When it comes to chapping corporate ass, you really can’t do better than veteran comic creator Darwyn Cooke. As many of us Fanboys and girls already know, Cooke recently attended FanExpo in Toronto where he let fly – not for the first time – on everything he felt was wrong with the comic book industry. When the short video of his rant was posted by The Comic Book Syndicate the comics community once again found itself polarized. On one side, readers with working brains (supporters of Cooke) and on the other, the knuckle-draggers who perceived Cooke’s comments as homophobic (give me a god damned break!) and anti-Miller / Millar. Here’s what that rascal Darwyn said:
“I want [Marvel and DC] to stop catering to the perverted needs of 45-year-old men. I want to stop seeing Batman fucking Black Canary. I don’t want to hear Batman swearing. I don’t want to see him feeding a boy rats. I don’t want to see characters getting raped in the ass. I don’t want to see characters who have been straight for sixty years become lesbians overnight because the writer’s too stupid or uncreative to come up with something decent. I want to see new characters for a new time and when the industry of superhero comics realigns its sights to the young people it was meant for I’ll be there with both arms and feet.”
Now, you can make your own judgment about whether or not you agree with Cooke, but you have to appreciate a guy who’ll come out of the gate and risk shooting himself in the foot to point out the emperor has no clothes. So, with this in mind, Review 2 a Kill would like to celebrate this week’s release of Weird War Tales by cobbling together a selection of Darwyn Cooke’s best comments from a variety of sources (Big Hollywood, Comic Book Resources, iFanboy, and The Comics Journal, to name a few). Check it out!
ON LAZY WRITING: “I sorta had this feeling that I was going to avenge [Hal Jordan] with [DC: The New Frontier] because of all the incredibly convoluted and sort of horrible things that had been propagated in the last eight, ten years. Since Emerald Dawn on I suppose. And yeah, I always looked at him as a classic example of, you know, lazy writing. Just guys stopped caring about him as a character, they stopped trying to make it interesting and then inertia keeps it going for ten years. Then one day nobody cares about this character, so it’s like “Let’s turn him into a murderer. Let’s make him a drunk.” You know? And he becomes a plot device. And I thought that was sort of a horrible way to wrap it up with him.”
ON SUPERHERO LEGACIES: “I’ll be straight up honest, and again I have a lot of respect for what my contemporaries do, but I’m sorry. There is absolutely no reason in the world there should be anything but an all-ages Superman story. There should be no other type, period. And if you haven’t got the imagination or the skill to craft a good story within that framework then you shouldn’t be working on the character. I don’t think these characters were built to carry these adult themes. And while they can…the minute you start tampering with the brand you’re destroying the goodwill it’s built up over sixty, seventy years. And one day you can’t go back.”
ON ARTISTIC INTERPRETATION: “One of [the DC: New Frontier character treatments] that I still love to see the reaction to is, of course, Wonder Woman. Certainly, if there was difficulty with New Frontier from the get-go in terms of a visual sense, it was [DC’s] inability to appreciate, I’ll say, my interpretation of Wonder Woman. And, as usual, the readership speaks and they LOVE her. You know? You’ve got this little percentage of guys who go [whiney voice] “Why is she so big?” but generally people just love the take on her. So it’s been a lot of fun for me to watch DC and Warner’s have to embrace that take on the character because she’s such an important part of the story itself.”
ON NON-SUPERPOWERED HEROES: “It’s no mistake that you’ll notice most of my work revolves around Batman, Catwoman, Slam Bradley, The Spirit…they’re all people. And even New Frontier. You’ll notice that the periods where you see the meta[humans] go have been compressed into as tight a space as I possibly could because I just have way more interest in what I’ll call human heroism. You know, to me, Superman’s always been a cheat. I never warmed up to the character because, hell, sure you’re a hero! Look at ya! You know? It’s easy to be a hero when you can’t be hurt. And I’ve never really appreciated the ‘immense burden’ that Superman carries around. You know? I look at all these normal characters and I think, wow, there’s a far more heroic journey they’re on because they’re mortal. They can be hurt.”
ON CORPORATE DEMAND FOR FAMILY-FRIENDLY COMICS: “And still it goes on. This year J. Bone and myself pitched an all-ages Wonder Woman book aimed at young female readers. In other words, I wanted to give them at least 12 issues of a Wonder Woman book that any parent could give their child. They couldn’t have been less interested.”
ON MEETING DEADLINES: “Look kids, don’t let anybody tell you any different, okay? The reason [comics] don’t come out in time is because [the creators] don’t work on them. It’s not because it’s impossible. It’s not because the guy’s putting so much into it that it just can’t be done. Okay? They’re just not working at speed. Alright? I’m sorry guys, but that’s the truth. Admit it.”
ON THE DIRECT MARKET: “I think everybody in the world likes and understands what a comic is. Except for the people in the direct market. Honest to God. No. Case in point. I’m going to prove my point right here, right now: They do a movie called Batman Begins. Huge success….so they gear up for a sequel. Well lo and behold the villain in the sequel dies [Heath Ledger]. There’s Oscar talk. The movie’s being hyped and hyped and hyped. So DC’s reaction is [to] kill Bruce Wayne. So anyone coming in off the movie to buy a Batman comic won’t know what the fuck is going on. That explains it all to me. You know? [The direct market is] so trapped within itself it doesn’t even understand the world outside of it or what’s there.”
ON THE DIGITAL MARKET: “I’ll ask you this question: How do you sell a million Spider-Man comics a month? Fuckin’ iTunes for a quarter a pop. Why do [Marvel and DC] have to be dragged into this technology? The whole world’s there already. They’re ten years behind the curve and they don’t want to get in front of it.”
The funny thing about all of these comments is that Darwyn Cooke isn’t some crabby old curmudgeon. If you do a YouTube search and watch any of his lengthier interviews (here’s a good one and here’s another) he comes off as an amiable and genuinely passionate sort of guy. And there is no end to attendees coming home from Comic-Cons with tales of what a friendly, talkative and super accommodating guy Cooke is. So what’s the deal? Well it would seem that Darwyn Cooke is not only exasperated with the existing direct market framework, but in the fortunate position to actually do something about it. Anyway, I for one will be heading off to the comic shop this week to pick up my copy of Weird War Tales. Who knows? At the rate Darwyn Cooke is going, this might be his last work for DC Comics.
– Ian
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To paraphrase Johnny Rotten, the only reason people are upset about what he’s saying is because they’re frightened it might be true.
The comics industry is a complete mess. If a new reader steps into a comics shop, and is interested in reading about the Avengers, they will have to sift through Avengers, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Avengers Academy, Avengers: Prime plus at least two other mini-series…in ONE MONTH.
Any sane person seeking escapist fantasy would certainly walk straight out the door and back home to his living room where he can watch LOST or Fringe on TV for free, or at best, rent it on DVD.
The marketing people behind the last 25 years worth of DC and Marvel output should all be out on the street for what they’ve done to the industry, and for their inability to capitalize on the billion dollar movies bases on their characters.
Mike-EL
Comic Book Syndicate
PS: Grant Morrison’s Batman storyline does suffer from bad timing, but its still a great run!
And any sane parent taking their kids into a comic store might feel compelled to turn right around and leave. When they see the figures, the covers of the comics…and finally find wherever the owner may have put the tiny little shelf devoted to comics just for kids it may not be enough for them. Especially as a lot of the shelf seems to be devoted to hardcover reprints of old Archies. My kids’ father is a pro, but even he sees their frustration in finding anything they want to read. I would take them to buy comics, bring them home and he’d grab them all–oh! no that Spider-Man is inappropriate! Oh, god, didn’t you LOOK inside that Batman? And anything actually intended for kids is watered down, goody two-shoes pablum that makes old Richie Rich comics look like The Sopranos.
I remember the Richie Rich Sopranos run. What they did to Dollar the dog still gives me nightmares.