Reading and signing for acclaimed graphic novel, The Hunter
January 30th, 4:00 PM

San Diego, CA (January 18, 2010) – On Saturday, January 30^th at 4 PM, award-winning creator Darwyn Cooke will read from his much-lauded graphic novel, The Hunter, which is based on the groundbreaking Richard Stark (a.k.a Donald Westlake) novel, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. One of the most acclaimed books of 2009, The Hunter has been included on over 50 “best of” lists, including NPR, Publisher’s Weekly, and Aint it Cool News. Cooke’s defining work has also been named best graphic novel of 2009 by over 15 outlets, such as The Village Voice, IGN and MTV.

Cooke will read from Stark’s novel while presenting images from his adaptation, demonstrating how creatively and accurately he interpreted Stark’s tale.  A limited number of tickets are available for this exclusive event through the Museum.

“I am incredibly honored that the Smithsonian American Art Museum is giving me this opportunity to discuss my work and that of the late, great Donald Westlake,” said Cooke.

Released by IDW Publishing in July 2009, The Hunter quickly became a commercial hit and critical success. The Hunter remained on The New York Times best-seller list until it was sold out. A second printing of The Hunter is now available wherever graphic novels are sold.

The Hunter is the first in a series of four graphic novels based on Stark’s character Parker from Cooke and IDW. The second book, The Outfit, will be released in October.

The Hunter (144 pages, hardcover) is now available in stores. ISBN 978-1600104930.

The Outfit will be available in stores in October 2010.

Visit IDWPublishing.com to learn more about the company and its top-selling books.

About IDW Publishing
IDW is an award-winning publisher of comic books, graphic novels and trade paperbacks, based in San Diego, California. Renown for its diverse catalog of licensed and independent titles, IDW publishes some of the most successful and popular titles in the industry, including: Hasbro’s The Transformers and G.I. JOE, Paramount’s Star Trek; Fox’s Angel; the BBC’s Doctor Who; and television’s #1 prime time series CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. IDW is also home to the Library of American Comics imprint, which publishes classic comic reprints; Yoe! Books, a partnership with Yoe! Studios; and is the print publisher for ComicMix.

IDW’s original horror series, 30 Days of Night, was launched as a major motion picture in October 2007 by Sony Pictures and was the #1 film in its first week of release. More information about the company can be found at IDWPublishing.com.

The Man Himself Collecting

Darwyn Cooke is a bit of a rarity in this business. For one thing, he’s a superstar in a field with very few superstars.  Let’s face it, with the exception of maybe Jim Lee and Alex Ross, there aren’t many people who have the crossover appeal of Darwyn Cooke. Having started in comics in 1985 with a short story in New Talent Showcase #19 Cooke then turned his attention to graphic design and art direction. He gave the comics world another shot when he started working as a a storyboard artist for Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series, which in turn got him the oppurtunity to design the main title design for Batman Beyond, something that I can remember watching fervently as a kid and being totally drawn in.

In 2000 he wrote and illustrated Batman: Ego; a fairly ambitious story that Darwyn himself described as “What if Batman and Bruce Wayne were able to sit down and talk about what it is they do?” It’s a brilliant story that earned the critical acclaim of Alex Toth (something that’s been known to be quite hard.)

My first exposure to Cooke was when he and Ed Brubaker revamped Catwoman bringing a noirish vibe back to the character, as well giving her a revived cast of characters that included Detective Comics’ original big name Slam Bradley. (A Character that remains obviously very close to Cooke’s heart.) He also wrote and drew the award-winning graphic novel prequel to their Catwoman run – Selina’s Big Score.

Cooke’s next project was the ambitious DC: The New Frontier (2004), a six issue miniseries which sought to tell an epic storyline bridging the gap between the end of the golden and the start of the silver age of comic books in the DC Universe. The story, which was set in the 1950s, featured dozens of super-hero characters, drawing it’s inspiration from Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff and James Ellroy’s American Tabloid. It won won the Eisner Award for Best Limited Series, Best Coloring, and Best Publication Design, the Harvey Award for Best Artist, Best Colorist, and Best Continuing or Limited Series. And the Shuster Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist (Writer/Artist). The New Frontier rocketed his name to the very top of the everyone’s top ten list. He even got the daunting task of being the first artist to take over Will Eisner’s beloved comic series The Spirit for 12 issues.

For the past few years he’s been working on adapting Donald Westlake’s (writing as Richard Stark) seminal noir series of books starring Parker, a hardened professional thief with his own code of honor. He’s a fairly unlikeable character who’s compelling as all hell to read. Cooke’s adaptation of The Hunter was released to critical acclaim and is being considered the front runner for the Eisners this year.

We caught up with Darwyn at Art Originals’ exhibit showcasing his art from the last 20 years. The exhibit, titled Noir and Beyond: The Darwyn Cooke Exhibition was held at the very swanky Gladstone Hotel in Downtown Toronto.When we asked Sean Menard (one of the minds behind the exhibit) about why they chose Mr Cooke as their inaugeral guest he had this to say: “When considering who we wanted to bring to Toronto for the first Art Original Series, we were looking for a creator that had appeal outside of the traditional comics scene. We were clearly hoping to expand the existing demographic for this type of show. Darwyn fit the bill 110%.”
Sean reinforced the notion of Darwyn’s importance in the Canadian Comic Book scene pointing out that “[he] has demonstrated to both fans and creators time and time again that the playing field is equal for those north of the U.S. border if they’ve got the talent and work ethic. He completely immerses himself within every project he takes on and certainly doesn’t have to work in comics. Quite simply, it is his chosen profession. He LOVES the medium and its potential. Darwyn’s career accomplishments are a cause for celebration for today’s Canadian fans and an important benchmark for the Canadian creators of tomorrow.”
Darwyn held court signing everyone’s books all while telling stories, answering questions and cracking jokes. He took time out to have a little chat with us about Parker, Crime and Comics.

ComicBookDaily: How Many books are there going to be in total? There’s over 20 Parker novels.

Darwyn Cooke: I’m looking at doing four, and… we’ll see how that goes. Four is a lot.

CBD: Which particular four?

DC: Well, of course, we’ve done the Hunter, and the next one will be the The Outfit, we’re going to take a bit out of The Man With The Getaway Face to make a prologue to The Outfit. Getaway face isn’t the best book..

CBD: It’s not, but it’s fun.

DC: Yeah, it’s like a bridge book, where he’s trying to figure… he wrote a novel and then an editor asked him to make it a series and I think that second novel is him trying to figure out what he’s going to do it. And then the Outfit, I think  it really gels.

CBD:I know with [Westlake], He never planned anything out, it’s just him going crazy..

DC: It’s ridiculous, the guy just sort of sat down everyday and started writing.

CBD: It’s almost like he was trying to purposely write himself into a corner

DC: He did it constantly. He’s a fascinating guy to talk to. He’s really like  vessel for these three or four voices. That are so completely distinct.

CBD: Between Parker and the Dortmunder ..he is really is interesting in how he tackles things specifically in terms of storytelling and you’re kind of a similar way. I mean, with this novel you have a more straight forward and then it switches half-way through.

DC: it’s funny because everyone one of the books is four books long same number of chapters and he always switches the POV in the third book to one of the secondary characters and then goes back to Parker. He always did the same thing where he leads the story to a certain point and you go oh jesus and then he takes it back to where a certain character got to that point and then the fourth book takes you to the end. and he took that formula and took himself into that corner and found a way to be imaginative within in over and over again.

CBD: ….with The Hunter you have a blue colour scheme are you going to switch it up for the next one?

DC: Yeah, each book will have a different colour.

CBD: Okay, so off Parker for a second. Before Parker was announced you had said that you wanted to do a fairy tale type story but with gigantic robots. Any plans in the future?

DC: Yeah. I’ve been trying to find the proper artist for the book actually.

CBD: Oh really you don’t want to draw it yourself?

DC: I think it’s a book that.. I don’t think I’m the ideal artist. Right now i’m actually I’ve been talking with John Buscema’s granddaughter Stephanie Buscema, Who’s a brilliant artist in her own right, who does really wonderful, funky children’s book paintings she’s an incredible talent – nothing at all like her Grandfather’s work, but the same skill and talent. She just did a story for Marvel…

CBD: What’s that do you know?

DC:It’s a one of those books like Colleen Coover does..

CBD: Like a back-up?

DC: Yeah, like Spider-Man and the Lizard and a few others.. but like kid..  She;s really brilliants we’ve been talking about maybe tackling it. She really loved the story when I told her it.

CBD: In the foreword to Jeff Lemire’s Collected Essex County graphic novel you talk  about how Canada’s really known for it’s autobiographical comics, but you sort of see yourself as more of a ‘genre’ guy. But in (DC’s ill-fated anthology comic series) Solo you did this great story about how you discovered drawing… art. So, I think you could do it.

DC: Oh I think i could do it!

CBD: [Laughs] Oh right..

DC: I just don’t have any interest in it. I don’t think my life is of interest. I don’t think Seth’s life is that interesting either, but the way he tells it… fortunately yeah, he’s got the skills to make it appealing. But yeah, I’ve never  had that urge, or that need. I mean everything you do is autobiographical on some level. Even if it’s a Spider-Man comics, y’know? Generally if you’re a writer you’re going to pull your characters out of people you know so Yeah, the guys are always on me for this y’know like you’re not legitimate unless you’ve done the story about the uncle who touched you. I just don’t really have that in me.

CBD: Fair enough

DC: I always say I’m not Adrian Tomine, I’m John Mctiernan call me when you want to shoot the lights out.

CBD: [Laughter] Fair enough. So what are you reading right now? What’s really grabbing you.

DC: Criminal. Criminal is the best comic book out there right now. Absolutely nothing comes close to it as far as I’m concerned.

CBD: What did you think of Incognito?

: Incognito was good. But it’s cut with this superhero hero stuff. I thought Ed [Brubaker] was really smart in the way he grafted the old pulp characters into the story. It’s still a great story, I think Zack Overkill was an awesome guy and i loved it. but it’s not criminal.

perhaps the best opening page of the year.

DC

CBD: It wasn’t.. but you could almost make it into Criminal story if they ditched the masks and instead of getting punched through walls they just fell on the floor.

DC: Well, they could almost do that one rift on the superhero in criminal if they wanted to but I think it made sense to section it off. I’ll tell you though – I love Sean[Philips]‘s work, I’ll tell you those Incognito covers, Sean if you’re listening and you still have the cover to issue one, I’ll buy it.

CBD: I’m actually trying to buy the splash page of Criminal season two issue one…

DC: The Dead and the Dying?

CBD: Yeah, that’s the one.

DC: See that one was a very Westlake-ian story he told there because it’s got that three POV stories, stories rolling at a different rate..

CBD: Well, we won’t take up anymore of your time, thanks very much for the interview.

DC: Oh sure, my pleasure.

We wrapped up our interview there, but stuck around and talked more about comics and plans for the future. We’d like to thank Darwyn for taking time out to let us interview and fawn over him. He’s a great guy and the success that he’s earned is well deserved. You can check out his kind of, almost blog here (maintained by the fine folks at Strange Adventures – the store where I bought my first comic book ever) and keep your eye on the Art Originals website, as the success of their first big exhibit will no doubt lead to many more.

Pete DeCourcy is a regular contributor to ComicBookDaily.com, he’s also a large fan of crime in general. You can check out his blog The Simple Art of Crime.

Warren Ellis once said, sometime, somewhere long ago that, “the idea of superheroes dominating comic books was as ludicrous as all novels only being written about nurses.” What he means is that we have in ‘sequential art’ is a intelligent and groundbreaking medium that can tell wonderful stories, but we tend to dedicate a large amount of time to costumed gods with whom maintaining the status quo is what readers really want.

Crime comics began in 1942 with the publication of Crime Does Not Pay. As sales for superhero comic books declined in the years after World War II, other publishers began to emulate the popular format, content and subject matter of Crime Does Not Pay, leading to a deluge of crime-themed comics. Crime, especially those published by EC Comics, came under official scrutiny in the late 1940s and early 1950s, leading to legislation and the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954. This code placed limits on the degree and kind of criminal activity that could be depicted in American comic books, effectively sounding the death knell for crime comics and their adult themes. . This makes the resurgence of crime comics really exciting. While crime has never really gone anywhere; lately it seems like it’s really only been tagged as the second part of a hyphen.

I’ve never been a sci-fi type of guy, as much as I can appreciate the return of silver-age thought concepts in modern comic books (I’m looking at you Grant Morrison.) as well as the mature, humane side of superheroes (Oh, hey Brian Michael Bendis and Geoff Johns), I find it almost impossible to really care for these characters because they are corporate owned properties where death (perhaps the greatest threat that hangs over any superheroes head) really only means ‘brief hiatus’

A greater part of classic and enduring works of literature usually revolve around crime of some sort, perhaps this is why tales of super heroics usually fall flat in comparison to the very human emotion involved in a crime story. Shakespeare’s greatest works are often wrapped around crime, as it tends to shows the human condition at its most desperate. The possibilities available within the context of crime offer so much more in comparison to the standard of epic space battles, end of time era catastrophes, and time traveling paradoxes.

Marvel even realized the potential when it recast many of it’s heroes in the ‘noir’ line of comics that debuted earlier this year, something that was so successful that it not only spun off its own line, but as was announced at this years Comic-Con, has now spawned a sequel. Keep in mind that no one’s doubting that there’s plenty of crime archetypes available in superhero comics; Daredevil echoes more of the Jim Thompson crime school, while Batman embodies quite literally what Chandler said of the modern detective, “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything.”

If you need more proof that we’re in the midst of a golden crime age just look at the fact that 100 Bullets, the 100 issue, eight year epic comic by Brian Azzarello (writer of the Joker GN) and legendary artist Eduardo Risso (more on him later). The success of 100 Bullets only urged on Vertigo’s decision to start up a new line of original black and white hardcover graphic novels under the Vertigo Crime imprint. The first two titles are set to come out this August. One being acclaimed Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin’s Dark Entries and the aforementioned Azzarello’s Filthy Rich. This does not even include the fact that Vertigo is home to Scalped by Jason Aaron, which has I could only describe as The Sopranos on an Indian Reservation, except grittier, dirtier and a whole lot meaner.

Meanwhile award winning artist and writer Darwyn Cooke is currently in the midst of adapting Donald Westlake’s (writing as Richard Stark) seminal crime novels featuring Parker, a ruthless thug who does whatever it takes to get what he wants (usually money), and he doesn’t care about a living soul other than himself. The first volume, The Hunter was released in July to positive reviews.

While back over at Marvel you can find Ed Brubaker doing the best work of his career with Criminal, four volumes, thus far, of compelling standalone, interconnected stories about thieves, killers, lowlifes and addicts. Criminal harkens back to his earliest works of slacker noir, Scene of the Crime and The Fall. Another Marvel scribe, many of us know Brian Michael Bendis for his talky superhero work of late. Bendis in fact started his career working as artist/writer on books featuring con artists and mobsters in Goldfish, the spaghetti western infused bounty hunter story Jinx, and the true crime story Torso which focuses on post-Untouchables’ Elliot Ness and his hunt for America’s first serial killer.

Europe, in comparison to North America, has a much broader scope in terms of its crime line. Eduardo Risso cut his teeth on such titles as Chicanos which follows an unattractive female immigrant trying to make it as a private detective in New York City. Jacque Tardi’s The Bloody Streets of Paris was a detective story set amongst the Nazi occupation of Paris during WW2 and is expected to be re-released later this year by Fantagraphics.

Back in North America Paul Pope uses European and Japanese influence to take on Phillip K. Dick’s futuristic drug addled detective with Heavy Liquid, a story that involves art that doubles as a drug, hoods who wear Halloween masks, and long lost love. At its core it is about ‘S’, an ex-cop in a snake-skin outfit trying to extricate himself from drug dealers and terrorists and find his missing ex-girlfriend. For more off the beaten path finds you can do no better than Matt Kindt’s inventive use of storytelling in the WW2 story of espionage Super Spy. While the art might not be for everyone, it’s a fantastic story told out of sequence that manages to amaze you on each page while remaining factually accurate. He previously released Pistolwhip concerning a hotel detective with dreams of grandeur that showcases his knack for kinetic and inventive storytelling style.

Union Station by Ande Parks and Eduardo Barreto is returning to print in a brand new edition from Oni publishing. Oni most likely wants to make sure that there are plenty of copies around now that the movie Public Enemies hit theatres. The two stories contain some of the same characters. The real-life lawman Melvin Purvis and outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd are showcased in both tales, and they even cover some of the same events. Oni is also responsible for Greg Rucka’s Alaska based murder mystery Whiteout as well as the forthcoming You Have Killed Me. James S. Rich and Joelle Jones partner up to present a more classic film noir story that could have come from a classic Bogart film complete with private eye, a dame from his past and a bunch of the emotional baggage he thought he’d left behind forever

Of course this is just tip of the iceberg. From reprints from EC Comic classic crime line of the 1940s and 50s, to even some of the best (which is saying a lot) of Will Eisner’s run on The Spirit contain some of the most intense crime stories ever put to paper. Crime comics are back with a vengeance and with a variety never seen before.