The DC Spirit - Darwyn Cooke!

When DC was finally able to move forward in 2007 with new adventures of The Spirit they picked Darwyn Cooke to take up the challenge of continuing Will Eisner's magnificent creation. It was a superb choice as Cooke's animated-inspired style blended nicely a noir feel with a modern sense of comics storytelling. 

They kicked off the series with a booster when they crossed over The Spirit with Batman in a Cooke-drawn one-shot. Jeph Loeb wrote this roller-coaster story which featured not only the two heroes but most of both of their rogue galleries who had joined forces during a convention to do away with the twin heroes. 

The series proper began with an updated setting. This was a modern but weary Central City in which The Spirit still battled the baddies with the help of Ebony White (redesigned to remove his stereotypical aspects). Ebony was shown as a sharp assistant, who helped the out-of-step Spirit with modern technology such as cellphones and other aspects of the information age. J. Bone was tapped to ink Cooke's stylish pencils which in the tradition of Eisner played with the storytelling. Ellen Dolan was the love interest, though it's made clear she loves Denny Colt. We are also introduced to a new savvy female television reporter named Ginger Coffee. 

P'Gell makes an appearance and is up to her usual attempts to come by wealth through a bit of romance and a bit of criminality. 

The Spirit's origin is slightly revised to include a hood named Elvarro Mortez who ended up with Denny Colt immersed in Doctor Cobra's weird suspended-animation solution. Whereas Colt was put into a crypt and so was able to get free of his internment, Mortez had a more cruel resurrection. This story formed a spine which flowed in the background of the many of the stories going forward. 

Silk Satin returns, but this time she is made a member of the C.I.A. and Homeland Security and is a very capable ally. 

Cooke was all too ready to play with the graphics, well within the tradition that Eisner had established decades before. 

Cooke supplies the cover for the "Summer Special" but we get stories by Walt Simonson and Chris Sprouse, Jimmy Palmiotti and Jordi Bernet, and Kyle Baker. Truth told, The Spirit always seems more at home in these shorter stories. 

The Octopus also returns, as mysterious but perhaps even more deadly. This Octopus does not play around nor seems particularly entertained by The Spirit's shenanigans. 

Cooke gives us some fantastic and sharp satire when he looks at the landscape of television news shows which have become hotbeds of misinformation and so put the society at large at risk. Something we are contending with even more today. 

The Mortez storyline comes to a finish when a horde of zombies descend on Central City and it's up to our hero and his friends to save the day. It's a very close thing. 

Cooke wraps up his run on the series with a fantastic retelling of the Sand Saref story, giving it a modern polish while staying very true to Eisner's original intent. 

Cooke leaves off with the cover for the thirteenth issue which is a Christmas issue. Inside we get a Halloween story by writer Glen David Gold and artist Edwardo Risso, another story by Denny O'Neil and artist Ty Templeton, and a third by Gail Simone and Phil Hester. 

Darwyn Cooke was a top-flight choice to create some fun but still engaging Spirit stories. He created a continuity which alas would largely be ignored by the talents who followed him. His act was a strong one indeed. 

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The Art Of Darwyn Cooke!

Darwyn Cooke was a fantastic comic artist skilled who loved the medium and came up through the animation ranks. He brought those storytelling chops to many a fine DC comic in time including a great run on The Spirit (more on that tomorrow). Below is a small gallery of just some of the many cover images available in The Art of Darwyn Cooke, a great collection of his stories from Batman to Jonah Hex and more. There are included the covers for my favorite Cooke effort -- The New Frontier. 

More Darwyn Cooke tomorrow. 

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The Rocketeer - High Flying Adventures!

When IDW Publishing first acquired the rights to The Rocketeer, they first published handsome collected reprints of the Dave Stevens saga, both in hardcover and paperback. They have since published the stories in more than a few different formats. The death of Dave Stevens in 2008 meant that for all of us Rocketeer fans there would be no more adventures of Cliff and Betty by their creator, the man who first wowed us all way back in the early 1980's to these retro 1930's adventures of a "rocket man". 

But that only meant that IDW needed to find new ways and new talents to treat the world to new adventures of The Rocketeer. They first did this with The Rocketeer Adventures, an anthology series which utilized the sundry talents of many of the best comic artists and writers of the time. It seemed everyone was itching to do a Rocketeer story. IDW produced eight issues, published in two four-issue limited series. Their featured covers by Alex Ross and the second by the late Darwyn Cooke. Inside each issue three different talents or teams of talents told stories about Cliff, Betty, Peevy, and the gang around the Bulldog Cafe. These issues are collected in the hardback volume The Rocketeer - High Flying Adventures. 

Things kick off with "The Rocketeer" by John Cassaday and tells how Cliff saves Betty from a rocket but she's less than happy with his methods. "Home Again" by Michael Allred shows how Cliff meets the mysterious Mr. Jonas again and makes a deal to keep the rocket at an unknown expense. "Dear Betty" was written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Mike  Kaluta and focuses on our heroine as is working as nurse during WWII and getting precious few letters from Cliff, until finally there are no more, but that's not all. 

The second issue begins with "It Ain't the Fall That Kills Ya..." by Mark Waid and Chris Weston. Weston is ideal for this project. Cliff is jealous (as always) of Betty as she makes a serial movie about a hero named Aeroman. "Betty Saves the Day" by Darwyn Cooke is formatted like a chapter from a movie serial and allows Betty to be the one who wears the rocket. "TKO" by Lowell Francis and artist Gene Ha features a standoff between the Rocketeer and another man in a somewhat different flying suit. Monk and Ham make an appearance. 

Ryan Sook kicks off the third issue with "A Rocketeer Story" which has Cliff stop a robbery at a theater which just so happened to be debuting a new movie in which she appears. Things go poorly. "Heaven's Devils" is a prose story by Joe A. Lansdale with spot illustrations by Bruce Timm and has our heroic duo in a movie which turns out to be a scam, but does put a barely dressed Betty in danger. "Junior Rocketeer" by Jonathan Ross and artist Tommy Lee Edwards tells about some kids who idolize the Rocketeer and show up at Peevy's and Cliff's hanger while Betty is tapped to play a version of Mary Marvel. 

The first quartet of comics wraps up with a story by Dave Gibbons and art by Scott Hampton titled "A Day at the Beach" which showcaes surfing, something new and a bit arcane in those years. "Waterlogged" by Joe Pruett with art by Tony Harris goes back to the beach and beneath the waves to face the threat of a Japanese sub intent on destruction. "The Flight of the Aeronaut" by John Arcudi and artist Brendan McCarthy pits the Rocketeer against a Nazi woman who has a rocket pack of her own and a more powerful one at that. 

The second set of four issues Rocketeer Adventures 2 begins with "The Good Guys" by Marc Guggenheim and artist Sandy Plunkett and has the Rocketeer fall into the hands of local farmers who fear this strange man might be a criminal. Plunkett's art is the most like that of Stevens of any of the artists in this series. Arguably the weirdest story in the series is "The Ducketeer" by Peter David and Bill Sienkiewicz and has Cliff and Betty reacting to a cartoon which makes hay off of the fame the Rocketeer has garnered. "A Dream of Flying" by Stan Sakai is strange one also and has Cliff shot down by a youth named Lex who wants his secrets, but is saved by a dark-haired boy who likes to fly and later we meet his older parents who might just be named "Kent" though that's not said expressly.

"Work to Do" by Tom Taylor and Colin Wilson puts the Rocketeer on the battlefield and confronting the horror of war. "Betty's Big Break" was written by Paul Dini and drawn by Bill Morrison and has Betty in another serial, this one a blend of western and science fiction and despite himself Cliff gets involved much to his eventual chagrin. Walt Simonson writes "Autograph" with art by John Paul Leon. This time Rocketeer saves a Hollywood starlet from kidnapping and gets her autograph for Betty which sends her over the rainbow with glee. 

The third issue of the second set begins with "Coulda Been..." by Dave Lapham and artist Christ Sprouse and has Cliff and Betty talk about a future together in a remote farmhouse, but then they have reservations. "Butchy Saves Betty" by Kyle Baker is a wild romp, again styled as the chapter of a serial in which the rocket gets attached to the Bulldog and Betty wing walks to save the day perhaps. The mysterious Mr. Jonas reappears. "History Lesson" was written by Matt Wagner and drawn by Eric Canete and reprises the life of Cliff Secord and his rise as a hero as the Rocketeer which we see has influenced the future mightily. 

The series wraps with "War Hero" by Louise Simonson and her hubbie Walt on art chores this time. Cliff and Betty have been helping the war effort and Cliff finds out why the Rocketeer has been kept from the front lines. Then a strange bomber threatens Washington, DC. Writer Bill Mandel and artist J.Bone offer up the totally strange "Cliff Secord Warlor of Blargon". This one has hit by lightning and ending up on a strange alien world where he imagines he is there to do heroic things but maybe he misunderstands the alien speak. The final story in the run is by John Byrne and is titled "Fair Game" and has the Rocketeer heading out to the 1939 World Fair to save some royalty from a terrorist attack. 

The volume ends with a Rocketeer Gallery and features artists Alex Ross, Tommy Lee Edwards, Stephanie Buscema, Mike Mignola, Jim Silkie, Joe Chiodo, Geof Darrow (with an awesome two-page spread), Ash Wood, Art Adams, Scot Campbell, Eric Powell, and J.K. Snyder III. I should also point out that each issue of every one of the eight issues in the two series showcases a classic Dave Stevens image from the many years he drew The Rocketeer. 

At forty bucks this is a heavy price for this reprint volume, but very entertaining, especially for Rocketeer fans. 

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The New Frontier!

Darwyn Cooke's 2004 epic DC: The New Frontier is truly that, a mighty and lasting epic. It is at once of its time and timeless, it is simultaneously historical and mythic, and it tells a story we all know but which is fresh and new and compelling. And that doesn't for a moment consider that Cooke's artwork is fetching beyond words and his storytelling itself is eloquent and grand and brazen and nigh flawless. I heap a lot of praise on this "Elseworlds" effort (does DC still use this phrase) which relates how the Golden Age of heroes fell before the paranoia of the Red Scare and how new heroes were still able nonetheless to come from the shadows when a startling menace appears. This story has touches of H.P. Lovecraft with a eldritch monster from the depths of both outer space and of Earth's prehistory, a malevolent intelligence that communicates with certain humans in their dreams, driving them mad and often to their death. This story evokes time and again the shining heroism of The Right Stuff, the opulent romance about America's earliest space program.

We get to see some of the greatest of the DC heroes in fresh lights that makes them feel more real to me and not just characters in yet another yarn about saving the planet, though that's just what this is. The heroes in focus in this story are not necessarily the ones you'd first expect given that this is a stealth origin of the Justice League story. We focus on the tragic WWII outfit The Losers, the relentless Cold War Suicide Squad, and the complex Challengers of the Unknown, with types like Slam Bradley and King Faraday getting substantial roles.  We meet and follow novice heroes like Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and Barry Allen as The Flash. A significant effort is spent making Martian Manhunter a compelling character, as much a cinematic creation as a comic book one. And finally there is the grim American fable of John Henry, a tormented black man who takes the fight to the Klu Klux Klan in the bowels of the South. Loved the treatment of DC's big three with Wonder Woman in particular coming across as a warrior born, Superman as truly the greatest of heroes and Batman as the wily schemer and tactician at which he excels.  

I read the story in the "Black Label" edition which puts the story together into one tome and doesn't divide the sections by anything other than the chapters Cooke used internally throughout the series. It reads and feels like a true "graphic novel", a complex tale of inspiring heroism in a time fraught with danger and menace. It's one of those stories in which you probably know the good guys will win, but until they do it holds you by the throat. Also this one is filled with loads of extras such as the copious annotations to each installment and lots of anticipatory art and such. 

Here are the covers for the original series and the subsequent JLA one-shot specials. 

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