Darwyn.

I found out that Darwyn Cooke knew my name back in 2008, when he showed up on this blog and left a comment supporting my decision to burn a giant X-Men omnibus. It remains (and will remain) my favorite way I have ever met a comics creator. I had no idea how he found the blog, or whether he was joking or not about burning books--at the time, I remember being convinced it was some odd kind of joke. I had an email conversation a few days later, but even after I knew it was true, it still had that same feeling: that this couldn't be happening, and I wasn't allowed to be happy about it, because it was a lie, and the rug was gonna get pulled.

But it was true. And while we didn't speak very much, Darwyn and I did email each other a few times. We spoke mostly about a John Flynn movie called Rolling Thunder that I had fallen for pretty hard, and that eventually led to him asking me to interview him for a big article on his second Parker adaptation, The Outfit. 

It was a lot of work, and I've never done anything quite like it since. I sat in my apartment in Brooklyn, talking to him on the phone for hours. He was funny, charming, and very smart: but most of all, he had a definite set of feelings and opinions about his work and the work of others, and it was exciting to hear that, to hear someone who wasn't concerned with pretending to like everything. I transcribed the conversation into an 15,000 word piece, found a home for it with Laura Hudson, who figured out a way to split it into seperate parts so that whoever it was that owned Comics Alliance at that time would have to give me more money, and we put it out there. I then got a chance to meet Darwyn when he came to New York for a book signing, and he took me out to dinner with Marsha and all his friends. He treated me like I was Gay Talese and he was Sinatra, and while the evening's performative qualities took a wear on both of us as the night went on, it was one of the few times in comics where the show we were all playing at felt like one put on by wry grown-ups as opposed to the dress-up games that stunted children so frequently play now. I lost my temper on one of Darwyn's dipshit synchophants, Darwyn needled him alongside me to defuse the tension, I went home embarrassed. We spoke a few more times, and that was it. I was proud of that piece of writing, and I think Darwyn was happy with how it turned out as well. We had another follow-up planned--the conversation we had on the phone that day went into many more subjects besides Parker--his feelings about Chris Ware, his thoughts on Batwoman, people he didn't like (people that I didn't like), but it never came to pass. I never did the work, and that night had burned me out. I didn't want to be Gay Talese, and I wasn't a good enough writer anyway. Instead I kept the raw mp3 recordings and promised myself we'd do it later.

We didn't speak much, but when there was a minor fracas over some comments I made about why the piece went to Comics Alliance instead of its original home, he stood up for me immediately. We caught up briefly, and that was it. Years passed. We decided not to carry the Watchmen books at Bergen, and word got back to Darwyn and Marsha, and I was too lost in my own head to realize how that might make them feel, something I didn't even pick up on until a few years ago, when we saw each other again at TCAF. I'm ashamed that I never reached out to him before I sat down on some useless MoCCA panel to say we were going to do that to a pack of assholes who didn't care about comics in the first place. In that moment, Darwyn deserved to be treated with more respect than I gave him. He deserved a heads up, even if I disagreed with him, because he had disagreed with me multiple times before that and had addressed it with me immediately. I apologized a bunch at, and after, that TCAF show. But a late apology really isn't worth that much. It isn't worth anything at all.

I am not part of his circle of friends, i'm not a close associate. But I will say that I saw him with those people, and I know that he loved them dearly, and they loved him right back. He was a funny smartass, and I think those are the best kinds of people in the world, and I think there are not enough of them. I wish I had done a better job of being the kind of person to him that he was to me. I will never forget the time I got to spend with him, and how much fun it all was. 

Thanks Darwyn. God bless you too.

 

Following on the heels of Darwyn Cooke‘s bestselling adaptation of “The Hunter,” this week sees the release of “The Outfit,” the third book in Donald Westlake’s legendary Parker series of crime novels. A whirlwind book that sees the inscrutable criminal facing off against the organized crime of 1963, Cooke’s “Outfit” picks up right where “The Hunter” left off. Cooke’s iconic interpretations of Parker run riot across the page, maintaining the same visual blunt force trauma the series is known for, and his experiments in layout and design choices will startle even the most seasoned veteran of the man’s work.

In this 18,000-word interview with ComicsAlliance, Cooke talks at length about the inspiration behind his startling visual choices, the influences that bring his Parker to life, the difficulty inherent in adapting the work of a personal hero, his response to the “retro-guy” criticisms, his future comics projects, and, yes, even more.

Tucker Stone: Let’s start things off by talking about the look of the book. Are you sticking with the same watercolor and brush methods you were using for the color in “The Hunter”?

Darwyn Cooke: Yeah, I don’t intend to try and reinvent the wheel. I want the look for these books to remain consistent across all four of them. That’s why it took so long before I first set brush to paper, because I wanted it to be something that would last through all of them. You know how you can look at something like the first twenty issues of “Madman,” and you can see [Mike] Allred’s evolution as an artist? You can see when he gets hot for Dave Stevens, you can see when he’s really grooving on [Alex] Toth or [Dan] DeCarlo, and that’s really cool, a fun journey. But the alternative could be something like Ho Che Anderson’s “King,” which, while it’s a f*cking great book, it took a long time for him to get it done. And there were so many long gaps in between that it ends resulting in a lot of stylistic disparity. I think that detracts from the book somewhat.

You have to be confident, but you have to be consistent. And the Parker books aren’t about me finding a new way to draw a f*cking revolver. It’s about designing a visual shorthand that best tells this type of story.

TS: I’d like to talk about the point in “The Outfit” where you start to break it up into the different styles, to tell the various heist stories, like the crime magazine, the men-in-suits, and the — is it okay to call it the “art deco” part for the horse racing stuff? I know you utilized a few different styles when you did “The Hunter,” but I felt like this was far more drastic.

DC: Sure. It’s the kind of approach that I never would have thought I could have applied. But I realized when I was going into that part of the book that the the stuff outside of the Parker narrative, the parts with all of the robberies — it was all the same thing. You know? Guys show up and steal shit. That was going to become incredibly repetitive, over the course of the four or five robberies. There’s good things in them, but what made each one of them unique was Westlake’s love of process. He was really into the way the rackets themselves worked. That’s what was fascinating. He spends all that time, breaking down how the New York numbers racket actually worked. The robbery isn’t really that important, because we already know how that works: the guys use cunning, daring, weapons and psychology to steal a bunch of money. Where the money came from–that’s way more interesting.

TS: Chasing that dime, from the housewife all the way to the outfit’s backroom.

DC: It’s pure Westlake. That’s how that chapter opens up: “You take one dime.” Besides that, he explains the whole bookie system, how layoff bookies worked. Once it occurred to me that this, these explanations, were what was fascinating about the jobs, I started thinking that it would be nice to distinguish each job.

I hate to try and give people the impression that I pulled things out of thin air. Here goes: My favorite comic book of this century was probably “Ice Haven.” I’ve got a lot of admiration for the way that Daniel Clowes pulled that story together, using all those different approaches. Using that as a jumping off point, I thought about what I could do, stylistically, to approach each of the heists differently. And when I looked at the way Westlake broke down all of the scams, I started thinking about charts and numbers, graphics that put all of that narrative across, so that people could really understand it in simple terms. 

At first I thought that I’d just tweak the style I was using. I’ll do this one with an open line. I’ll do this one in pencil. But when I sat down and started screwing around, and I realized that it was still going to be the same shapes, it was still going to be the same thing. That’s when I made the move to take things towards what you see there now. The inspiration behind the individual heists were sources and artists that were popular at the time… Noel Sickles spot illustrations for Reader’s Digest for the illustrated text portion, and a take-off on UPA animation and the Hanna Barbera house style for the airport/suitcoat scam.

I knew I’d taken it as far as I could go when I got to the men in the suits, as drawn by Hanna-Barbera. It was like — wow, this is as far as you can push something like this.

TS: Oh yeah, the nose on that guy. Those noses come straight from the little guys who would show up as the comic foil against those fruit characters. Even the way they walk, with their little kneeless legs.

DC: Hell yeah. Hanna-Barbera is just a commercial distillation of the UPA style from the 50’s. So it was stylistically appropriate for the book.

On top of that, it’s probably the funniest and most absurd of the heists. The idea of these guys, with suits full of money and a big guy just getting on a plane with a gun… It just felt like, “What the hell. Go for it.” And then, by the next one, I made a decision to pull right back, to get closer to the style I used for the book so that the reader doesn’t get too uncomfortable.

TS: And lead them right back into the Parker narrative. I do have to say, if I had a complaint, that last heist has my only one. That’s the part of the book where Westlake has that line, “They believed in machine guns.” I love that line.

DC: Hey man, a lot of good lines end up on the floor! For what it’s worth, I spent hundreds of hours with this prose, and losing any of it can be really heartbreaking. It’s very difficult in that aspect, because he didn’t waste words. It’s not like there’s a lot to cut. But when it’s a scene involving physical action, you know, I have to step away from the narrative. I figure it’s my job to visually translate the narrative, and let his dialogue shine through. But in the scenes where I set up the narrative to carry a flashback, or carry a sequence… There’s not a lot of adaptation to be done. A little prudent editing, but his prose is perfect.

TS: What was it like performing plastic surgery on Parker visually so soon after coming up with him? Did Donald ever mention anybody besides Jack Palance, any ideas for what a post-chop Parker should look like?

DC: Palance was Westlake’s only visual reference. When I changed Parker, the idea was always to use plastic surgery as a metaphor for his emotional regression. He’s meant to look like a rawer, more stripped down version of himself. There was no one specific in mind here — it was more an exercise in imagining what could be done to alter the face I’d already designed. I thought about the surgical procedure back in 1962. Chemical peeling and less nuanced procedures just took my imagination to a more cut up, severe looking version of the man from “The Hunter.” His jaw, and most importantly, his eyes, are the same. The rest is meant to reflect a man drained of things like remorse and compassion. A loveless, unadorned man.

Tucker Stone: There are only a few more days before the world gets a taste of “The Outfit.” How are you handling things?

Darwyn Cooke: Man, I’m forcing myself to relax. It’s always a weird week, that last week before a book drops. You’ve been done with it for a couple months, but you still don’t know if it’s any good or not yet.

TS: Who has seen it so far?

DC: Some of the usual suspects. My editor, Scott Dunbier, as well as everyone at IDW. George Gustines at the New York Times, Geoff Boucher at the LA Times. Everybody in f*cking Britain.

TS: Yeah, I saw that reviews had started pumping out of there. I’m guessing that wasn’t planned?

DC: Nope! Over here, Diamond holds the actual release a week so that bookstores can have a fair shake, because bookstores get it a week later. That apparently didn’t get through to Britain.

TS: Selling them early in Britain still has to be a better problem than what happened when The Hunter was released in the US.

DC: Yeah, I know. When “The Hunter” came out, it was right around Cinco De Mayo and they had one of those “heightened terrorist activity” alerts going on. So the container with the f*cking shipment of books was stuck in the port. They held it for “inspection”, and we didn’t have copies of the book for the first ten days. Meanwhile, there’s the New York Times review sending people looking, and nobody could get a copy. Hopefully we’ll have what we need this time.

TS: And after that, there was a pretty long period of time between when the first printing sold out and the second printing arrived.

DC: Yeah, nobody expected what happened there. Nobody did. We literally printed 40% of the pre-orders as overage, which is pretty unusual. Over at DC, they usually stick to a 10% overage. Ted [Adams, IDW’s CEO] took a pretty courageous investment by overprinting the way he did, but they were gone within a week. Nobody expected that. We had to start all over again in Korea. That delay hurt too.

TS: Do you know how much you overprinted this time?

DC: Hopefully enough, right?

TS: Well, and you hope people know what they can sell this time.

DC: Yeah, I don’t know how they factor out their thresholds or what they expect. You just want to have copies in stock. At the same time, selling out in a quantity you didn’t expect isn’t a bad thing. [Laughs] What’s most important is that the sales are enough to make it viable to continue publishing them. It certainly isn’t going to make me rich, but that’s not what I care about. I just want it to be viable.

TS: You’re not saying that the success of “The Outfit” determines whether or not IDW will publish a third and fourth book, are you?

DC: Oh no, IDW is committed to all four. It was just a question of whether I was going to have to draw the f*cking Flash or something to make a living while I do them. [Laughs] That’s the rub. It’s all good.

TS: You used the phrase “we can only do four” when you spoke with Tom Spurgeon prior to the release of “The Hunter.” Does that mean you can only do four books because that’s all you agreed to with the Westlake family, or that you only want to do four?

DC: I don’t know that necessarily. One of the big things about this kind of work is not committing to too much. Right now, I feel like he’s a character I could stick with for a long time. At the same time, I’ve got two more of these books to do. My plan is to finish the fourth one for my 50th birthday. At that point, I don’t know what my head space will be like. If it’s still chugging along, I’d certainly be amenable to doing more. Maybe I’ll do agree to do another two of them five years later. I’m not sure what it means yet, but I feel like there’s a big shift going on as I come up on this milestone. I’ll have to wait and see how Parker fits into that. Maybe I’ll do The Mourner in 2448 someday, I don’t know. I can tell you that it’s not wearing on me, working on this character. I can see him being a part of what I do for a long time. Maybe not constantly, but he’s going to be there.

TS: What’s the nature of your relationship with the Westlake family on the project? Do you deal with them at all, with the story or anything?

DC: Well, no. They seemed very happy with the way “The Hunter” turned out. It was a really proud day for me when the New York Times covers it. See, in Donald’s house, that was the paper. Shortly before he died, I had linked him to a bunch of the press that the project was getting, and he wrote me back and said, “That’s nice. Tell me when the New York Times covers it.” So the day they did cover it, his wife Abby emailed me to tell me how thrilled she was. That meant a hell of a lot. 

They’ve been great about this one too. They signed off on “The Outfit” with complete support. They haven’t changed anything, but they don’t really get involved on that level. I think we have their trust.

TS: How did it differ doing this one without Donald Westlake around? [Westlake passed away in December of 2008] 

DC: It sucked. I really relished the fellowship, that he was going to be able to guide and collaborate with me and help put it together on a certain level. It was a drag. There’s certain things I came up against while working on “The Outfit”, things that were in the book that I definitely thought would benefit from a change. I wish he’d been around to discuss those. I think I could have convinced him, because the changes were based on character, on key things that were based on the characters. It would have been wonderful for him to have been able to provide the dialog for the new scenes. Who knows. I have no idea whether he would have liked “The Hunter” or hated it, right? If he’d been down with what was going on, than I would have loved to work with him on this one.

And now, every time I step away from the book, what I’ve got in front of me…I do my best, but I can’t help but feel that there’s a certain amount of subtraction. It’s a little less pure, because I ended up with scenes that I wrote, and I’m writing HIS characters. I can’t help but think they would have been better with his help.

TS: Did you tell talk with Donald about those feelings when you were working on “The Hunter”?

DC: I didn’t want to be a pest. He was an older guy, you know? I tried to think about it as if it were me, if there was some young guy making, God forbid, New Frontier motion comics or something, and he was a total fanboy…that would drive me up the wall. So I just said to him, look: as far as I’m concerned, if you’re wondering, I think the books should take place in the period in which they’re written. That’s going to allow me to maintain as much of the prose as possible. The minute I update these stories for cell phones and alarm systems, all that kind of stuff, I’ll have to re-write the entire books. I’ve got to maintain as much of the prose as possible. Maybe you can help me out when we get into a spot, to re-write and fill the gaps. 

That seemed to make him happy. From that point on, his tone seemed different, you know? He just seemed a lot more on board after that, he understood that I was working more as an editor than a writer, that I just wanted to bring this work to a new medium. It’s not like I read the books and said “F*ck it! How about twenty killers and a big f*cking gun at the end of the Hunter? They’re flying out with guns blazing!!” Anybody can do that. “He needs a dog! He needs a girlfriend!”

TS: Hey look, the Punisher showed up!

DC: Yeah! That’s where adaptations fall apart. When they can’t resist that kind of stuff. “Lee Marvin’s gotta have a girl. Let’s have him f*ck Angie Dickinson. We’re paying her this much to be here.” Sticking to what Donald did, as much as I can, that’s the way I had to go. With “The Outfit”, there were things I played with, but when I look forward to “The Score”, it all seems pretty straight ahead. It’s all in a neat little box, there’s no real continuity to deal with.

TS: The book doesn’t have the words “f*cked up” in it, does it?

DC: No, that’s added. I don’t go overboard with it, but these books were all written at a time in an era when you just couldn’t use that language. So when I have a scene where I’m writing a little bit of dialog, I’ll usually throw one salty word in. There’s maybe four of those spread amongst the books, just to give it a flavor. The complete absence of them seems somewhat suspect. Just using it here and there as an accent reminds the reader, that yeah, that’s who these guys are.

TS: These books do seem to be as close to a pure adaptation as the stories have ever had.

DC: Absolutely. There are things–well, spoilers ahoy! We’re only doing four books, and Donald had twenty books to roll out that huge cast of characters. We only have the four. And in the next book, “The Score,” we have twelve guys to deal with. 

So, I’m looking at that scene in “The Outfit,” where Parker stops at that hotel all the criminals used, so he can spread the word about hitting the outfit. It’s a fine scene as it is, but you know what, I’d rather insinuate characters like Grofield into the book earlier, so I can familiarize readers with him, Dan Wycza as well. If I can introduce the characters to the readers now, and give them a sense of ownership, they can come into the third book and recognize a couple of the guys from the last book. And because there’s only four books, there’s a couple of spots in the Outfit’s original text where the specific characters Donald used weren’t really important, so why not put a couple of guys in the comic that will be showing up in the next one?

TS: I just read “The Handle”, the island casino one, and I really got into Grofield, almost as much as Parker. So turning that page in your Outfit, and seeing that character washing off the sign, bullshitting around at his goofy theater — I loved that guy, I felt like you really nailed him.

DC: Yeah, I didn’t catch him the way I wanted too. I wanted Burt Lancaster in Vera Cruz. I got Burt Lancaster in From Here To Eternity. He’s not swarthy looking enough. I want Grofield just a tad swarthier, not quite as clean cut as he ended up. That was just a first thought. In the next book, I’ll try to do better by him.

TS: I’m curious about Grofield — you changed his name just a little bit? You took the “i” out?

DC: You know what, I’ll just cop to it right now. That was a complete mistake on my part! Just a blunder, a total blunder. And it’s funny, because there’s a website, The Violent World of Parker, and Trent gave it a quick review. He nails the reason for it, he said “he changed Grofield to Grofeld. I can’t imagine why, but I don’t think it will bother many people because that’s how most people say it anyway.” And that’s exactly what it was! I’m just hand-lettering onto my page, and in my head, it’s Grofeld. Nobody caught it. So yeah, it was just a complete screw up, and I’ll just cop to it now rather than come up with an elaborate lie.

TS: When did you actually catch it?

DC: When Trent pointed it out.

TS: [Laughs]

DC: See, because to me, it just looked right! [Laughing] On some sort of spastic level, I’m dyslexically lettering it over and over again, so it just looked right over and over again. I guess now the big question is whether it becomes Grofield or stays as Grofeld in the next book.

TS: What went into the changes you made with Bett Harrow’s appearance?

DC: I wanted to leave it open. It’s part of this game I’m playing…is the casual reader going to be worried about how important she’s going to be? Is it because some of us who know the book and know the way these things are put together that we think “she’s there for a reason”? I don’t really know. I just wanted to leave it open, I guess. And I didn’t like the fact that the Outfit ended with Parker and Handy acting like Archie and Reggie. It’s basically them going “Off to another adventure. Together!”

TS: “Handy, you’re my best friend.”

DC: I’ll tell you one thing: I didn’t want to end the story with him going back to Bett, because that really implies something. That was important to me, so that’s why I decided to go with that scene in Lake Tahoe for the end. We infer that he’s going back to Miami, but I don’t really want to imply that he’s in a big hurry to get back to Bett. There could be a room full of women right down that road. Maybe he’ll hang there for a bit. Parker needs to be alone. 

I don’t know how far we should go into this, but — should the story really close the way that it does? With Parker leaving Quill alive? A guy who works for the bosses, and now he’s the only one who knows what Parker looks like? Would Parker let that guy live? I don’t think so. That would have been the one thing where I would’ve been brave enough to say something to Donald. There’s nothing about Parker that explains that decision. In “The Jugger,” he goes up to kill an old man who is a friend of his. It’s hard for me to imagine a guy like that letting somebody like Quill live. It’s so wildly out of character. 

TS: And Quill doesn’t show up again later on in the series, he never uses the information he has against Parker in later books.

DC: No. If he had, I would’ve had to leave it alone.

TS: So you’re just tying off a loose end. Same thing Parker would do.

 

“Darwyn’s adaptation of ‘The Hunter’ mirrors its main character: tough, no-nonsense, and deadly — no, elegantly — efficient. Not a wasted line anywhere, in the prose or the drawing, it’s a high-wire act. Darwyn was able to take Westlake’s novel and make me feel as though it were always a comic. It’s seamless. How many comics can you really, truly say that about? Maybe a handful, and none of them are also adaptation. Darwyn’s ability to digest and assimilate the source material AND stay true to it is nothing short of astonishing.”
-Cliff Chiang

Tucker Stone: How long does it take to put these books together? What’s your process like?

Darwyn Cooke: Well, the process, the part where I’m actually producing the books is shorter than most people would think. But a hell of a lot of time goes into figuring out what I’m going to do before I get started with the actual drawing. Like, killing that scene in “The Outfit” where Parker and Handy buy a getaway car from the hillbilly — I didn’t just decide “okay, strike that scene.” There was a week of back and forth on that, character design, exploring the scene because it’s got a lot of possibilities. Page count wise, is it less important than something else? Yes it is. It still takes time to make that choice. Figuring out the heist section, things like that, it can all take an inordinate amount of time.

But when I’m more or less fully prepared, I sit down and I do what I’m calling “live off the floor.” That’s penciling straight ahead, right onto the boards, lettering it and inking it, no white-out. If there’s a problem with something, I black it in. I’m trying my hardest to execute the artwork the same way Westlake made the scenes work. He sat down everyday until it was time to finish it. And then the next day, he’d sit down and do it again. He didn’t work off of an outline.

TS: Yeah, I’ve read enough of those books now to grasp how crazy that is. Making it up as he went along — that’s just insane to me, it’s amazing.

DC: Yeah! It’s stupefying. To a great degree, I’m trying to replicate that method myself, to leave it up to me and the brush. It leads to good and bad things, that method of leaving things as they stand. Anyway, that’s the long set-up. The answer is – -three and a half, four months of actual work. Before that, there’s six months where I’m doing thumbnails and character designs, re-reading the book, and watching Robert Duvall [in “The Outfit“].

TS: Of course. You know, I think that’s why I didn’t think too much about the loss of that hillbilly car scene. It’s one of the parts of the Duvall “Outfit” that’s they completely nailed. It’s so perfect.

DC: [Laughs] Yeah, it was definitely gone only because of length. Blending in the “Getaway Face” stuff, something had to go. And while that sequence is one of the better written chapters, it’s one of the least necessary. The guy gets a car. There’s not much else about the character that we aren’t going to see in other spots.

TS: How did you feel about “The Outfit” movie? I felt like it just wasn’t “my” Parker.

DC: I never pictured Parker bald, with a belly, and wearing a wife-beater.

TS: Or sticking with a girl after she betrays him.

DC: Well, Westlake really enjoyed that movie.

TS: Oh, it’s a cool movie, don’t get me wrong. All those John Flynn movies from that period are. I don’t know why they’re all unavailable, but those movies are all awesome. That period of time where he made “The Outfit,” “Rolling Thunder” and “Defiance” — the guy couldn’t miss.

DC: It’s funny, because all the guys I know that are say, compadres, we’re all within about five years of each other’s ages, and there’s a dense band of us. And we all grew up in that era of cinema. It was awesome. To be 13 or 14, nihilistic, to have fascist responses to violent action — that’s fantastic! That was a great time to be a young guy going to see action movies. They weren’t cluttered up with a lot of regret, or emotion.

TS: Oh yeah, and they aren’t catalogs. That’s one of the most noticeable thing to me when I watch the action movies of today. John Flynn movies were never about the clothes they wear, they’re not about being attractive, nobody is styling their hair before they get down to business. It’s the way Westlake described Parker to you, that they’re “carpenters.” They go out to perform jobs.

DC: Exactly. Warren Oates in “Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia.” [Laughs] The kind of guy who actually goes into a department store and actually thinks that white suit, and those white shoes–that those are the shit.

TS: Those sunglasses too!

DC: [Laughs]

TS: How about Warren Oates in “Cockfighter,” going up against Harry Dean Stanton? Nobody is going to make a movie like that anymore, nobody is going to play that kind of story seriously. It’s all irony and satire, there’s no willingness to commit to the idea of taking cockfighters seriously, telling stories about guys who care only about using birds to settle scores.

DC: Yeah, I have hope for that Direct-to-DVD market one day, for it to be the place where that happens again. Because you know, there was some great shit, movies like “Pocket Money,” with Lee Marvin and Paul Newman, or “Emperor of the North.” That sh*t would never get made today. For good reason, maybe. But I’ve always enjoyed these things, where you see people trying to build stuff, really reaching for it.

TS: There’s a purity of creation to those movies. Sam Peckinpah was able to get away with it after a while, when people got scared of him. He was a lunatic cokehead, but he had that kind of commitment to his own vision, the power to force his own ideas out there. That kind of power doesn’t seem to exist anymore.

DC: I don’t know how true that is. I think there’s a half-life to the story, that the truth is classified for a certain amount of time. Every now and then, they’ll let it sneak out. Did you read Jane Hamsher’s book about the making of “Natural Born Killers”?

TS: The book about working with Oliver Stone, where they get really high and head out to find locations?

DC: Yeah, it’s the middle of the night, they’re in a limousine, they eat a bunch of mushrooms and go to a Kentucky Fried Chicken. I don’t know if it’s really that different anymore. I think everybody just keeps their mouth shut about it until you start to falter. You know how society is, it’s like Stephen King’s “Long Walk“, where they wait until they see the guy stumble a bit, slow down… and then everybody pounces. [Laughs] So who knows. One day Oliver Stone will be on CNN, defending himself against a whole rash of crazy sh*t.

TS: What’s the promotional cycle that you have to go through for something like “The Outfit”? How would you say it differs from what you had to do for “The Hunter”? It’s clear from your conversation with Tom Spurgeon that you were suspicious of whether or not the book was going to find an audience, whether or not people were going to take a chance on a $24.99 hardcover, that kind of thing.

DC: Yeah, you certainly go into it with your convictions and your instincts right? I didn’t want to break out of what we refer to as the mainstream just with a creator-owned book that might have done pretty well but wouldn’t have been financially viable. I’ve got a deliberate way I’m going through this, and I knew in my gut, that if there’s one thing that I love, that’s really f*cking great, that really turns me on and probably hit the strata of readers that wouldn’t maybe pick up one of my comics necessarily, the Parker stuff was the thing. It seemed to me like a perfect fit, because you’re taking a readership — a very committed readership — from an author and a genre, and you’re bringing them into what YOU do. And I thought, sh*t man. I think this can work! But you never know, right? It’s all subjective. It’s all in your own head. So yeah, there’s a certain amount of concern about it. 

As far as promoting it, IDW did a hell of a job with “The Hunter”, in terms of getting it out there, and making sure it had that profile, and enticing retailers. I think they did an amazing job. And — I think the notice for the most part — other than the Spurgeon interview, and a couple other little things… I’m not on the net chatting a lot. I’m an old man, so I’m going to use an old phrase here that I learned from Warren Ellis one time on a gramophone. Signal To Noise. There’s just so much stuff out there that I’ve sort of — I’ve learned from a few key people, and a lot of good friends that sometimes, it’s better not to be talking all the time. That way, when you do, people might actually want to listen to you.

TS: Don’t flood the sites with repetitive boilerplate interviews, boilerplate press releases.

DC: That’s sort of where a lot of the frustration came from, Tucker. Site A would see that Site B got ten questions. So the kneejerk was to email me to get an interview, and then they’d send me back the same ten questions. And you know, it’s like — it’s already out there. Just go cut and paste the other one. I much prefer to have a more involved discussion about it. People who want to look like pretty pictures, there’s pretty pictures to go along with the article. There’s always a soundbite to take and put on Youtube and make my life a living hell for ten days.

TS: Yeah. [Laughs]

DC: [Laughs] Yeah. But at least it’s within the context of a larger piece.

TS: I know when IDW sent out those advance hardcover review copies of “The Hunter,” that was almost as big a thing amongst the people who got those as it was to actually read the book. Nobody does that sort of thing. You might get a copy from DC Comics of something that shows up in a manila folder and is all beat up, there’s those advance black and white proofs, but for something that unique to show up — that was pretty audacious.

DC: Yeah, again… This is why I’ve never been a company guy. I’m a person guy. And that person is [IDW editor] Scott Dunbier. He was able to look at what I was doing, and see everything I’m vibing, and I’m saying, “Okay, I want this gauge paper, I want this color, I want it to look like a book, I want the kid in Barnes and Noble to open the book and put it in the mystery section, because that’s where it looks like it belongs.” And I think Scott picked up on that, and he’s thinking that if you’re reading it like a book, we should do an advance review copy, because that’s an old school book thing. So… fantastic. 

In many, many ways, Scott is responsible for all that attention we got. The idea of doing a press conference in San Diego to announce “The Hunter,” on Wednesday, as soon as it opens — nobody does that! And so the press were able to go to a conference, for them. And of course, that motivates them to want to get it up on the site, right away. And we sort of stole the news cycle for the show, by getting out in front of it. With something that’s really easy to do, but nobody thinks to do it. I put all the energy into the book, and he comes up with all these great ideas on how to push it.

TS: It’s funny, because one of the things that I hear from a lot of cartoonists now is that they refer to their publishers merely as printers. They’re not publishers. The stuff you’re describing — that’s what the publisher should be doing, right?

DC: That’s an oversimplification, but… to a certain degree, there’s a bit of truth to that. But a certain type of publisher attracts a certain type of editor.

TS: Right.

DC: That just hasn’t been the case for me at IDW. Ted’s got a vision, and an approach to the way he does things. Conversely, he’s got an ability to let Scott do his thing. But definitely, I know from a creator’s standpoint, their editor is their number one guy. He’s their guy.

TS: You were already talking about merging the “Getaway Face” story into one chapter of “The Outfit” months before “The Hunter” was even released. Was that something you had realized while working on “The Hunter”? As soon as you were finished? 

DC: No, the original idea was just to do the first four books, because there is a continuity to them. By “The Mourner,” the continuity is pretty much done too. You can pick up any of the books after those four and more or less read them on their own. There are neat ways they connect though, like the Grofield book that comes out of “Slayground“, where they share the first chapter but then it goes off and takes on a completely different dimension. They locked things together, but never in a way that would keep you from enjoying them on their own.

So the idea was to do the first four. But when you think about it, you think: Sh*t man, that would kind of be a shame! Because there are stronger, more definitive books. What’s the point of the first four? To get a clear picture of the character. So what’s necessary to do that? One of the reasons I can be considered difficult to work with is that I think it’s a fluid situation right up until they switch on the printing press. Which is to say, better ideas come along and take time to incorporate. Nothing’s necessarily carved in stone. We said we’d do the first four, but let’s take a step back here. So then there was a gentle period over a few months, talking people through that idea and why it made more sense. “The Hunter” came out, it did well, and by then everybody felt like “whatever you think is best.”

TS: When you say talking to people, do you mean IDW? The Westlakes?

DC: Yeah. Talking to Scott, this gets through to Abby and Paul [Westlake], and that’s probably done by Susanna over at Literary Management. But again, I think I was blessed in this regard, I feel real lucky. Donald was supportive of this, and everybody was aware of that. It wasn’t broke, it didn’t need fixing, so they just let it go. Hell, even at this point, I’m wondering: should I do “Slayground” in 24 pages? Like a bullet to the head? Do “Butcher’s Moon” as the last one?

TS: Wow.

DC: “Butcher’s Moon” is the closest to literature. I definitely see why he couldn’t write another one for a long time after it. It’s sublime. “Slayground,” although it is tied for my favorite because of its virtuoso nature, the premise behind it… “Butcher’s Moon” completes the story started in “Slayground.” I think it picks up a plot point from Slayground and finishes up the initial run. And I’m wondering if I shouldn’t finish up on the last book. Because “Slayground” is one of those stories that could be done in a short number of pages and be incredibly effective. There’s just not much — you know the premise, right?

TS: Trapped in the carnival, doesn’t have a lot of ammo, right?

DC: Well, it’s incredibly involved. By this point in the series, you have to wonder if Westlake’s a bit of a sadist. Right? With what he’s put Parker through.

TS: Oh yeah, “The Sour Lemon Score” is… Jesus. 

DC: Exactly.

TS: When he’s sitting by the pool, and the guy across from him gets blown away. The rape. It’s so over the top.

DC: “Deadly Edge” is over the top too. That’s the one right before “Slayground.” I think they reflect the times a bit, those [Sam] Peckinpah years. Tom Jane, barking at the moon.

“It was Archie Goodwin, in the course of weaning me away from science fiction and shoving crime fiction down my throat, who first introduced me to Donald Westlake and Richard Stark. There have been a number of attempts to bring Parker to comics, but all fell apart, so I remain mystified that it took so long, and delighted that it finally happened in so compelling and well made a package.

Darwyn’s take on the material certainly isn’t mine, but it’s wonderful–I love the source material, and I love what this Canadian has done with what I regard as a quintessentially United States’ian crime franchise.”
-Howard Chaykin

Tucker Stone: Well, if you’re going to tighten something up, it’s clear that the thing Westlake liked to tighten up in those books was the violence. He’d lay out everything that goes into a job; you’d see the crew walking into those rooms, catch them picking up those guns. The one that I’ve read a few times now that sticks out is “The Seventh,” the way they spend the entire book building up to the one confrontation, when Parker is finally going to catch up with the impotent ex-boyfriend. All the stuff that goes into it — the kid ruining the heist, the entire gang turning on each other and dying, and then he finally finds the guy. Chases him up flights of stairs, dodging those sheets of glass, and then Parker’s standing there, and the guy’s crying, and… one sentence. Parker executes him. There’s no catchphrase, there’s no jokes. It’s just a task to be carried out.

Darwyn Cooke: Yeah, there were a couple of critics who referred to “The Hunter” as “bloodless.” That the violence is antiseptic. I don’t think those people have read the book. It’s a reflection of the character, of Westlake, that they never dwell on this stuff. Even at the end of “The Outfit,” I make a lot more out of the death than there is in the book. In the book, Parker pulls the trigger, the guy clutches his chest, and he slumps over. Those moments of violence are non-events in the book. They’re simply there to punctuate or catalyze another set of hurdles. That really works in the books, but to a certain degree in the graphic novels, you want to feel these guys get shot. It’s why I have him strangle Mal Resnick in nine panels, blocked off in a wide shot. It’s because those scenes are completely emotionally dislocated in the books. They never have anything to do with emotion. There’s no passion behind them, it’s ruthlessness and efficiency. I didn’t want to get sexy with it. [Laughs]

TS: The one thing that gets repeated throughout the books, besides structural stuff, is that he consistently mentions the dangers of enjoying that kind of violence. Most of the time when it comes up, it’s about torture, but he’s regularly presented as being someone who has no craving for violence. It’s not why he’s in this business.

DC: Again, this is the benefit of having a few exchanges with Donald. One of his concerns was that I understood that Parker doesn’t operate out of anger. He never commits a violent act out of anger. He does it because it’s the expedient thing to do. It’s the practical thing, a survival mechanism. “The Hunter” is the place where he expels all of that violent energy, and from there forward, you’re watching an emotionally dislocated guy making decisions based on his survival and what’s best for him. There’s no point in glorifying the violence, because it isn’t the point. He’s kind of like Howard Roark, another character that I dig. Parker’s just f*cking oblivious to what you’re feeling. He doesn’t think “bad” or “good” of you. He doesn’t think of you at all.

TS: I don’t remember which book it is, but there’s one with a girl who can’t get over the fact that he constantly views her with no emotional reaction. She needles him, he doesn’t react. He doesn’t love her, hate her, anything. He’s completely numb to her.

DC: I think that’s a big part of why he’s such a compelling character. Any reader can template anything they want onto him. Even a contemporary reader, even though there’s a lot of misogyny being templated on him right now. And that’s valid. They don’t shy away from that in the books. But he remains a compelling character, even in different social times.

TS: It’s something that comes up a lot. That’s a consistent fascination, it reminds me of the way you described young men having fascist tendencies. Those kind of characters, masculine characters that don’t permit any type of emotional reaction to interfere continue to engage audiences. Characters that aren’t faking the disconnect, because they’re fictional, so they don’t have to fake it. People in charge of not having feelings. They don’t get upset, or lustful, or angry — emotional states don’t dictate their behavior. The guys you see in every Michael Mann movie ever made.

DC: There you go, that flips my switch. The movie that changed the way I see all this shit was “Thief.” I saw “Thief” in the theater when I was very young, and it just blew my f*cking head apart. That Tangerine Dream music, the cinematography, the whole approach to it. Some of the dialog feels a little purple now, like when you’re re-reading “Dark Knight Returns.” But man, that f*cking movie re-energized my entire interest in this stuff.

TS: The heist in that is your classic Westlake style heist. Ripped off from reality, copied as realistically as possible. Mann apparently hired real safecrackers to program that scene, the one where they burn through the vault with that…I can’t remember what you call it. Some kind of carbon fiber, maybe?

DC: Yeah, the burning bar. It’s an arc-welding stick, but it’s gigantic. But man, that guy. He’s used that like three times. I loved his show “Crime Story.” I loved it.

TS: Even in things like “Last of the Mohicans” or “Jericho Mile,” when Mann’s out of his comfort zone, he always returns to those same Stark-like characters. Tasks are treated as craft, everything is technical. His guys always sacrifice emotional life in the service of whatever it is they do.

DC: Well, these characters make decisions in a fair exchange within themselves. It’s saying “I’m not a good enough person to be true to those things.” So they’ll be true to the one thing, they find that one thing, whether it’s sheriff, ordained minister, or safecracker. I know that, for myself, a huge part of what fascinates and attracts me to these books is the notion of a guy who has figured out how to operate parallel to society. Without having to take a lot of the shit that comes upon him. To me, that was a huge part of the attraction. I love the notion of Parker, this guy who is smart enough to have this life set up in Miami and he just ventures out three or four times a year to do his thing. And then he comes back quietly, to live his life. Outside of all the bullshit that everybody else has to deal with. I thought that was an incredible concept when I was younger and just reading the books. The kind of guy who doesn’t answer to anybody but himself–I just found that admirable.

Again, he’s a fictional character.

TS: That’s gotta be part of the reason it remains attractive though, that’s why it survives. You look at the world today, and it’s a place where being a jack of all trades is the goal, you’re supposed to have your toe in everything, to have a relationship with everything available. Characters like Parker, living outside the mainstream, wholly committed to one thing, to being a perfect heist man — it’s against what’s expected, it’s become an ideal. In a way, I feel like Grofield is more representative of who we are now, someone who has and purses all kinds of different interests.

DC: I don’t know that what you’re saying is necessarily true. I think Grofield represents what any normal human being would get involved in this for. They want to live the life they want to live, and this is how they finance it. To them, that’s just their vocation. Their passion is racing cars, performing in theater. With Parker–there’s nothing outside of the job. That’s what makes him the backbone of the story, what holds it together. He does the job and he goes and sits on the beach until he gets too bored to sit on the beach. And then he goes and does another job. He’s got no real life outside of it. The other guys represent all of us, on one level or another.

TS: See, I think that what makes him more compelling to us. That he’s so inhumanly focused, whereas we’re bent to human distraction. That lack of life makes him “better” than the rest of them. He’s perfected the things that the rest of them can’t. Grofield is always gettting hurt, and Handy wants to open a diner. To all of that, Parker just shrugs. “We’ll see.”

DC: Oh, he sees all those things as a sign of weakness, but not because he’s superior. Again, the reason it’s seminal is explained in “The Hunter”. This is a guy who has been in love. He got up and got married. He had a honeymoon. He had friends. And what happens to him in that book wipes all of that out. So when he’s looking at Handy, when he’s looking at Alan [Grofield], it’s all through the prism of what you get if you don’t control that side of yourself. So yeah, any sort of human attachment for him is completely factored out.

TS: He already knows where those things are going to end up.

DC: Yeah, I think he views every relationship as a foregone conclusion. Another reason he’s so fascinating is because it’s impossible to see anything that he believes in. Other than his ability to take advantage of other people’s greed, his skill, his craft. You sit and think “there’s got to be more to this guy.” But Westlake was clever enough to leave that for you to think about.

TS: It’s similar to why Robert De Niro fails in “Heat.” He’s great at his job, alllows for nothing else, and then he falls apart when he tries to chase his revenge, get the girl, head off to the beach.

DC: Yeah, I gotta say…I feel like you youngsters talk about that movie as if you’ve discovered something, and I think you give it way too much credit. I remember sitting there thinking it was just a bloated statement, that it was just too long. And it’s miserable too, because there’s just no way that Al Pacino would’ve f*cking got him at the end! That movie ended the wrong way. Obviously, De Niro would’ve killed him dead in that little runway chase thing. The one that took an hour. God. Yeah, I’m not down with that one as much as other people.

TS: I’ll love that shoot-out in the streets forever.

DC: Oh yeah! Oh, the movie has some great stuff. But it’s too long.

TS: I’ll give you that it’s too long. But I have a hard time sh*t-talking movies I saw right after I got my driver’s license.

DC: Oh, yeah, I know. “Death Wish.” I could sh*t-talk that movie all day long.. but I really can’t. I loved it once, and it’s like an ex-wife, or girlfriend. What’s the point in sh*t-talking it? You loved it once.

Tucker Stone: After seeing the large format of “The Man With the Getaway Face” comic that you and IDW put out, I started to wonder if you’re going to end up with a bunch of new versions of this series down the line. Part of the culture nowadays seems to be a constant cycle of reproduction, reprinting and new formats. But when I look at these Parker books — they’re weighty, heavy books. There doesn’t seem to be any sacrifice, down to the designs on the actual book under the dust jackets, and I can’t help but hope that this is it. That there isn’t some cheapy softcover omnibus coming. These are the books, this is how much they weigh.

Darwyn Cooke: Oh god, Tucker Stone’s precious little life!

TS: Pretty much!

DC: [Laughing] Yeah, well. My editor is the guy who came up with the Absolute format. Scott loves nothing more than playing with the stuff after he gets his hands on it. So yes, much to your horror, you’ll probably see the thing in different formats and configurations. None of them will be done without the idea of making things special in a certain way. It’s not going to be cut-rate.

TS: Will it be your thing too? Do you get to have a complete hand in it?

DC: Scott is kind enough to give me a free hand. They send the books to Korea, and they do the proofreading, and the design department helps me with a few little things. But every page is designed by me, the covers are designed by me, the colors are picked by me.

TS: The prints on the endpapers?

DC: All of it. I used to be a graphic designer, so I can’t help myself. I tend to have a really strong idea of how I want the look and the feel, so it’s just easier for me to do it than to explain it some poor f*cking kid.

TS: What are your plans while you’re waiting to start on the next Parker book, “The Score”?

DC: Well, there’s a lot of stuff I get offered that is actually pretty good work, but its ground that I’ve already covered. So when something comes in and I haven’t done it, like — there’s nothing more fun then bashing out a pin-up of some cool looking characters. I just did a Thunder Agents variant cover for one of the issues of that relaunch, and hey: I would never draw a Thunder Agents book. But to draw them all once, sure. Great fun. “Weird War Tales” was a book that I loved as a kid, so Joey had me on the sentimental level. And it was kind of divorced from everything else, so I could do something fun and make it absurd. So yeah, you like to have those things come in. They’re nice little palate cleansers.

I can sort of tease the fact that I’m talking to DC about something ambitious. But things move at a glacial pace there, so it’s premature to get into. I hold out hope that we’ll all get to work together again. For me, it’s very important that I’ve factored out as many variables as possible before I lock into anything. I think it’s allowed me to work on quality stuff that’s at a certain level.

I’m not going to be working hard the next year. It’s going to be a lot of recharging, cutting down trees and painting. Hanging out with Miss Marsha. Right now, it feels like I did those two novels back to back. There was a little time in between, but it really felt like boom-boom-boom. So I want to take a step back, do a couple of other things. That’ll make me miss Parker. It sounds like an old shopworn cliche, but it’s a lot of fun to work on him. There’s very few days where it’s like “oh, f*ck me.”

TS: You’d talked about doing a digital strip at one point, right?

DC: Yeah, the next thing you see from me will be a digital book, in between “The Outfit” and “The Score”. I’m still trying to work it out, I’m doing a lot of research on it right now. Getting back up to speed on some things. I’m not sure how long it will be, but it will be exclusively digital for an indefinite period of time. That’s probably the number one thing I’m going to be concerned with. It will probably be 48 pages, a romance story. It’s got a bad ass plot driving it, but it’s definitely a big romance. That’s probably going to be my creative focus until I get around to doing “The Score,”

TS: Will it be through a publisher? Or Do you plan to set up a site and do it yourself?

DC: That’s what I’m exploring right now. There’s going to be a big announcement in New York about a big media concern getting involved in this stuff. But if you look at it, most of them are going through comiXology or something like that, basically middlemen. They take a piece. The question becomes “what do you get for that piece?” Do you get more exposure from being with them? More promotion? Is it more accessible to a broader audience? Because to me, that’s what it’s all f*cking about, trying to reach more people. Fighting this whole contraction that’s going on. Every project that I do now, it’s about that, how you reach more people. And so right now, I’m asking what would be the best way. I can do it direct, I could do it through comiXology and that’s certainly going to be enough for people who want my work, but what about the somebody else, who might not already know about it?

TS: It’s not about pleasing the people who are already at the party, but finding more people for the party. Not pulling the same money from the same group over and over again, expecting them to fund and support every comic that’s available.

DC: And that’s an almost impossible thing to do, within that market.

TS: You released “The Hunter” direct through the IDW app, right? How’d that go?

DC: I believe it’s available in a couple of different spots. People certainly haven’t any trouble accessing it in that way. I remember when the Transformers film came out, the IDW app was all over the top ten. The public doesn’t seem to be having trouble finding this stuff. With “The Hunter”, I think they did a really great job. I’m not objective, I look at it and know that it’s something other guys did — it’s not bad, but it’s not all mine.

TS: I’m curious to know if you’re interested in doing more stuff where yours is the only name in the credits, more work with your own characters, your own creations.

DC: To a certain degree, I don’t know if that’s important to me as it is to some. I think a lot of people around me find it a lot more important than I do. A lot of it too, if I’m brutally, sincerely honest is that I’ve got the opportunity to work with Donald Westlake, the writer, or Darwyn Cooke, the writer. That’s it, okay? I’ve always looked at myself as a director. I was a magazine art director, I was an agency art director, I’ve been a production designer, I was a storyboard artist and an animation director, and… I’ve never been that concerned about that notion of “sole creator.” I think more like a film director, I tend to see stories that I love, that I think would really work in the medium that I love. I explain this to [Ed] Brubaker all the time. You got a choice of writers, Richard Stark or Darwyn Cooke. 

So I don’t know. I do a lot of shorts, and I’ve certainly written up a lot of stuff like that. But there’s circumstances that come up, you know? When I’d finished my issue of “Solo” at DC, that was going to be it for quite a while. I was starting to put together a lot of stuff that I had in mind for myself, things that were all mine. And that’s when I got the call: “There’s this Will Eisner thing.”

And it’s the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. But it’s kind of a weird situation, because I can remember being in high school and tracing those panels. I can remember when I was younger, it used to give me a pain to think that I would never get to draw this character. Eisner’s the only one who gets to do it. And all those old memories are buried, and then they give you this call and it’s like “hey, we’re doing this”. Now I’m not just thinking about doing it, I’m thinking about what happens if I don’t do it, that somebody else will get a hold of it and do it, and ultimately, I end up taking on that responsibility, that challenge. Because it was tough.

That’s two years right there, that I hadn’t planned. But when you’re looking at something you love so much, and you know they’re going to pull the trigger on it no matter what, you end up involved. It sets you back a little bit, but during that time on “The Spirit,” I took a look at how things sell. What’s breaking out, what’s breaking through, and by the time I got to the position to go out on my own, I thought it would be smart to take somebody cool with me here. To work on the Stark books, the Parker stuff — I feel different, more like a film director than I do when I write a Batman story. Because there, I am writing it, even though it’s someone else’s character. But I actually have to sit down and plot it, conceive it. I consider the Parker books somewhat differently, and again, I’m hoping that I’ve built a certain readership over time that’ll follow me over, and hopefully it’ll attract a certain number of new readers, and hopefully, between all of these things, they’ll be enough readers to sustain what I do, if and when I get my act together. 

You gotta keep in my mind that you’re talking to a 47-year-old guy. I gotta have my sandwiches. My heat. My phone, my gasoline. I starved most of my adult life, but I’m at a point now where I have to consider my responsibilities to my wife, my life. I can’t just go off on a flyer on something that isn’t going to make any money for three or four years. It’s baby steps, I guess. And the other thing is, yeah, I love working with good writers. There’s a lot that are better than me.

That being said, I do have a couple of stories that I want to put out there. And the first one is an ideal fit to go at in this new, digital way. I’m also constantly dealing with the fact that I’m “the retro guy,” that I’m this old-timey guy. So I want to do something contemporary, something that sets that on its ear a bit. The new format makes that kind of ideal.

So I’m doing it, I guess. But I’ll tell you, from my standpoint, it’s a lot easier to draw than write. I find writing to be completely soulcrushing. A horrible, horrible process of embarrassment and shame. There’s nothing more horrible than having to read your own work.

TS: Can you describe why it’s important to you to have everything in this project be under your control?

DC: I guess it’s the mindset of the art director. It’s sort of a horrible taint to get in your blood. You’re walking down the street, and you’re seeing some girl thinking “those pants aren’t cut for her body type” and “what’s that dude doing wearing that shirt, doesn’t he realize it makes his skin look green” and “god, that building sucks” and “who the f*ck thought that copper was a good color for a car?” [Laughing] 

So you find yourselves always thinking that way, thinking things could look a little cooler, a little better. And for me, the greatest experience of things like books is that when you pick up a book you love, one where every detail has been attended to, and all of it is in harmony from a design standpoint, everything is there in service of the book. The old Mr. X books were one of the first times I felt like it was ever really done, full bore. You could see graphic design applied to a comic in a way that was completely sophisticated. It cemented the proposition, to see something that was totally separate from all those comics that had ads for seed packages and bicycles with banana seats.

I’m happy with stuff that i’ve sent in, but I can remember seeing the finished product and thinking “oh, i would’ve done this differently” or “what a garish logo.” The Parker books were my opportunity to make it as perfect as possible. And I get to love that feedback, when somebody mentions liking the way the whole thing looked, when people compliment the package.

I’m looking at the book right now — I just rip the dust jacket off, just looking at the book — and I’m thinking that if it was a softcover, with that Marvel Pontiac design… What’s the point? The back was all covered in nonsense? I’d still be proud of the book, but… It wouldn’t be finished. It wouldn’t be mine.

TS: Beyond the design, what’s the mission statement behind doing absolutely everything in these adaptations?

DC: One of the things that’s rarely discussed in this industry is the marriage between content and execution when you’re cartooning the whole thing. I don’t write dialogue until I’m finished. I can sit at a blank screen, writing dialogue for myself, but why? I know the basic scenes, the plot, the emotional pitch. The twenty minutes I spend drawing the person emoting are a time when I can run through twenty different lines. And half the time, you’ll get the drawings finished and realize you don’t nearly as many of the words as you thought you did. You end up with something that’s more organic because it’s created in a more organic way. With a script, it’s cut and dry. It comes in, gets drawn, it goes out the door. Then a different point of view takes it and goes away with it.

TS: Do you have a response to those criticisms you mentioned, the “retro-guy” stereotype?

DC: You become distinguished for certain things, to start with. I think in terms of any sort of entertainment or popular culture, that’s bound to happen. Hopefully it’s something you’re comfortable with. As for whether it’s relevant or not? In the long run, absolutely.

If you look at the bridge in time between “The Hunter” and now, it’s about the same time difference between the Wild West dying and John Ford making those great Westerns. It’s about the same amount of time. And comics are a really weird substrata of entertainment where this kind of thing is somehow viewed in a particular light. When you look at filmmakers, people don’t look at “LA Confidential” and criticize it for being “retro.” Because it’s a f*cking period piece. We seem to attach that word retro to what we’ll call pop culture if it looks backwards at all. But if you make a movie, and it’s set fifty years ago, nobody gets up in arms about it not taking place together. I don’t know. “Catwoman” and “The Spirit” took place in the here and now. There’s certain aspects of my style and approach to storytelling that are specific, but I don’t know that they’d seem out of date to the average citizen. To the audience for the Big Two, for what’s coming out every wednesday for the last eight years. But in a bookstore? On a bookshelf? In ten years?

All this stuff that’s being generated right now is going to look specifically dated. I think will my work will still stand. I think it’s easier to tell certain types of stories in a retro time period, to tap into that sense memory of a society that believes the past was a simpler time. It’s also a lot easier to do allegorical work. I don’t know. I love drawing that era, which may explain why I gravitated toward my approach on Frontier, or why I’m attracted to the Parker books. I want to leave it intact, so that means it gets set in 1962, so that’s what we’re doing. I think in the future, the work will look a little more timeless. Most of what i’ve done can be collected into complete stories, finished books, graphic novels. I think it will outlast some of the contemporary stuff, but that could just be my ego talking.

I don’t know man. None of that really gets to me. It’s very unlikely I’m going to do another story that takes place in that era, outside of the Parker stuff. I can see maybe one down the road. But that’s a long ways off.

I never really thought I had the broadest reach. When I got into this, I thought the best I could do was make a humble living at it and get enough work to stay at it and enjoy it. So I feel like I’m way ahead of the game. I have a strong and faithful readership, and it’s hard to worry about that. In terms of criticisms that are leveled–there are a lot of guys who get way more shit than me. There’s a lot of stuff that I think sucks, so I can’t get too broken hearted about the fact that some people think I suck.

I think my work gets off easy. But on the other hand, I don’t think I’m trying to do “Fun Home” or “Infinite Crisis”. I’m not reaching for anything more than telling you a good story in an inventive way. I’m not sure it deserves that much awe or ire.

TS: I think it deserves a fair bit of awe.

DC: God bless you, young man.

 

 

Comments

[Tom Vutayan]

Well done interview. I guess I'll pass on watching "Heat" then, since I've never seen it.

[Chris Allen]

Hi Tucker,
I appreciate the honesty and regret in the remembrance (and while I haven't read that long interview since it came out, it was great and I will get back to it soon). I didn't know Cooke at all and so was left to talk about him as just a fan who, when Cooke died, had essentially boycotted him due to Before Watchmen. It's pretty common for artists and people you know to disappoint you in some way and you either accept it and forgive or don't, I guess based on the offense and how much they mean to you, the history, etc. Anyway, it's here: http://christopherallen.tumblr.com/post/144418621704/rip-darwyn-cooke-1962-2016. Thanks again for writing that.