Darwyn Cooke
Darwyn Cooke (b. 1962, Toronto, Canada) is an Eisner Award winning comic book writer, artist, cartoonist and animator, best known for his work on the DC Comics' Catwoman, DC: The New Frontier and Batman/The Spirit.
In the early 1980s Cooke became a professional artist when legendary comic book editor Julius Schwartz gave him his first work as a penciller. However Cooke then switched careers and became a magazine art director, graphic and product designer for the next 15 years.
In the mid 1990s Cooke decided to return to comics, but found little appetite for his work at the major publishers. Eventually he was hired by Warner Bros. Animation after replying to an ad placed by animator Bruce Timm.
He went on to work as a storyboard artist for Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series and in 1999 he animated the main title design for Batman Beyond. He then worked as a director for Sony Animation's Men in Black: The Series for a year.
DC Comics then approached Cooke about a project which he had submitted to the publisher years earlier which eventually became the Batman: Ego graphic novel published in 2000.
The critical success of that project led to Cooke taking on more freelance work, such as X-Force, Wolverine/Doop and Spider-Man's Tangled Web for Marvel Comics and Just Imagine... Stan Lee and The Dreaming for DC.
In 2001 Cooke and writer Ed Brubaker teamed up to revamp the Catwoman character. They started with a 4 issue serial "Trail of the Catwoman" in Detective Comics #759-762 in which private detective Slam Bradley attempts to investigate the death of Selina Kyle (AKA Catwoman).
The story led into a new Catwoman title in late 2001 by Brubaker and Cooke in which the character's costume, supporting cast and modus operandi were all redesigned and redeveloped. Cooke would stay on the series, which was met with critical and fan acclaim, up until #4. In 2002 he would write and draw a prequel, the Selinas Big Score graphic novel which detailed what had happened to the character directly before her new series.
Cooke's next project was the ambitious DC: The New Frontier (2004), a six issue miniseries which sought to tell an epic storyline bridging the gap between the end of the golden and the start of the silver age of comic books in the DC Universe.
The story, which was clearly set in the 1950s, featured dozens of super-hero characters and drew inspiration from the comic books and movies of the period as well as from Tom Wolfe's novel The Right Stuff. In 2005 the series won an Eisner Award for "Best Limited Series".
Most recently Cooke contributed to DC's artist-centric anthology project Solo. His issue, (#5, June, 2005) featured several different stories in different styles with a framing sequence featuring the Slam Bradley character.
In July, 2005 it was announced that in 2006 Cooke and writer Jeph Loeb will produce a Batman/The Spirit crossover, which will be followed shortly afterwards by an ongoing Spirit series which will be written and drawn by Cooke.
Sources
- Cooke, Darwyn. "Darwyn Cooke" in Solo #5. DC Comics, August 2005, pg. 48.
- The Grand Comic-Book Database