I’m shaken to hear this, and still processing it. Darwyn Cook has passed away, and I’m having a hard time facing a world in which his pen will never again burst forth with smiling characters being heroic.
It’s been my hope since I first saw his work that he would eventually become the Editor In Chief at DC Comics (he even has the initials for it!) and steer the company back towards some sort of relevancy with readers rather than heaping out fan service to a dying crowd of collectors. The only DC books I’ve bought over the last fifteen years have been Darwyn’s, in fact.
The company has tried over and over to revitalize their line without success because they haven’t the guts to cut loose the tiny crowd of hardcore buyers of their product and try to appeal to a larger crowd. With Darwin in charge, I had hoped the sky over Metropolis, Star City, Gotham, and the rest of the DCverse might be filled again with unambivalent heroes flying towards conflict with unambivalent villains or the forces of nature.
I don’t need to identify with a protagonist in a comic book because he’s as screwed up inside as me, I want him (or her) to be an example that I can try to emulate to make myself better. This is how heroic storytelling has worked for thousands of years, and nobody at DC seemed to understand that as well as Darwyn Cooke.
I wish him peace and offer my thanks.
