R.I.P Darwyn Cooke, 1962-2016

Darwyn Cooke leaves an indelible stamp on the comic book industry

Darwyn Cooke has passed away from cancer at the age of 53, and leaves a huge whole in the comic book industry. He was a multi-talented writer an artist, working as a storyboard artist on shows like Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series. He helped redefine Catwoman in the early 2000s. He won an Eisner award for his series “Solo”.

But arguably Darwyn Cooke’s greatest contribution to the comic book industry in general was the seminal DC: The New Frontier. The New Frontier was a 6-issue mini series that bridged together the Golden and Silver Age superheroes of the DC universe, but actually didn’t do any modern updates for them, having the appear as they did when they originally appeared as heroes. The New Frontier won an Eisner award for best limited series, as was later adapted to an animated film (one of the best DC has made to date, titled “Justice League: The New Frontier”, check it out if you haven’t yet).

One of Darwyn Cooke’s final projects was in celebration of the 75th anniversary of Batman. Surprisingly, it wasn’t based on any of his bigger more well-known projects such as New Frontier or the Batman/Spirit crossover he worked on that came out in 2007. It was an animated short based on the extremely underrated Batman Beyond series. And despite there not being a whole lot of evidence of Darwyn Cooke being a fan of that show (he worked on a cover of one issue of the comic) he got the feel and look stunningly correct. Check it out below:

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So basically if you’re a fan of comics and the shows and movies they inspire, you should be a fan of Darwyn Cooke, as he was one of the defining voices of comics for the last few decades. He will be sorely missed.