Darwyn Cooke, RIP, Cont'd...

I pulled out my copy of Batman: Animated, the coffetable Art History book from 1998 devoted to Batman: The Animated Series, because I remembered it had sample storyboards that Darwyn Cooke worked on for the sequence in "Legends of The Dark Knight" that adapted the battle between Batman and The Mutants leader from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. They do a fantastic job of invoking the suspense and mood of the comic. I really wish the actual direct-to-dvd film adaptation of the book had been animated in this style, not the cranked-out assembly line anime look that's plagued most of the films for the last decade.

I also dug up my copy of Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, from Twomorrows Publishing, which contained the passage I had recalled from memory of Bruce Timm's observations on Darwyn's art style. Since my previous post about Cooke was quite packed, I felt like putting these images in a separate post.

Darwyn Cooke, RIP.

Darwyn Cooke, RIP

Within days, we learned that artist Darwyn Cooke had an "aggressive" form of Cancer and was in "palliative care"..and  come Saturday morning, we learn that he passed away. He was only 53 years old.

He first got attention for his work doing storyboards on Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond. In the former, it was the magnificent recreation of  Batman fighting The Mutants gang leader from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in the episode "Legends of The Dark Knight". For the later series, it was the striking title sequence that opened the show. His first comics work was the graphic novel Batman: Ego for DC Comics, which was followed by a major revamp of Catwoman with writer Ed Brubaker that defined the character for the last decade and a half, including the graphic novel Catwoman: Selena's Big Score.

But wait! There's more! A revival of The Spirit. New Frontier. A series of graphic novels for IDW adapting Richard Stark's "Parker" novels. And lots of variant covers. His art style, at first glance, looked like an offshoot of animator Bruce Timm's style, capitalizing on the popularity of the animated cartoons, but Timm was quick to observe in interviews that when he looked at Darwyn's drawings "...there's a little bit of Frank Robbins, there's some Milt Caniff, a little bit of Sickles.." I would suggest that Cooke's characters tend to look self-aware; they seem to behave like actors that know they're being filmed - lots of expressions with eyes, jaws and teeth. A glance at both artists work in comics reveals that if Timm's characters stick to the script, Cooke's actors are prone to ham things up.

His work as a writer wasn't flawless; I found his scripts could be leaden at times - the dialogue and plots don't necessarily fire on all cylinders and payoffs can come off anti-climactic. His zombie Montez storyline in The Spirit had a climax taken from a short Batman: Black & White tale and went off the reservation, as if he was glad he could find an ending to the arc.

But that's just a minor quibble. Cooke loved heroes that were heroic and liked to tell stories he wanted to read. He could be an outspoken critic of popular dark storylines, like Brad Meltzer's Identity Crisis. He despised stories that pretended to be "mature" and "sophisticated" when it was only dragging fictional characters that were once created for children  though the mud. In the last few years, he felt he was typecast as an artist who only dwelled in Silver Age nostalgia and he's not wrong - if he had illustrated Grant Morrison's run on Batman, that definitely daft tenure wouldn't have been so easily discarded. When asked about why he didn't do much work for Marvel Comics  (beyond two issues of a Spider-Man title, a fill-in issue of X-Force and a surreal mini-series starring Wolverine & Doop), he pointed out that he was originally enlisted as the architect for the all-ages "Marvel Adventures" line, before his ideas for creative teams and storylines were completely scuttled by editorial. So he made his name working on DC Comics characters. Not bad.

He was working till the very end, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the stuff appears posthumously. A comic book variant cover by Cooke on the outside always outclassed the art featured on the inside. When DC had Cooke do variant covers for all their books in 2014 - some featuring characters rendered by him for the first time in print, like He-Man and Skeletor - on the face of things that was a very classy-looking month, but only a few of those books might have had stories people still remember today. They'll remember those covers, though.

Darwyn Cooke, RIP

#Top5ComicBooks of 2015 - #3: "All-New Hawkeye" by Jeff Lemire and Ramon Perez

I delayed posting this entry on my list of the "Top 5 Comics of 2015" because I wanted to see how the current storyline in All-New Hawkeye was going to wrap. Surprise, surprise..the end of the arc marked the end of the book. Bittersweet, since it's not clear if Hawkeye will ever be the same.

Let me make this perfectly clear: Clint Barton - Hawkeye - is the coolest superhero in current comic books produced right now. Take a good look at what's currently on the stands these days; all the members of the cape and cowl set are serving as pawns of storylines on the whim of their respective writers. Hawkeye, on the other hand, has managed to quietly function within the successful status quo launched by Matt Fraction in 2012. Even though he's purely a fictional character, he has stayed in character, so in a way, he's solid. His adventures have a feel. They matter. He still wears that hearing aid from using a "sonic arrow" back in the Mark Gruenwald mini-series, and he's cool with it. He has no superpowers and resides in a tumbledown apartment building, but it's his home. He's got that smart cool dog that likes pizza. He's even cool with letting his protege Kate share his superhero moniker rather than diminish it with "Hawkette" or "Lady Hawkeye". His brother stole his fortune in cash, but he was willing to turn the other cheek after learning that the bum had turned fairy godfather/boyfriend to a harried single mother living in Clint's building, wisking her family with him to a newly-bought island haven. Spider-Man would bitch and moan about these "indignities" to no end; Clint took them on the chin and looked all the more heroic for it. He moves forward.

And if the future foretell a new status quo that pulls him away from what felt like a cozy haven from the noise of mainstream superhero funnybooks, then it did its part.

I actually liked Lemire's run better than the Fraction's. True, one era couldn't have occurred without the other, but I never liked the Track Suit Mob or The Clown much. What I did enjoy was everything else. All-New Hawkeye gives us more of the everything else while building up the iconography of Clint Barton and Kate Bishop by digging into their respective pasts with the three arcs that comprise all 11 issues of the series. Wunderkammer, the longest installment, sets up the main adventure about the rescue of three genetically modified children with distructive psychokinetic powers wanted by S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra while elaborating on Clint's childhood with his brother Barney as they were taken under the wing of their mentor, The Swordsman. The Bishop's Man documents a possible future in which both Hawkeyes are still plagued with guilt about their failure to save these kids - Clint never really moved on, while Kate became preoccupied with getting her house in other, both leading colorful, but empty existences. The final arc, Hawkeyes, depicts the rescue mission, the fate of the three kids and flashbacks to Kate's childhood, raised by her shady tycoon father, who will likely be the main adversary of the Hawkeyes in a future arc.

We also get the return of Barney Barton, Clint's brother. I like this character and his bizzaro evolution along the periphery of the Marvel Universe: he began as Clint's foil, a ne'r do well older brother who morphed into a teetotaler secret agent, then morphed into supervillain Trickshot before reverting back into a ne'r do well who loved freeloading and playing crossword puzzles and ultimately stealing his brother's fortune...for a good cause...well, it worked out that way - he did help with the assault on Clint's building by all those gangsters.

The letter page in the last issue hinted that "big things" were in store...I'm not sure what they could be...maybe Clint marries Kate and buys a farmhouse...it's comics. Even though this is emphatically not the same Hawkeye depicted in film and cartoons, his is not entirely dissimilar in characterization...perhaps less inspired then the Clint of these recent comics. And definitely not as cool. If you have never read this series, I do recommend that you give it try.

Art Therapy: "Batman: Hush" Coloring Book (Part 13, 14, 15 & 16 of 104)

Ah...

Four pages!

Killer Croc!

Showdown at sunset!

Rust!

New crayons!

Then back to using the old crayons! (The new crayons - which I brought because they were "jumbo-sized" and figured that would be a relief when coloring backgrounds - wound up being awful; they would break up and file away like rubber erasers, then leave behind smears on my hands and crumbs on the pages! So I went back to the Crayolas...stick to making Mr. Potato Head toys, please, Playskool.)

Incidentally, I noticed in a recent Comic Shop News a criticism of DC Comics repri ting their comics into Adult Coloring Books as part of CSN's annual Red K Awards, citing that these books do not meet the standard of a proper coloring book done by a true coloring book artist.

I've never heard something so boring (aside from negative reviews of Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice). Who gives a flying fortress? It's a coloring book! There's criteria for a coloring book? Do me a favor..do me a favor...grab the issue of CSN with your opinion, sir...use it to clean up after yourself when you've finished letting the horses out of the barn.

Four down...more to go...

"Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice" ☆☆☆☆☆ (Review)

Spoilers ahead...

I  saw this movie last week and enjoyed it.

...

I am completely baffled by the intense dislike of this film by the critics. Were Marvel Studios' efforts akin to the works of Shakespeare, Poe, Faulkner, Cervantes, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Dorothy Parker and Guy De Maupassant? Is there a bias?

I didn't find this film "dark", "boring", "depressing", "overlong" or "stupid". If you've been actually reading DC's superhero comics anytime within the last 3 or 4 decades, it's very faithful to the source. But it's not the funeral dirge that it's been likened to. These characters are not comedians, nor are they TV show characters making TV series-style quips; if they did make cracks, it would be in relation to real things as they happen (for ex: the "Is she with you?" "I  thought she was with you!" bit in the film).

Maybe it's a conditioned response. This movie had a four year buildup; sixteen years if you count the initial mention of a Batman vs. Superman film pitch that would've been directed by Wolfgang Peterson - this was during a fallow period when the Batman film franchise was thought to be dead after Batman and Robin and different ideas for a revival were tossed around Hollywood, including a live-action Batman Beyond and a Batman: Year One adaptation that Frank Miller and Darren Aronovsky developed. The Superman/Batman comic book from 2003, a revival of World's Finest, was obviously launched in anticipation of this movie (a reprint of the first issue was offered as a free giveaway comic to coincide with the premiere; DC went out of there way to revise the title credit page to add Bill Finger's name, in keeping with current tradition).

So, with the long wait, who can expect good reviews from critics, podcasters and bloggers who say things like: "I got a bad feeling about the choices Warner Brothers is making with this movie", "I don't really have high hopes for this film", "Zack Snyder is the worst choice for this movie"...with that attitude, you cannot possibly be engaged, you are stuck with the idea that you are watching a disaster.

All I feel I can really say is that I liked it..and I'm glad I didn't follow the bad reviews, otherwise I would've missed out on an entertaining launch that I hope won't be derailed. Yes, it is a sequel to Man of Steel. Yes, Jimmy Olsen gets killed within the first 15 minutes.* But this film is far superior to Man of Steel. It's short on jokes about underoos and flippant references to ancient video games and doesn't rely on cheap heat by sampling pop songs. And the bonus scenes that Marvel Studios usually saves for after the credits are offered before the third act, instead (enough bonus scenes for 4 separate movies, to be speciffic). And maybe the funeral scene at the end could've been shortened by a minute (and is the act of a hand bursting through a coffin exclusive to only vampires & zombies, but not heroes? Why couldn't we see a stronger image of Superman coming back from the dead? Or am I tapping into touchy subject matter?).

You know what? This film was cool. Go see it. I had fun. The people who hated this movie can go take their reviews and wipe their asses with them. Ben Affleck is a great Batman. Henry Cavil has gotten more comfortable as Superman. Gal Godat is a fantastic Wonder Woman. Amy Adams is kind of bland as Lois, though her scenes with Cavil are good. Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor may get his mannerisms and wardrobe choices from Heath Ledger's Joker, but make no mistake, beneath the affectations, this is the manipulative, Machiavellian, egocentric meglomaniac of the modern age comics, so it's very entertaining to see how the two incarnations of Luthor manage to mesh well.

Enough. Go see it.

*DC Comics had a "Jimmy Olsen Must Die!" lapel pin made available at one point; he must've grated on people over the last 77 years.

Art Therapy: "Batman: Hush" Coloring Book (Part 10, 11 and 12 of 104)

April showers..bring coloring book pages. Witness the wealthy man from Gotham in grey and blue rescue an unrelatable kidnapped effete cipher schoolboy from the clutches of working poor mercenaries gone broke from buying gaudy licensed apparel...in a swirl of pink and orange smoke??

Yeah..much like the corridors, smoke is kind of boring on a coloring book page..then I recall the colorful smoke bombs used in the old Adam West Batman show and rolled with it!

3 down..more to go..

#Top5ComicBooks of 2015 #1: "Amazing Spider-Man #1", Vol. 4

When I was a kid, I always thought Spider-Man was a rich guy. Those gadgets must cost serious money..no way could he afford an apartment (albeit a crappy one) in NYC by taking pictures of himself in costume for millionaire cheapskate J. Jonah Jameson; he'd be better-off shaking down tourists for tips after posing for free photos on Times Square with the other shabbily-dressed cosplayers. Plus, the toys always showed he owned a multitude of vehicles at his disposal - cars, motorcycles, jetplanes, helicopters..and he lives in Forest Hills!! Peter Parker, you rich, boy.

Let's be honest...Spider-Man was always a miserable read. Who gives this book to children? A guy who can't win because his life is doomed. Why can't he win? Why is Parker plagued with bad luck? Because he sucks. He was a sap..perhaps he is destined to remain a sap. At least he's a rich sap now. Money buys time, money pays bills, money pays ideas forward...better to have money and be a guy who inadvertently killed his girlfriend and got his marriage annulled by the Devil so that his 90-year-old Aunt could continue preparing meals for him than a guy with dick in the bank who inadvertently killed his girlfriend and got his marriage annulled by the Devil so that his 90-year-old Aunt could continue preparing meals for him...let him play Ted Kord for a while.

And a happy April Fools Day to everyone. :)