On the occasion of the Mexican edition of the comic Batman: Ego and Other Stories, we recover the story of its creation with the words of Darwyn Cooke.
As Matt Reeves has repeatedly stated, his new movie The Batman takes Darwyn Cooke’s Batman: Ego comic as one of its sources of inspiration. However, as CBR reports, “Darwyn Cooke’s Batman: Ego release had been pushed back for years until someone at DC found it and decided to release it.”
The original idea for the work dates back to 1994, the year in which the comic book market was dominated by drawings of strong men and statuesque women. Those were the days when the Image Comics style line dominated with artists like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld.
In an interview for The Comics Journal in 2016, Cooke explained what it was like trying to sell his Batman: Ego pitch back in the day.
Batman: Ego, a countercurrent comic
In the aforementioned interview, Cooke confessed: “So I thought: “You know what? This is probably my last chance to try. I was exhausted from the work that I had been doing and the way that I had been performing, so I took a break and that’s when I set about launching [Batman] Ego. It was maybe ’94. I went to a convention in Chicago. Again, like I said, in my life when I’ve wanted to do something I do it and then I take it somewhere to show it to people, and I figure it out from there. So I went to show it, and yet that was the year of the big Image boom. That’s why I was the last person anyone would want to buy something for, a guy who draws like Alex Toth. I couldn’t have picked a worse time.”
Then she remembers that, after standing in line to show her portfolio, she finally arrived with Will Portacio, who was doing the revisions. “He looked at my work and [risas] trying to explain to me how to do the kind of work they do. It was a bad year for me for carrying my stuff.”
And he concludes that Portacio, “He did not realize that I had made an aesthetic decision that was far from what he did. He thought that what he needed was for my eyes to be opened to the way they drew, whereas I had decided to avoid that approach. What did he know about it? I believe that any comment or response to the work is good. Nowadays it is difficult for me to receive honest comments because they come from people who know me. You rarely hear what people really think of the play, unless it’s from the odd critic.”
Darwyn Cooke insisted on his proposal and won
Despite the recognition of his work by Archie Goodwin, things did not improve. “The next time I was in New York I dropped by and dropped it off with DC editors Denny O’Neil and the head of the group at the time. Again, they were quite appreciative, but they didn’t see any place for him or anything to do with him, so he basically died. I said, ‘OK, well, that fell through. It was the dream of my life and I have failed. Fantastic’. I went back to work as an animator for commercials and tried to figure out what my next step would be.”
Half a decade later, Cooke received a phone call: “Hello. Darwin Cooke? Yes, my name is Mark Chiarello from DC Comics. I have this thing, Batman: Ego. I found it here in the office, I was wondering, would you still be interested in doing it?
“He had been hired as an art director in DC and when they gave him the office, he was cleaning up all the old proposals. throwing them And he found my job. And he liked it. So people ask me, ‘How did you start?’ And I laugh and say, ‘I don’t know! Take a hang glider jump from the Chrysler Building. Try voodoo. I do not know’. For me it was a really strange path. So at the time I was working on the (animated) series, and I said, ‘I’d love to do the book, but I’m too busy working on Batman for Warner Brothers right now.’ And when I decided I had fun with animation, that’s when Mark and I got together and I started Ego.”
Batman: Ego, the comic that opened the doors to Darwyn Cooke
Thanks to Mark Chiarello, Darwyn Cooke’s aesthetic proposal could see the light. With lines very different from the dominant ones in the industry at that time.
After this first work of art, prize-winning proposals and recognitions would come, such as his Catwoman from Selina’s Big Score (2002), The New Frontier (2004), Green Lantern: Secret Files 2005 (2005), Batman/The Spirit (2006) , The Spirit (2006), Before Watchmen: Minutemen (2012), and The Twilight Children (2016).
Sources: CBR.com and The Comics Journal
Remember that this comic masterpiece awaits you in our online store:
DC Comics Deluxe – Batman: Ego and Other Tales
Eight classic Dark Knight tales from a true comics legend!
A Batman book like no other, conceived by a master storyteller, BATMAN: EGO AND OTHER TALES brings together the magnificent and moving stories of the Dark Knight, created over a period of more than a decade by award-winning writer and artist Darwyn Cooke. .
This deluxe edition includes the acclaimed BATMAN: EGO and BATMAN/THE SPIRIT one-shots, as well as the original CATWOMAN: SELINA’S BIG SCORE graphic novel and the BATMAN: BLACK & WHITE, SOLO, and HARLEY QUINN short stories.
It also features the work of writers Paul Grist, Jeph Loeb, Amanda Conner, and Jimmy Palmiotti, and artists Bill Wray, Tim Sale, and J. Bone. A must have collection for any fan of Batman or Catwoman. This deluxe edition of BATMAN: EGO AND OTHER STORIES collects stories and material never before seen in Mexico, as well as an introduction by celebrated comic book creator Amanda Conner.
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