supes, then bouncing around in the background while the adults talk. He understood the characters he worked with (look at the mutual respect Bats and Supes have for each other! look at them actually smiling and not thinking of ways to hold each other down!), and structured his books to get the most emotion or investment or impact from that. This could have been a fine transitory scene on its own, but with that small bit of color, it’s special.

Darwyn Cooke was a singular talent. I could mention his fantastic rendition of Wonder Woman, his definitive Catwoman, his seedy Parker. He approached the page with grace, precision, an expertly animated eye, a strong sense of staging, and a presence to make frankly legendary stories. We’ve lost a master of the medium, and though his absence from the comics community will be sorely felt, his legacy will continue to inspire and influence us for eons.

Brian Salvatore

It is interesting that three of us chose variant covers that Cooke had done for DC in 2014 (our cover image for this piece is also one of said variants) – I think they are easy to focus on, because they distill what is so wonderful and pure about the characters featured into one handy image. If someone wanted to really understand the hopefulness of superheroes, I would hand them “DC: The New Frontier.” I couldn’t show them one image to get across all my feelings about any one character, but to show them this “Detective Comics” variant cover would get pretty close to summing up Batman in one panel. It’s all there: Alfred being his caretaker, the exhaustion of trying to eliminate all of Gotham’s crime, the portrait of his parents, the physical imagery of his tireless research and detective work.

If you haven’t seen all these covers, they’re worth a look, as he manages to get every single one to sum up decades of stories into one indelible image. And that is why I don’t think we’ll ever see another Darwyn Cooke – the ability to bring things into such perfect focus is something that, likely, was once in a thousand lifetimes.

Chris Thompson

It would be disingenuous to say that I knew Darwyn Cooke well … but I did spend a lot of time with him at The Lakes Comic Art Festival last year, and for the duration of that show he was my ‘con buddy’. He was the guy I did a lot of my panels and talks with, and he was the guy who was helping me prop up the bar in the wee small hours. I would only have another shot if Darwyn had one with me, and he was the sensible one who always suggested late-night ham sandwiches to soak up the alcohol. He was that kind of guy.

The beauty of going to any convention is you never know who those people are going to be … The ones you connect with and forge a bond, even if it’s only for that time. It’s one of my favourite parts of travelling to a show, and I’m so glad to have got that time with Darwyn.

I’d been a fan of Darwyn’s from very early on, and I can still clearly remember buying Batman: Ego off the shelf at Comics Etc. in Brisbane when it first came out. In fact, I remember that being an incredibly productive week because not only did I get Ego, but I also picked up issue 1 of a little book called Powers from Image Comics. Who was this Brian Michael Bendis? I already knew Mike Avon Oeming from DC’s Judge Dredd series, but I had no knowledge of this Bendis and his extensive letters pages. But I digress … This is about Darwyn.

It’s funny because I didn’t know at first if we’d get along. I remember hearing he’d be coming over for the Lakes Festival, and so I begged the wonderful organiser Julie Tait to let me host his events. They ended up taking the form of a spotlight panel (one of my favourites) where we delved into his career and touched on some rather personal, candid moments – and a live-draw featuring him, Stuart Immonen & Ian McQue.

As is customary at any of these shows, we started an email chain ahead of time to discuss what we would do and what was needed. I asked Darwyn if there was anything he did or didn’t want to talk about, and asked if he could supply us with some images for a slideshow since he would have better access to his work. He wrote back saying: “Believe it or not, I’m the kind of guy who believes that the images and questions are completely up to you. I’m not afraid of tough questions and I believe that the tone of the panel should be set by you. As for images, I’m sure you can find whatever you need on google.”

I’ll admit … I was taken aback. That’s one of the downfalls of emails, you can misinterpret the way in which something is said – and boy did I get this one wrong. When I met Darwyn it all fell into place – I realised exactly what he meant by his email and, having spoken with him, I could hear exactly how it would sound in his voice. I still can as I cut-and-paste those words from his original email.

The truth is we hit it off right away, and we bonded in the bar on the first night. He reaffirmed that I could ask him anything, and I asked if that included fighting and punching people at cons. He laughed and told me all the stories – the real stories – not the ones that had been passed around like some bad game of ‘telephone’. It turns out there was a lot more myth to them than fact, and I think Darwyn was okay with that. We discussed it all again on the panel the next day – telling the stories that could be told, and leaving the others in the bar where they belonged.

The thing I remember most of all was when Darwyn welled up talking about his years in advertising, and that moment of realisation that he wasn’t doing what he wanted. It was hard to tell, but sitting there next to him I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice … It’s one of those moments that has stuck with me because we were two guys having a very real conversation in front of a crowded room. You can listen to that interview here and hopefully experience some of the magic for yourself: www.multiversitycomics.com/podcasts/orbital-in-conversation-156.

Again we spent the night in the bar – hanging out with Jeff Chahal from NICE Convention – and finishing the night with our customary shots and ham sandwiches. Fortunately that didn’t wreck us for our live-draw event the next day with Stuart Immonen & Ian McQue. Hosting live-draws can be a lot of fun, as not only do you get to chat with the artists, but you can have them draw what you want. I knew in this case I wanted to see Darwyn and Stuart do Superman (because I was a big fan of both) and I wanted to have them do a self-portrait as well. Both of those pieces were eventually auctioned off as part of the Lakes Charity Auction here at Orbital, and it was hard to see them go.

Even harder now is knowing that Darwyn is gone … It was so sudden, so unexpected, and so tragic. It hit me personally because beyond appreciating the work I’d become invested in the man, and to lose him so early – so young – is something I can’t make sense of. I’ve lost a few good friends in the comic industry over the last few years … Herb Trimpe is one that still hurts and who I think about often. I think that’s the nature of comics – so many of the people are great, and that’s something we can tend to forget as the latest scandal or outrage unfolds.

Personally I prefer to dwell on the positive, and to remember the good times, but today while I do that I’ll be shedding a tear for Darwyn and his family – especially as I listen to our interview once again. I will never forget Darwyn or that brief window of time we had together.