COOKE Darwyn
The Hunter, July 2009: Dust jacket back.
Born 16 November 1962 and raised in Etobicoke Greater Toronto Area.
At about age 13 years while visiting an aunt and uncle in Sudbury, he picked up a copy of The Spectacular Spiderman, read it then studied and copied it for weeks. He took art classes at his high school. He went to George Brown College but was expelled when his social life took priority over his studies. He took odd jobs to pay the bills.
While waiting on tables at the Madison Avenue Pub in downtown Toronto he heard the publisher and editor of Music Express magazine discussing their need for a new art director. He bought a copy of the magazine, redesigned it and presented it to them. For the next four years (1984 to 1988) he was art director for that magazine and its sister, Metallion. During that time, in 1985, he took some of his cartoon work to DC Comics in New York. A five-page story was published in DC Comics New Talent Showcase 19 but that was not enough to support him and so he returned to Toronto and his design work. He moved from Music Express to working as associate art director for Flare a fashion magazine published by Maclean-Hunter. He moved on to working for such ad agencies as Doner Schur Peppler and Brotherhood. He won awards for his designs for packaging and TV commercials.
In the 1990’s he again attempted to return to the comic book field but found little interest from the publishers. Finally, after answering a trade ad by Director Bruce Timm to which he submitted a fourteen page story which would eventually become Batman Ego, he began working for Warner Brothers animated division as a storyboard artist on Batman: The Animated Series, 1992-1995), freelancing from Toronto.
He met Steve Manale. Steve was in art school and working at the Silver Snail, when he began working as an animation assistant and he and Darwyn came to share a studio for some years. Wednesdays, they would walk over to the Dragon Lady a comic shop on Queen Street West then managed by Dave Darrigo. The shop also sold tear sheets from Life and Time magazines which Darwyn collected for use as period references. The origin of Darwyn’s “Catwoman” came from a Look magazine November 1954 cover showing Gina Lollobrigida. They would then go for lunch. Soon other cartoonists including Michael Cho, and J. Bone joined them. The waitress called them “The Superman Club” and the nickname stuck.
Darwyn and his partner Marsha Stagg moved from Toronto to the east coast of Nova Scotia. DC Comics was headquartered in New York. It was probably when DC moved to Burbank that they moved to Los Angeles. He worked on four episodes of The New Batman Adventures, (1997-1999) a continuation of Batman: The Animated Series) and on Superman The Animated Series.
In 1999, he designed and animated the opening sequence for Batman Beyond, in which he adapted the visuals to the music. He did most of the animation on his personal MacIntosh computer. After his involvement with Batman Beyond he worked as a director on Sony’s Men In Black: The Animated Series (1997 -2001). In 2000, DC Comics rediscovered the story Darwyn had submitted in the early 1990’s and published it as Batman Ego. This led to freelance work for Marvel. He also worked for a year on Sony Animation’s Men In Black.
In 2001, Darwyn and Ed Brubaker redesigned the “Catwoman” character in a series of four backup stories in Detective Comics August to November 2001 which led into the Catwoman series late in 2001. Darwyn drew the initial four issues. In 2002 he cartooned Selina’s Big Score which was a prequel to the new Catwoman series.
Another major project was DC: The New Frontier (2004) which set the origins of the Justice League in the U.S. of the early 1950’s. This six-issue series won both the Eisner, and Harvey Awards (2005) for “Best Limited Series” and a Shuster Award for “Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist”. He followed this with DC’s Solo 5 for which he won an Eisner Award for “Best Single Issue”. The former was adapted into the animated feature film Justice League: The New Frontier (February 2008)
In 2006 Darwyn and writer Jeph Loeb produced Batman/Spirit (November 2006 then Darwyn cartooned the Spirit series. In June 2007 he and his old friend J. Bone won a Shuster Award for “Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Artists” for Batman/Spirit and Darwyn won a Shuster for “Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist” for the Spirit series.
Darwyn’s adaptions of Richard Stark’s “Parker” novels garnered Eisner Awards for The Hunter (2010), The Score (2013), Slayground (2014), and Harvey Awards for The Hunter (2010), and The Outfit (2011). He was also inducted (posthumously) into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.
He died of lung cancer at his home near Tampa Florida U.S. 14 May 2016.
WORK:
ADAPTER & ILLUSTRATOR:
BOOK GRAPHIC:
Content novel & Cover dust jacket:
The Hunter. Writ., Richard Stark.: IDW Publishing. July 2009.
SOURCE:
Obituary newspaper:
Globe & Mail, 21 May 2016: “Comic book virtuoso revived the medium”. Writ., N. Atkinson: S11.
Internet:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwyn-Cooke. Accessed 29 May 2024.
goodreads.com/en/book/show/1121045. Accessed 29 May 2024.
GALLERY:
The Hunter. July 2009: Front cover.
Globe & Mail, 21 May 2016: S11. Image of Parker for a Limited Edition Book Plate 2014 drawn by Darwyn at Toronto City Hall
Globe & Mail, 21 May 2016: S11. Courtesy Darwyn Cook/DC Entertainment via AP.