June 7, 2006

DARWYN COOKE SELINA'S BIG SCORE

Darwin Cooke

Selina's Big Score by Darwyn Cooke is a comic-noir self-contained story in which Selina/Catwoman goes broke on a faulty heist in Morocco, and heads back to Gotham in order to put together a more profitable venture stealing $24 million from the Falcone mob family.

The cast includes P.I. Slam Bradley and James Stark, an aging criminal accomplice from Selina's past who has basically put himself out to pasture in Miami Beach. There are a half-dozen equally interesting noir-type characters populating this tale which is fashioned along the lines of any number of heist movies from Hollywood, though Cooke has distinguished the main characters with inner emotional lifes which is half of the tale in itself.

Cooke's writing is to the point and the story is fleshed out well. I wish the regular stories running in DC's monthly books had this much attention to rounding out a story. Cooke's artwork is amazingly economical and the fat, curving ink brush strokes he uses are quite beautiful. He also has staged scenes from the story well, giving us Miami Beach, Las Vegas and Morocco in effective vignette's around the main action which is set in Gotham City and at the Canadian border.

The noir formula of the 40s and 50s Hollywood movies usually had a good portion of the cast dead before the end, and Cooke's story and art both reflect that 1950s sensibility. Two random pages from the 96 page book below:

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

There is an interview with Darywn Cooke at the Silverbullet site here.

Critical Eye discusses Cooke's animation work via interview here.

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