WONDERCON ‘08: DARWYN COOKE SPOTLIGHT - NEWSARAMA

February 24th, 2008 | by admin |

Original Post here: Tales from the Longbox

WONDERCON ‘08: DARWYN COOKE SPOTLIGHT

by Matt Brady
Former WildStorm Executive Editor Scott Dunbier (suffering from a touch of laryngitis) introduced Darwyn Cooke at his spotlight panel at WonderCon on Friday afternoon. Dunbier gave a brief recap of Cooke’s career in animation and comics, saying that, like many other professionals in the industry, he was glad when he learned that Cooke, with all his talent, was as old as he was.
“I remember when I first met Art Adams,” Cooke said, “He said, ‘Thank God,’ I thought you were a kid.”
Citing his voice as the reason he couldn’t discuss more with Cooke, Dunbier opened the floor to questions, the first of which came from a fan who asked Cooke about the influence of legendary artist Alex Toth on his work.

Cooke admitted that Toth is a tremendous influence on his style and approach, but it took a while for him to appreciate Toth’s work and style, initially. Early in his days as an artist, Cooke said, he was more influenced by Neal Adams and the level of detail he put into his work. At first, Cooke said, Toth’s work turned him off, yet he kept going back to it over and over again. The more he looked at it, Cooke said, the more it made sense to him – Toth was capable of stripping images down to their bare essentials while still expressing emotion and a clear dynamic.
Cooke likened the above to hearing a song on the radio – “If you hear a song and just love it at first, you’ll probably grow to hate it, but if you hear a song three or four times, and it has to grow on you, it will be in your head your entire life.”

Dunbier agreed, saying that Toth was an acquired taste.
Further explaining Toth’s influence on his work, Cooke said that his work is “fairly simple and open” and he finds himself always trying to figure out how to connect with his audience on an emotional level given his “simple” art. To illustrate that point, Cooke pointed out how that, if you took a photo-realistic painting of a person smiling, the simple yellow circle with two dots and a curved line will express the feeling more clearly, due to its simplicity. Cooke said he is always striving for what Toth had in his art – to use the simplest image to get the emotion across, from artist to audience.
The next question asked about the creation and inclusion of the character John Henry in New Frontier, to which Cooke said that he wanted the story to depict the time in which it was set, and therefore, realized he would have to look at the Civil Rights movement.

“But when you began to look at DC’s history, it’s hard to find a black character in that period,” Cooke said. “In the ‘50s, DC was a white publishing house, which made it kind of difficult to find a character to carry that side of the story.” Cooke said the modern character Steel kept coming back to his head as a viable option, but John Henry Irons didn’t exist in that period. “Steel was based on folklore,” Cooke said, “so I went back and read the original stories and poems and thought, what if there was a guy who did this first, years before Steel, and John Henry Irons was aware of it, and based his ides on it?”

Once that seed was planted, Cooke said, the rest came to him very quickly: If it’s a Civil Rights issue, and John Henry is the hero, who’s the villain? Cooke asked, taking the audience through his thought process. “That ain’t hard to figure out – it’s the KKK. They’ve got white hats with points on them, he wears black. They tried to hang him; he wears the noose as a badge.”

But, as readers of New Frontier know, John Henry’s story is ultimately a tragic one, as the hero is betrayed by a child, and killed by his enemies. “I couldn’t let him win because the world wasn’t there yet,” Cooke said. “That’s why at the end of the story it’s a little girl that rats him out. I wanted it to be clear that we were still at least a generation away from solving this problem – so even this baby, this child, has this hatred programmed into it.”

Cooke said of all of New Frontier, the John Henry story was the most difficult to write, but at the same time, it’s the part he’s proudest of. The difficultly, Cooke explained, was due to something very basic: “I’m white - it’s really difficult for me to even begin to think that I understand the situation or what I’m writing about.”

Cooke, ever his own worst critic said that he felt that on that part of the story he did “okay.”

The creator said that Henry does appear in the film, even just for a minor appearance which shows his ultimate fate. In the film, Henry’s end is what motivates J’onn J’onzz to leave earth.
Asked about his use of Batman in New Frontier, Cooke said that he wanted everybody to have a character arc in the story, and for Batman, it was his transformation from the horrifying avenger in the night to something resembling Dick Sprang’s version of Batman by the end of the story. “Even Superman’s like, ‘What the hell’s happened to you?’ at the end. ‘You’re smiling and hanging around with kids.’” Cooke joked.

While it was changes in publishing parameters and the audience to which Batman was aimed that resulted in those types of changes in the character over the years, in New Frontier, Cooke explained that it was Batman’s own realization that he couldn’t be alone and obsessed his entire life. What truly brought this home for Batman, Cooke said, was when he saves the child in the burning church, and even after he’s rescued the tot, the child recoils from him in fear. It was at that point that Batman was struck by how intense he’d become, Cooke said, and realized it was time to change.

“But,” Cooke added, “I wanted them all to start out in that ‘alpha state’ – as they were originally designed and created.”

In regards to other characters that appeared in the story, Cooke chuckled when asked about the controversy among some fans due to his depiction of a more Rubenesque Wonder Woman compared to today’s slimmer, more athletic version.
“I thought she looked good,” Cooke said, adding that much of what fans were upset about was based in societal expectations and the difference in male and female ideals at different points in history. “I wanted to make sure my characters rang true to the original versions, but wanted to take that kernel of the original idea and take it to another level,” Cooke said. “At the time [when he was working on New Frontier], DC was publishing many skinny Wonder Woman covers with her waist as small as her wrist and breasts bigger than her head. I wanted to draw it the other way – she’s an Amazon. Powerful.”

Still, Cooke admitted that his vision of Wonder Woman for New Frontier was a tough sell, and he could understand why fans would react negatively to it. But, he said, in his vision, his version was valid for the story and was a valid representation. “She was true to the character, and that was what was important.”

Asked if his personal political views were included in New Frontier, Cooke laughed and said that his politics are “writ large all over the book. However, I’m an independent, and let’s go even further – I’m Canadian. So, my politics are all over the book, but they aren’t partisan.”

Cooke admitted that his views of the characters that many fans see as the “bad guys” in the story changed as he began the third book of New Frontier. “It occurred to me that none of these characters were bad – they all thought they were doing the right thing, they just drew the line in different places.”

That realization, Cooke said, allowed him to explore every philosophical and political point of view, which made the characters infinitely more interesting for him. “Even King Faraday becomes just infinitely more interesting when he’s pulled out of the role of the ‘government spook,’” Cooke said. “He’s the sincere guy with the good heart who believes in what he’s doing, the way he’s doing it, and is looking for a better day.

“Partisan thinking is nuts,” Cooke concluded. “As long as we’re not talking about Hitler, there are good people on every side of an argument.”

Moving to The Spirit, Cooke said that while he was proud of his run on the series overall, he never got close to what Eisner had done with the character. Cooke named issue #10 of the series as his favorite.
Cooke said that his initial approach to the series was to look at how Eisner had approached Spirit stories and what kind of stories he told. From there, Cooke said that he came up with a list of about 30 types of stories, from thriller to comedy to outright horror and more. “But there was pressure,” Cooke explained. “You’re carrying Will on your back…every move you make, you have to ask, ‘Will he be okay with that?’ But at the same time, you can’t let that smother your creativity.”

Dunbier mentioned that, given what he’d said, in issue #2, he went back into the larger history of the character and gave P’Gell a backstory, which he felt, added a new dimension to the character.
Cooke said that he was nervous about giving the famous character a backstory that Eisner hadn’t created or hinted at, but at the same time, people aren’t born like P’Gell fully formed – things happen in their lives to shape them into what they ultimately become. He wasn’t sure that it was a story that they should be doing until he ran it by Eisner’s agent and friend Denis Kitchen who approved it and loved the idea. But – Cooke said, his reservations about the story did manifest themselves in the story in the form of an “out” for the character. “[P’Gell] nails the Spirit with lamp and runs off at the end, so she could have made that story up and had things set up…so that hole is there for the reader who doesn’t want to buy it. I’ve found that when you’re doing something that a great creator did previously, you should leave yourself a trapdoor, so the readers can get out of it if they don’t like it.”

Asked about the role of the “Trinity” (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) in New Frontier, Cooke said that the story has nothing to do with them, which is why they barely show up. “It’s about the dawn of the Silver Age and these new characters. In my heart, the Silver Age is Challengers of the Unknown. They were who started it, but not a big enough fish [for the story] – so it’s Flash, it’s Green Lantern…one of these two started it. Frankly, I preferred Green Lantern – I thought that test pilot embodied that era in a way that Barry didn’t. Barry’s a great character, but Hal’s so much more representative of that place in time. Test pilots were the heroes of the nation then.”
Cooke added that Hal Jordan was also the easiest character for him to write in terms of giving the character an authentic voice. “I don’t think I have great range as a writer – all my characters all a little smart ass and sound a little like me, so Hal was a perfect fit,” Cooke said with a smile.

Throughout the panel, Cooke said and implied that he and DC weren’t always on the same page when it came to the project, and that, during the four years it took to get the project off the ground, there were things that DC didn’t want him to do, but they were all ultimately talked through. “There was a point where Dan [DiDio] said ‘Look, you have more reverence for these characters than we do’ and told me that DC wasn’t worried about New Frontier.”
Cooke added that the above wasn’t to say that DC doesn’t have reverence for the characters, but rather that, in the more mainstream, modern era, change and the perception of change is the coin of the realm, whereas New Frontier was a look at the characters in their earliest incarnations, and sought to stay very true to their original visions.

All in all, and with a good-natured smile, Cooke said that he felt New Frontier was initially seen by DC as a modest little book that he could do that would shut him up. Cooke said that he felt no one was going to read it anyway, which is why he started off with characters that no one was very familiar with, and within the first four pages, put them in mortal peril. If he could make people feel that level of peril, and respond to it, Cooke said, “then I’ve got game.”
Dunbier added to the accolades for New Frontier, saying that during the period he original miniseries was being published Alan Moore had asked Dunbier to take him off the comp list for DC titles. Dunbier said that he sent Moore New Frontier #1 with a note saying, “I think you’ll like this,” to which Moore’s response was, “Okay – you can keep those issues coming.”

When asked, Cooke said that there’s really no book out there that he’d like to take a shot at, but rather, is looking forward to turning inward and working on slightly more personal, creator-owned stories. Cooke joked, saying that he doesn’t have a “Hellboy in the drawer waiting to go,” but rather is looking to tell more introspective stories for a while.

Cooke said that the more “mainstream” DC is, generally speaking, territory he’s not looking to explore. As he explained, he views the modern era of comics opposite to what he was doing in New Frontier, that is, full of darkness and a grittiness. Cooke said that if he were to work in that arena, his work lose out to other creators, “because I just don’t have that in my heart.”

Although, there are other projects on the boards, Cooke said. Referring to a meeting earlier in the day, Cooke said that Dan DiDio “flipped my lid, offering me stuff that’s impossible to say no to,” but added that the year on The Spirit following and combined with all of the New Frontier work has him at a place where he just needs to recharge his batteries for a while.

Considering things further, Cooke admitted that he’s like to take a shot at the classic Jim Corrigan version of The Spectre.
He also admitted, when asked by a fan, that he’s had many people tell him he should try Captain Marvel, and he wonders if he could, although he’s always found the cape ridiculous. “But you don’t realize how ridiculous it is until you see Paul Dini dressed up in it,” Cooke added with a laugh. “I went to Paul’s Halloween party, and let me tell you, when you see Paul in it…it marks you.”

Finally, to close the panel, Cooke related a story about an argument he had with Bruce Timm about Batman, saying, “One of us posited that he’s got mental problems, and Bruce spun around and said, ‘Bruce Wayne is the sanest person on the planet.’ That was the end of it. But I still fall into the category that thinks he’s damaged goods.”