Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The all Darwyn Cooke (deceased) thread

Yeah, the animated feature is pretty faithful. I had bought the NF series on eBay and the animated movie both last year. I had refrained from watching the movie until I'd read the series, so I just watched that last week, too. Oddly enough, they didn't show the Losers segment/LTTF segment but did allude to it. They also worked the big heroic moment of that story into the final battle and transferred it to another character to give that character a different death than he's originally had. Obviously, there were nips and tucks but the story and look were basically all Darwyn. Most of the very best moments were there.

Definitely eye-poppingly AWESOME! Oh, GAWD, yes!

I think they should do the Loser's segment as it's own movie. A little padding (extended story telling from Darwyn, and you could get a full feature out of it.

Yeah! They could show us exactly what happened to Sarge!

You've inspired me to reread NF - again.

I checked up on Darwyn's dedications in New Frontier, which is very telling of his influences. NF stands completely on its own and parallels the spirit of the Silver Age--it contained many older concepts but was new. It went it's own way. That is pure Cooke.

Book One - Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman and Alex Toth

Book Two - Gardner Fox, Carmine Infatino, Johnny Craig, and Bernard Krigstein

Book Three - Bill Finger, Dick Sprang,Joe Simon, Jack Davis

Book Four - John Broome, Will Eisner,Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood.

Book Five - Julius Schwartz, Archie Goodwin,
Gil Kane, Russ Heath.

Book Six - Jack Kirby

(Very telling that Kirby has a book singly dedicated to him)

Anyone else read Batman: Ego or Selina's Big Score? I remember the reviws for SBS being VERY enthusiastic in various trusted websites!

Also, did Spirit 1-13 plus the Batman/ Spirit one-shot comprise all of Darwyn's Sprit work?

I just re-read the first four chapters of New Frontier!

It's amazing how you can tear up one minute with reading the fate of the Losers, then tear up a few pages later at the sight of Hal Jordan meeting Chuck Yeager!

Wonder Woman telling off Superman in Southeast Asia! And the only version of J'Onn J'Onzz that I've ever read that I've really loved! And Batman in the church scaring the kid!

I love this book so much!

Okay, ENOUGH. I will now reread NF as well so I don't feel left out!

Lardy, you are correct, those are the Cooke Spirit stories. They are also excellent and each one takes a solid 20+ minutes to read. It's really the only non-Eisner Spirit stuff that's ever been really good.

I've got to read Batman: Ego! Can't believe I've never done so before--and delighted there is undiscovered Cooke material out there!

For the record, Parker: The Hunter = Ordered!

Yay! Prepare to have your face melted by awesomeness!

Looks like the next volume is coming out in October.

FUCK YEAH!!!

I reread V. 1 of New Frontier. The whole thing with the JSA and HUAC - was that the inspiration for Marvel's mutant registration story?

NF was even more awesome than I remembered. Wonderful the way all those classic characters were woven together, and how Cooke managed to distill their essence without the 50s hokiness. It's sort of like the Secret History of the DCU.

Dunno, but it's worth noting that Paul Levitz originally came up with the idea during his 70s JSA run.

Guess what arrived in the mail today?

See you in two days! After your face has been completely melted off by awesomeness!

Read it! It definitely kicks ass!

I'm traveling this week (posting from the Sioux Falls, SD airport right now) so I brought along my Parker: The Hunter GN to just look at and Marvel at on my flights.

It's really just incredible. The flights are too short to reread it, so I've just been flipping through looking at the composition and marveling at Cooke's talent.

His shots of NYC are so good they almost make me want to pinch myself to see if I'm dreaming.

Book Two of the Parker series, The Outfit, came out today and accompanied me home! Though I'm excited to read it, I'm not sure when I'll be able to do so. Today's out because I'm half asleep after working and have to be back early again tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'll be all jet-lagged from having worked 9 days straight without a day off. Then, I'm going to visit my mom for four days this weekend and won't have any time to read (trust me). Then, it's back to work straight through probably another 6-7 days as 'punishment' for the 4-dayer.

Ugh! A Cooke Parker novel deserves my undivided, rapt attention, so it may be a couple of weeks. Also, I KNOW it's gonna be so good, I'll have that empty feeling of not being able to anticipate reading it any more once it's read! Damned either way I suppose...

The only solution is for Darwyn to be chained to his drawing board and be forced to be more prolific!!!

Like Chief L., I got this book and put it aside until I had a good chunk of time to savour it. Well worth the wait! It was even better than Book One.

Parker takes on the mob, with the help of a few acquaintances, on a cross country series of heists, culminating in a face-to-face confrontation with Mr. Big (or one of the Mr. Bigs).

You get a better idea of Parker's character in this second volume; his discipline and focus, his particular standard of right and wrong.

The book shines with its variety of story-telling techniques - mostly the standard panels in their muted, restricted colours, but Cooke also uses magazine newspaper articles, cartoons and text pages to develop the tale. The wordless, small panel action scenes alternate with denser text, including some explanation of how some capers work. The art can be incredibly moody, somber and dark like Parker himself. Cooke manages to visually communicate the tension felt prior to confrontations.

Time for a second reading, and a third just looking at the incredible city scenes.

The bad news: we have to wait until 2012 for Book Three.

^Still haven't read it, Cramey, but I'm excited to hear you think it's even better than the first! I'm just waiting for the perfect time to read it when it can have my undivided attention. I'm just so fatigued from work lately that I'm always a little sleepy when it comes time to get some comic reading done. Days off are spent recovering and catching up with the wife and boys. There's also been a fairly good amount of TV to watch lately as well. This ain't no ordinary book, so it deserves my full, focused attention when I can give it.

Still looking forward to it. I'll hopefully have a good opportunity to read it in December or January. The good news is, the longer I put it off, the less time I'll have to wait for Book Three!

Finally read Parker: The Hunter

Why didn't you guys tell me this was so good.

Darwyn deserves any award he can win...even if he's writing and drawing the entries for the dictionary.

His simple, yet more expressive than 99% of other artists out there is unbelievable. Evry character has character that you can feel just by looking at them on the page.

Go buy this, get it from the library, trade your kidney, whatever you have to do to get a copy to read.

One of the recent House of Mystery issues had a short story by Darwyn Cooke in the middle featuring the 50's sci-fi character that hangs out at the House and it was really cool! Totally 1950's sci-fi type stuff that was really trippy.

Just like his Question short story in his Solo issue years ago, Cooke knows how to jam-pack a short story with some punch. I expect his Vigilante back-up will be equally as good.

I totally wish there was an ongoing Strange Adventures anthology comic with 2-3 stories per issue, and Cooke could contribute regularly. He's shown length of a story doesn't matter, that an 8 page story is oftentimes better than a 120 page TPB if the quality is there.

I definitely would like to see more sci-fi driven stuff from Cooke. This reminded me of his awesome rendition of the Challengers of the Unknown.

!!will post image later, it's screwed up and I've got to run!!

From Mike Holmes' "True Story" comic strip, in which Holmes illustrates stories that readers send in. Darwyn Cooke guest starred in and illustrated this one.

Hear, hear. Loved the ending where all of them banded together for the final battle. Hell yeah!