Darwyn Cooke

Early life

Darwyn Cooke was born in Toronto on November 16, 1962. Cooke's father was a construction worker and later ran a union. Darwyn and his brother Dennis grew up in Nova Scotia.

Cooke's interest in creating comics began after watching Batman starring Adam West. Cooke's grandmother saved some of his earliest drawings, at 5 years old, of Batman and Robin in crayon on construction paper, with Cooke keeping them after her passing. He discovered comics as a child, but did not become passionate about them until he was a teenager.

Cooke's desire to be an artist crystallized at 13 years old after reading a reprint of Spectacular Spider-Man #2, with Cooke purchasing markers and boards the day after reading the comic and attempting to copy John Romita's artwork. The following week, Cooke purchased Detective Comics #439, featuring the story "Night of the Stalker," and had found his calling. He attributed the ability to develop his own style as a byproduct of limited entertainment choices, allowing him to focus on deconstructing the comics that inspired him. His father, however, did not think that comics were a good avenue for a career.

Cooke attended George Brown College, but was expelled after a year.

Career

In 1985, Cooke left his family on his own for the first time in order to show his samples in the DC Comics offices in New York City. The trip resulted in his first published comic book work as a professional artist in a five-page crime story in DC Comics' New Talent Showcase #19, which was coincidentally edited by "Night of the Stalker" artist Sal Amendola. Economic pressure, however, made Cooke leave comics, as he was only paid $35 per page and produced one page a week. Deciding that comics was not an economically feasible job, Cooke worked in Canada as a magazine art director, graphic and product designer for the next 15 years. He eventually established his own design studio.

DC animated universe

In the early 1990s Cooke decided to return to comics, but found little interest for his work at the major publishers. Eventually, he was hired by Warner Bros. Animation after replying to an ad for storyboard artists in The Comics Journal placed by animator Bruce Timm, with Cooke shocked that there were positions available. His successful pitch included 14 pages that would be published in 2000 as Batman: Ego.

Originally freelancing from Toronto, Cooke met his animation colleagues at San Diego Comic-Con and was approached about moving to Los Angeles full-time. Despite no desire to live in Los Angeles, Cooke moved there to take advantage of "an opportunity to be a part of something that was never going to come around again this way," the ability to associate with creators such as Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, Alan Burnett, and Eric Radomski. Cooke worked as a storyboard artist for four episodes of The New Batman Adventures as well as a handful of episodes of Superman: The Animated Series.

In 1999, he designed and animated the opening sequence for Batman Beyond. In contrast to most cartoon openings—which adapt music to a finalized group of shots -- Batman Beyond's visuals were specifically cut to suit the music, after a successful pitch of the concept by Cooke to Bruce Timm. Surprisingly, Cooke employed his personal Macintosh computer in his spare bedroom and Adobe After Effects for most of the animation, as opposed to Warner Bros.' resources. According to Cooke, the Batman Beyond team created a strong show in light of what he considered "kind of a disheartening mandate from the network," which wanted a show about the Batman of the future. He believed the WB Network ultimately disliked the show's level of violence and prematurely ended the show as soon as it was able to be syndicated. Cooke then worked as a director for Sony Animation's Men in Black: The Series for a year.

In April 2014, Cooke released a Batman Beyond animated short celebrating the 75th anniversary of Batman.

Justice League: The New Frontier

In July 2006, it was announced that Warner Bros. Animation and DC Comics would release a series of direct-to-DVD DC Universe Animated Original Movies based on important DC comic books. Due to the adamance of DC's then-Senior Vice-President of Creative Affairs Gregory Noveck, the second film to be adapted was Cooke's DC: The New Frontier, produced by Bruce Timm.

Due to Cooke's obligations on The Spirit, Stan Berkowitz wrote the film, while Cooke storyboarded ten percent of the film, rewrote and polished dialogue, as well as provided art direction and most of the character design. Cooke praised both Berkowitz and Timm for their ability to preserve many important character moments within the necessary shortening of the story to accommodate the film's runtime., shifting the movie's focus specifically to the Justice League characters. During the scripting process, Cooke intervened to preserve both Wonder Woman and Lois Lane's places in the film, which had originally been eliminated due to time constraints. Without them, Cooke joked that "We might as well just rename this 'White Guys in the '50s,' because everything else is gone," describing the women as "the heart of the story."

Cooke also admitted fearing for the outcome of the film until he learned his former Warner colleague David Bullock would be directing it, praising Bullock as "probably the only person in the world I would have picked ahead of myself to direct it." He also credited his strong previous relationships at Warner Bros. with his comfort on the project.

DC Comics

In the late 1990s, DC Comics art director Mark Chiarello discovered Cooke's years-old proposal for a Batman story while throwing out old pitches, and hired Cooke for what eventually became the 2000 graphic novel Batman: Ego, marking Cooke's permanent move from animation to comics at 37 years old. The internal dialogue of Batman: Ego between Bruce Wayne and Batman was inspired by the 1981 film My Dinner with Andre.

Catwoman

In 2001, Cooke and writer Ed Brubaker revamped the Catwoman character. They started with a four-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 (a.k.a. Catwoman). According to Cooke, he and Brubaker bonded over the re-introduction of Bradley, who first appeared in 1937's Detective Comics #1 and pre-dated the super-hero era of comics. 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 until issue #4. In 2002, he would write and draw a prequel, the Selina's Big Score graphic novel which detailed what had happened to the character directly before her new series. Cooke regarded Selina's Big Score as the "single thing I did that I liked the most." While developing DC: The New Frontier, Cooke also drew a short Catwoman back-up story within 2002's Just Imagine Stan Lee with Chris Bachalo creating Catwoman. An untold story concept Cooke held onto involved the return and revenge of Catwoman's betrayed ex-lover Stark in a similar manner to the lead character of the film Point Blank.

DC: The New Frontier

Cooke's next project was 2004's DC: The New Frontier, a six-issue miniseries which bridged the gap between the end of the golden and the start of the silver age of comic books in the DC Universe. Cooke began brainstorming The New Frontier after completing Batman: Ego and being steered by Mark Chiarello to do a Justic League story. Preferring not to write a story tied to modern continuity or with short-term consequences, Cooke quickly realized he had little interest in writing about the Justice League unless the focus was on "who they were before they became the Justice League."

The story, which was set in the 1950s, featured dozens of super-heroes and drew inspiration from the comic books and movies of the period as well as from Tom Wolfe's non-fiction account of the start of the U.S. space program