Just yesterday we heard that Darwyn Cooke had entered palliative care in the last stages of cancer, and by the time I went to bed, the internet was telling me we that we have lost Darwyn Cooke, comics artist and writer.
2016 seems intent on taking my favorite artists from the world before their time.
It seemed to me Cooke was properly appreciated by comics enthusiasts, and a favorite in the creator community as a solid guy.
His art is making its way around the internet, and you won't have to look far for the next 72 hours to see all of us posting our favorite pieces. I'll focus here on his DC work and his work with Richard Stark's
Parker novels.
Perhaps the best known of his works is DC's
New Frontier, the Jet Age re-imagining of the origin of the Justice League of America, featuring all the mainstay players and some more-forgotten characters of the JFK/ pop explosion era of DC. If you've never read it, it's available out there in print and digital. And, it was adapted into a feature length cartoon film a few years back.
Cooke's art tilted toward iconographic cartooning, and fit no house style at DC, even as it clearly fit the aesthetic and mood of the DCU on the sunniest of days. Both retro and modern, his style borrowing heavily from the pop-art style of late-50/ early-60's illustration, with the nuance of line to manage expression and convey more in a face than 95% of comics artists.
During an era when DC Comics and comics in general are on a swing back toward projecting a world view of fire, chaos, and gnashing teeth for all of their characters, Cooke still found a place in the comics world to show a DC Universe infused with hope.