Cooke off of Spirit

[stealthwise]

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=122799


FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKK KKKKKKKKKKKKK!

The last great monthly that I've been reading religiously, and it's all but dead now.

[Jack Zodiac]

Unless a really great creative team manages to keep the momentum of this book going, I'm gonna' have to drop it. I mean, there's no way to top Cooke, Bone, and Stewart. Almost makes me wish they'd just announced it would be heavily delayed and let it continue at its own pace with the amazing team already on it.

A writing team like Palmiotti and Gray (who wrote a decent story in issue seven, which featured several writers and artists besides the normal creative team) might be able to make the crime drama angle work, but I doubt anyone has the skill to juggle drama, action, and humor like Cooke and Co.

[stealthwise]

The whole draw of this title was Cooke and his crew, and now it's just... it's just not good.

[Crowley]

This is deeply disappointing...

I couldn't really agree more with Cooke in regards to the shit that is the direct market.

[Alan Lynch]

Wow. Ordinarily I'm all for giving a new creative team a chance, but I only started buying this because of Darwyn Cooke. I can't really see me sticking around with him gone.

[the4thpip]

[AaronJ]

Yeah I will probably be dropping the book too.

My lone hope is that Darwyn will be taking over as artist on Wonder Woman, even though I know the chances of that are basically nil. :(

[PatrickG]

Unless a really great creative team manages to keep the momentum of this book going, I'm gonna' have to drop it. I mean, there's no way to top Cooke, Bone, and Stewart. Almost makes me wish they'd just announced it would be heavily delayed and let it continue at its own pace with the amazing team already on it.

A writing team like Palmiotti and Gray (who wrote a decent story in issue seven, which featured several writers and artists besides the normal creative team) might be able to make the crime drama angle work, but I doubt anyone has the skill to juggle drama, action, and humor like Cooke and Co.

I think somebody with a strong Eisner sensibility could work.

IMHO, Mike Allred or Jeff Smith would be good.

But I really think this is such a creator driven book that the best route would be a new #1 if you do a new creative team.

[The Beast Of Yucca Flats]

Brothers & sisters, join me now in a chanting of "What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?!"

[TCJohnson]

It sounds like Dwayne Cooke is getting burned out on the comic book industry.

Jeff Smith would deffinitely be interesting.

[Cayman]

He sounds really bitter. I wonder what's going on behind the scenes? I'm surprised. I thought this book was a labor of love for him.

[TCJohnson]

He sounds really bitter. I wonder what's going on behind the scenes? I'm surprised. I thought this book was a labor of love for him.

Greg Rucka said that comic books are like sausages. You can really love them but you don't want to know how they are made.

Still, it sounds pretty straight forward. He has projects he wants to work on and DC isn't interested in them, plus the whole fact that comic books might now be around for the next generation.

That and general burn out.

[KevinTBrown]

Cooke's last issue is #12.

My last issue is probably #12.

Cooke was literally hand picked by Eisner to take care of this character. I just don't see any other creative team or person treating the Spirit with the amount of respect Cooke has.

This is deeply depressing news. :(

[JTPencils]

Cooke was adequate, but I just had a hard time seeing anything Spirit related without Eisner's touch.

For me, the character, and the look of the stories, were just a mesh. Spirit was Eisner's baby, and his touch on the character (and the overall look of the stories) was perfect. It (for me) is difficult to see the work in a different style. It's probably wrong, but that's how I saw it. I can name at least a half dozen great Batman artists that I've enjoyed, but for the Spirit, only Eisner for me.

So bring in another artist, another creative team, whatever, I won't really miss it all that much either way.

[Stressfactor]

*Sigh* Issue #12 will probably be my last now. Let us have a moment of silence for the passing of Denny Colt. Buried once and soon to be buried again.

Not trying to be a negative nellie but I wonder if DC will even give it to a new creative team -- there could be obstacles in the way. For one, it was my understanding that part of the Spirit revival deal was that Dennis Kitchen had the right to pull the project at any time if he felt that it strayed too far from what Eisner would have wanted. As someone else pointed out, Eisner trusted the Spirit to Cooke -- another creative team would probably have to pass Kitchen's approval and DC may not want to deal with that headache.

Also, I thought I had read where sales numbers on the title were not all that hot. DC may not want to add to the workload of another creative team on a title that was not doing so well anyway.