he was very famous and the movie is called Sergeant York.

Yes, thank you! Dunno why my mind short-circuited on that one, as I finally saw the movie for the first time only a year or two ago, but there ya go. Anyway, the heartfelt nature of the true story presented in the movie certainly seems to dovetail with Cooke’s pacifistic portrayal of Hal. I wonder if it was a specific influence?

And I’d forgotten that Howard Hawks was the director on York.

Right now, we record on Tuesday night, but that might change at some point in the New Year to later in the week. At any rate, we check email pretty much up until that point, so if an email gets to us by, say, early Tuesday afternoon, odds are we’ll probably have it for the podcast.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0034167/

I think the word I’d use most often to describe it is “in the animation vein.” Which I realize is not a word.

But if I had to describe Cooke’s art style to someone who had never seen it, and couldn’t just show them the work, I’d say that his work displays top-notch storytelling with a clean look reminiscent of classic illustrators and animators. If I had to go with one word… yeah, it’d probably be “cartoonish,” although that’s one of those words that means something different to everyone.

(actually, this is the first podcast, and I’ve listened to all of them except the Fables one due to possible spoilers, that I found a bit too long)

I really dig Cooke’s artwork, but initially I wasn’t interested in The Spirit. My lack of interest is mostly due that I am not familiar with the character, I’ve only heard of him and saw some covers of the recent trades.
But due to all the rave reviews for the Batman/Spirit one-shot and the first issue of the ongoing I might get the first trade.

Apparently I am one of the few people who picked up Darwyn Cooke’s Solo issue. I am even more in the minority as I have every issue of the Solo series. Didn’t like all the issues, but it was a great way to get to know artists I didn’t know, or to get top notch stuff of the artists I already knew.
I hope to see a revival of this series one day…

Even before I started listening, when I saw the subject of Darwyn Cooke, I started preparing questions.. and my biggest one is: Can you describe Cooke’s art without using the diminutive words such as “simple”, “sparse”, “minimalist”, “cartoonish”?

I ask knowing that these words are not used in any negative fashion, and most readers knowing what the style represents can appreciate those terms. Problem comes when I talk with non-readers. Whenever I say, “I love his simple style.” I always have to follow up with qualifiers and clarifications that it’s not simple in an amount of work or skill. Know wut I’m sayin’?

Wow, I feel moderately stupid for missing that.