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Interview with...
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JMH: Where were you born and raised?
CW COOKE: Born and raised in the wilds of Kansas and Missouri. I'm from the Midwest so I like to think I have some of those sensibilities. I've done some traveling to the West and East Coast, so I've seen places. But I've never been out of North America, sadly.
JMH: Tell CBI about yourself…
CW COOKE: Where do I start? I'm a huge comic book fan and have been since I was a kid, watching the Batman movies and cartoons and the X-men and Spider-man cartoons and having those toys. The toys! I had everything, like Ninja Turtles and GI Joe and just everything.
When I'm not writing comics, I have a day job that pays the bills. Comics is the passion project, the thing I'm working immensely hard at to get a chance to do for a living. It's not the living yet, but I hope that some day it will be.
I'm married and have been for almost 4 years. I still live in the Midwest and have written comics, professionally, since 2008. It's been a wild ride, and I hope things keep picking up like they have been. Anything else you'd like to know, feel free to ask.
JMH: Have you had any formal training in writing?
CW COOKE: Depends on the definition of formal writing. I graduated with an English degree and have been in love with creative writing since one teacher sparked my interest in it by challenging me. It helped me take part in a literary magazine and becoming the Editor in Chief of that for one year. That was high school.
After that, I went to college with a love of writing and a love of creating, and another set of teachers challenged me to grow, and to grow in my writing. I took poetry, screenwriting, playwriting, short story, and fiction and creative non-fiction writing classes. I spent time in college doing a little bit of everything, writing a little bit of everything, and even doing live readings of my own work. It was amazing stuff and I loved every minute of that too.
JMH: Who are your writing influences?
CW COOKE: Fiction-wise? I love Chuck Palahniuk, Hunter Thompson, Joe Hill, Flann O'Brien, Amy Hempel, George Saunders and have really taken a harder look at stuff by Roald Dahl and L Frank Baum and Maurice Sendak. I want to be able to write more all-ages stuff without reverting to too adult of themes, which can sometimes be my problem, based on those first few names I listed.
If we're talking about comic books, then the list is humongous. Jeff Smith, Peter David, Jai Nitz, Jason Aaron, Garth Ennis, Skottie Young and Eric Shanower, Abnett and Lanning, Ande Parks, Phil Hester, Darren Davis, Mike Allred, Fred Van Lente, Dan Slott, Brubaker, Vaughan, Fraction, and the list goes on and on and on. It's way too long to list, but there's a ton, trust me when I say that.
JMH: How did you break into writing comic books?
CW COOKE: Blood, sweat, and tears. It happened completely by a divine accident of some sort. I was at a local comic convention and I met Jai Nitz, who at the time hadn't yet published El Diablo for DC but had some small successes. I am lucky to be able to call him a friend now, but then, in 2008 when we met, I didn't know him at all.
We talked for about 2 hours at the convention. Maybe more. He's got a big personality, has great stories, and loves to talk. I do too. We talked and talked about comics, and when I brought up that my dream was writing comic books for a living, we talked in depth about that. He told me the only way to do it was to try. Not to say I was going to try, but to actually try.
So the first thing I did after the con was go online, find every single comic book company that was in existence at the time, and sent them emails. Or phone calls. Or sent letters of intent or submission letters or requests to assist in writing comics for these companies.
And I mean everybody. Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, Archie, everybody. I sent the emails and harassed some of them, or got close to it, and almost all came back and said no. Some there was no response from. Some said maybe later but not right now. Bluewater said yes. They gave me a chance to write. And that was my dream. That was what I wanted. So I sunk my teeth in and worked hard. And now here we are, 3 years later.
JMH: What is the first comic you remember reading?
CW COOKE: Great question! It was actually a four way tie. The first I ever held in my hands was a Jones Store newspaper insert that my dad had been holding onto for years. Hulk and Spider-man fighting Kraven the Hunter in the heart of the city, all while going to Jones Store to get new clothes. It blew my young mind, and it opened the door for the next 20 years or more.
After that, the next three were the Death of Superman (#75), X-men 1, and an Adventures of Superman where the statue is on the cover with the Eagle landing on his arm (might not have been the statue at that point, but it was a bit older than the others, I know that). All great stuff and I was hooked.
JMH: Do you read any of the new comic books that are being published today?
CW COOKE: How about I give you a list of the ones I read? There are a ton of comics I still read today. I love comics. I really do. Writing them hasn't stopped me from wanting to read them, still on a weekly basis too.
I read Chew, Walking Dead, Rasl, X-Factor, Madman, Amazing Spider-man, Usagi Yojimbo, X-Men Legacy, FF, Secret Warriors, Shield, Ultimate Spider-man, Deadpool, Punishermax, Wolverine, Scalped, Haunt, Invincible, Nonplayer, Green Hornet, anything by Warren Ellis, anything by Jai Nitz or Peter David or Mike Allred or Jason Aaron or Jeff Smith and most of the guys I listed above. Most of the comics I read get cancelled or rarely come out, like Unknown Soldier, Rasl, Thor the Mighty Avenger, Madman, stuff like that. I'm a big fan of the superhero stuff but then I also love the off-the-wall stuff like Axe Cop and Reed Gunther. My list of comics goes on and on as I have thousands of them in my home. Trade paperbacks, hardcovers, single issues, everything.
JMH: Print versus Digital. Your thoughts…
CW COOKE: This is a tough one. I love paper comics. I love flipping the pages. I remember the smell of comics when they were the newsstand yellowish paper. I love the glossy feel of the pages as I flip through them. I take my time reading them, pouring over the pages and reading each panel, looking in the crevices for everything that might get missed (learned that from reading Top Ten and missing all the background stuff on the first go-round). I love handing a comic to a kid and seeing their eyes light up, or doing a comic signing and meeting people and handing them my books and seeing their eyes light up on my creations. I love comics, pure and simple.
Now, digital isn't for me, but it's getting better. Every day. I want comics to be around forever, in one form or another. I want them to be paper for as long as they can, and if that can happen, amazing. I'll be happy forever.
If digital is the future, then so be it. I won't fight against it like some might, but I will make my voice heard and say that I love the print versions more than digital and more than likely always will. If digital can bring people to read comics and want to find single issues or trades or hardcovers and can help the industry, then that's for the best. That's what I want. I want a world where digital and print can co-exist, where one can feed into the other and they can make each other better.
I want comics to live forever. I don't want them to die out. So I'll accept digital as a backup to print for the time being, and I'll keep telling people how much better the experience is reading it in hand. Having the paper in front of you and just pouring over the pages, one or ten times. There's nothing like cracking open a comic after a hard day at work, just sitting by yourself and becoming immersed in the world of the character you've chosen to read at that time.
I'm not sure digital can ever do that, honestly. Does that answer your question?
JMH: Writer’s block. How do you get around that creature?
CW COOKE: Usually the easiest way for me to get around writer's block is to drop whatever it is that is creating the block and move onto something else. For example, right now I'm working on fiction and non-fiction comics pretty much back to back. So if one of the Fame or Female Force books trips me up, I'll work on the fiction stuff and just crank out the creative stuff and spread my wings. If it's the opposite, it usually works out that I can crank out a non-fiction comic and that immediately makes me think of something that I need to do on the fiction side.
I also keep a small moleskine journal on me at all times. Any ideas I get I write in there. Any time I have a block, I can usually pick that up and it will spark something in me.
JMH: How did you get involved in the Prince Harry biography?
CW COOKE: It's pretty simple really: I got asked to do it. Ha! I wrote the Royals: Prince William and Kate Middleton and once I was finished with that, I was asked to do the Prince Harry book as there was a lot to say about him too. I know it seems relatively cut and dry, but that's really how it happened.
JMH: What's it like working for Darren Davis and Bluewater Productions?
CW COOKE: I've had no issues yet, thank God. Just kidding. I've been working in comics fairly steadily since 2008, all for Bluewater, and I've had no arguments. No concerns. No issues. I'm pretty much free and clear to do whatever I want. I can pitch a comic idea to them and get to work on it usually within the span of a few days. I've been given carte blanche to do what I want for them and as I'm working on my own creator-owned ideas and trying to find artists to finish the projects for me, I keep doing whatever I'm asked in order to stay in those good graces and not fall off the face of the Earth. Hope that answers that question!
JMH: Do you research your story ideas? If so, how?
CW COOKE: I do. I use Google searches for just about anything and everything. I google news on people like Prince Harry or Kate and William, I watch videos, I read interviews, if there's books or movies about their lives, I'll watch those too. Usually, I do anything and everything I can to find anything and everything I can about the person I'm investigating. It's fun because it helps me to learn more about these people and who they really are.
JMH: What is your writing process like?
CW COOKE: My writing process all starts with the research, whether it's fiction or non-fiction. Non-fiction research can take a few days or a few weeks, depending on the person we're talking about. In a serious time crunch when something needs to get solicited and published in a hurry, I'll do research as I write. But for the most part, it's research for days, and then outline and begin writing.
The writing process can then take anywhere from a day to a month, depending on the topic and the story that's being told. Prince Harry and the Royals comics were all pretty similar. The good thing about Prince Harry's comic, as I think I mentioned previously, was that a lot of the research about his childhood was already done when I researched Prince William. That made his comic infinitely easier to write and research.
As for fiction comics, the process can involve research but not always. I have a prison book I'm working on and I spent months researching a specific prison and also researching capital punishment and the death penalty. That's a story for another day and hopefully you'll get to see that comic very soon. But on other fiction comics, I'll write an outline for the entire series (be it an ongoing or a mini), then an outline for each specific issue, then a character breakdown, and then I'll begin to write. In the course of writing the one issue of Vincent Price Presents I've written so far, all it took was getting the idea and writing it out. That comic was a blast to write and I hope to get to do more of those as well.
JMH: Do your stories carry a message?
CW COOKE: I'd like to think so but I feel that depends more on the reader. The message I try to convey with any and all of the non-fiction comics I write is that these are real people and I'm going to show them as they are. I'm not going to sugarcoat and I'm also not going to paint a negative picture of that person. I'm going to show them as they are and let the reader decide how they feel about the main person.
With my fiction comics, the message varies based on the book. I like writing comics and I like having fun with them, and when I worked on the book Violet Rose, there was a message presented there. It was a message of acceptance and understanding, and that message continued through to my work on the Myth Adventures of the Muses. That book is all about how gods, muses, and humans can all work together to further the world around them, and all it took was understanding the other group. I loved that. I loved writing that. I loved remembering what it was like to be a young kid reading comics and what it meant to me and trying to deliver that for someone else.
JMH: Do you feel more comfortable with writing prose or comic book sequential storytelling?
CW COOKE: That is the $64,000 question. I'm honestly not able to decide. I jump back and forth so often that I'd like to think I can just slip in and out of both when needed. I love writing comic books because I use the full script method. Panel breakdowns, narration, dialogue, all that good stuff just flows out of me when I'm writing a comic. Sometimes when I'm writing prose I get stuck in a rut and need to change things up, so a lot of my prose gets really weird, really fast. Different narrators pop in and out of books. Different viewpoints can even sometimes fill a page. I like to play around with the written word and see what people can accept from the written word.
But I've written short stories, poems, screenplays, comics, and am working on a novel (just like everyone else is). I hope that I can make a living being a writer because that is what I love, and would honestly work in any of these fields because I love to write so much.
JMH: What future projects are in the works?
CW COOKE: I'm not sure how much I can state outloud. I'm working on a sequel to VSS for Bluewater, another sequel to Violet Rose for Bluewater, I wrote adaptations of the novels Taming the Star Runner and Anne of Green Gables which will hopefully come out any day now. I'm working on a super-secret project or two for Bluewater that hasn't been announced yet but I'm very excited for. There are still 8 issues left of the Myth Adventures of the Muses comic to be published, printed, and put in your hands as of this interview. Issue 1 came out recently and I'd like to believe that people loved it.
I've got a four-issue mini-series called Baneberry Academy for Wayward Fairies that is due out in stores very soon as well (I think October) and it's one of the first things I ever wrote for Bluewater (alongside Violet Rose). I've got quite a few more biography comics coming out. Steve Jobs is coming out in September. Conan O'Brien just came out. So did Madonna. General David Petraeus just got announced and I'm sure in the near future more announcements will make their way out on the fiction books as well.
And I've got a number of creator-owned books I'm working on. I have a set of 4 mini-series that are all akin to the old 50s horror movies that I'm writing and trying to get out in the hands of the comics reading public as soon as possible. I have artists for two of the books and have 2 more to go. I have a number of short stories I've recently written for anthology comics that I hope to see come out in the near future. I've got an ongoing series of my own about a superhero that I would love to tell you more about but I always worry someone will try to steal my ideas, and I'm always pitching comics to publishers around the world in the hopes that this can be made my day job. So if you know anyone who needs assistance on a comic, I'm always available. I love comics and love writing them so much.
JMH: Where can fans get a hold of your books?
CW COOKE: Lots of places. Comicshoplocator.com is your best bet for finding a local comic shop in your area. I love that place as it alerted me to 4 comic shops I never even knew existed in my hometown. Amazon is another great place to buy them, as is Barnes & Noble. I'm a big fan of the local comic shops though, so support local businesses, step into the local comic shop in your area, and if they don't have it on the shelf, ask them to get a copy for you. And if I ever meet you, I'd be more than happy to sign it for you.
JMH: Anything else you'd like to mention that we haven't covered yet?
CW COOKE: There are numerous things we didn't talk about but I'm not going to go into all of them here. I'm always available to work on a comic or assist in working on a comic. I'm also available if you have questions about your own comics. A great friend of mine gave me amazing advice which put me on the road to creating comics and helped me realize this dream, and if I can help just one person do the same thing, then it was worth it.
So you can email me at [email protected]. You can find me on Facebook as Cw Momarvandercamp Cooke. You can find me on Twitter as Robocop_Murphy. You can throw up a bat signal in the sky and I might try to answer you somehow. And no one uses messenger pigeons anymore, but I'm game for those as well.
JMH: CW, Thanks for your time! All the best!
CW: Thank you John! I had a blast doing this and would love to do it again at any time. I've made it pretty clear that I love comics, so I'm always available to talk about them. It's my favorite hobby and I hope we can keep getting the word out and get people out there to either try something new or just check them out. Thanks for letting me have a chance to do that on your site!
Discovery CW Cooke's comics here:
The Royals: Prince Harry
CW COOKE: Born and raised in the wilds of Kansas and Missouri. I'm from the Midwest so I like to think I have some of those sensibilities. I've done some traveling to the West and East Coast, so I've seen places. But I've never been out of North America, sadly.
JMH: Tell CBI about yourself…
CW COOKE: Where do I start? I'm a huge comic book fan and have been since I was a kid, watching the Batman movies and cartoons and the X-men and Spider-man cartoons and having those toys. The toys! I had everything, like Ninja Turtles and GI Joe and just everything.
When I'm not writing comics, I have a day job that pays the bills. Comics is the passion project, the thing I'm working immensely hard at to get a chance to do for a living. It's not the living yet, but I hope that some day it will be.
I'm married and have been for almost 4 years. I still live in the Midwest and have written comics, professionally, since 2008. It's been a wild ride, and I hope things keep picking up like they have been. Anything else you'd like to know, feel free to ask.
JMH: Have you had any formal training in writing?
CW COOKE: Depends on the definition of formal writing. I graduated with an English degree and have been in love with creative writing since one teacher sparked my interest in it by challenging me. It helped me take part in a literary magazine and becoming the Editor in Chief of that for one year. That was high school.
After that, I went to college with a love of writing and a love of creating, and another set of teachers challenged me to grow, and to grow in my writing. I took poetry, screenwriting, playwriting, short story, and fiction and creative non-fiction writing classes. I spent time in college doing a little bit of everything, writing a little bit of everything, and even doing live readings of my own work. It was amazing stuff and I loved every minute of that too.
JMH: Who are your writing influences?
CW COOKE: Fiction-wise? I love Chuck Palahniuk, Hunter Thompson, Joe Hill, Flann O'Brien, Amy Hempel, George Saunders and have really taken a harder look at stuff by Roald Dahl and L Frank Baum and Maurice Sendak. I want to be able to write more all-ages stuff without reverting to too adult of themes, which can sometimes be my problem, based on those first few names I listed.
If we're talking about comic books, then the list is humongous. Jeff Smith, Peter David, Jai Nitz, Jason Aaron, Garth Ennis, Skottie Young and Eric Shanower, Abnett and Lanning, Ande Parks, Phil Hester, Darren Davis, Mike Allred, Fred Van Lente, Dan Slott, Brubaker, Vaughan, Fraction, and the list goes on and on and on. It's way too long to list, but there's a ton, trust me when I say that.
JMH: How did you break into writing comic books?
CW COOKE: Blood, sweat, and tears. It happened completely by a divine accident of some sort. I was at a local comic convention and I met Jai Nitz, who at the time hadn't yet published El Diablo for DC but had some small successes. I am lucky to be able to call him a friend now, but then, in 2008 when we met, I didn't know him at all.
We talked for about 2 hours at the convention. Maybe more. He's got a big personality, has great stories, and loves to talk. I do too. We talked and talked about comics, and when I brought up that my dream was writing comic books for a living, we talked in depth about that. He told me the only way to do it was to try. Not to say I was going to try, but to actually try.
So the first thing I did after the con was go online, find every single comic book company that was in existence at the time, and sent them emails. Or phone calls. Or sent letters of intent or submission letters or requests to assist in writing comics for these companies.
And I mean everybody. Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, Archie, everybody. I sent the emails and harassed some of them, or got close to it, and almost all came back and said no. Some there was no response from. Some said maybe later but not right now. Bluewater said yes. They gave me a chance to write. And that was my dream. That was what I wanted. So I sunk my teeth in and worked hard. And now here we are, 3 years later.
JMH: What is the first comic you remember reading?
CW COOKE: Great question! It was actually a four way tie. The first I ever held in my hands was a Jones Store newspaper insert that my dad had been holding onto for years. Hulk and Spider-man fighting Kraven the Hunter in the heart of the city, all while going to Jones Store to get new clothes. It blew my young mind, and it opened the door for the next 20 years or more.
After that, the next three were the Death of Superman (#75), X-men 1, and an Adventures of Superman where the statue is on the cover with the Eagle landing on his arm (might not have been the statue at that point, but it was a bit older than the others, I know that). All great stuff and I was hooked.
JMH: Do you read any of the new comic books that are being published today?
CW COOKE: How about I give you a list of the ones I read? There are a ton of comics I still read today. I love comics. I really do. Writing them hasn't stopped me from wanting to read them, still on a weekly basis too.
I read Chew, Walking Dead, Rasl, X-Factor, Madman, Amazing Spider-man, Usagi Yojimbo, X-Men Legacy, FF, Secret Warriors, Shield, Ultimate Spider-man, Deadpool, Punishermax, Wolverine, Scalped, Haunt, Invincible, Nonplayer, Green Hornet, anything by Warren Ellis, anything by Jai Nitz or Peter David or Mike Allred or Jason Aaron or Jeff Smith and most of the guys I listed above. Most of the comics I read get cancelled or rarely come out, like Unknown Soldier, Rasl, Thor the Mighty Avenger, Madman, stuff like that. I'm a big fan of the superhero stuff but then I also love the off-the-wall stuff like Axe Cop and Reed Gunther. My list of comics goes on and on as I have thousands of them in my home. Trade paperbacks, hardcovers, single issues, everything.
JMH: Print versus Digital. Your thoughts…
CW COOKE: This is a tough one. I love paper comics. I love flipping the pages. I remember the smell of comics when they were the newsstand yellowish paper. I love the glossy feel of the pages as I flip through them. I take my time reading them, pouring over the pages and reading each panel, looking in the crevices for everything that might get missed (learned that from reading Top Ten and missing all the background stuff on the first go-round). I love handing a comic to a kid and seeing their eyes light up, or doing a comic signing and meeting people and handing them my books and seeing their eyes light up on my creations. I love comics, pure and simple.
Now, digital isn't for me, but it's getting better. Every day. I want comics to be around forever, in one form or another. I want them to be paper for as long as they can, and if that can happen, amazing. I'll be happy forever.
If digital is the future, then so be it. I won't fight against it like some might, but I will make my voice heard and say that I love the print versions more than digital and more than likely always will. If digital can bring people to read comics and want to find single issues or trades or hardcovers and can help the industry, then that's for the best. That's what I want. I want a world where digital and print can co-exist, where one can feed into the other and they can make each other better.
I want comics to live forever. I don't want them to die out. So I'll accept digital as a backup to print for the time being, and I'll keep telling people how much better the experience is reading it in hand. Having the paper in front of you and just pouring over the pages, one or ten times. There's nothing like cracking open a comic after a hard day at work, just sitting by yourself and becoming immersed in the world of the character you've chosen to read at that time.
I'm not sure digital can ever do that, honestly. Does that answer your question?
JMH: Writer’s block. How do you get around that creature?
CW COOKE: Usually the easiest way for me to get around writer's block is to drop whatever it is that is creating the block and move onto something else. For example, right now I'm working on fiction and non-fiction comics pretty much back to back. So if one of the Fame or Female Force books trips me up, I'll work on the fiction stuff and just crank out the creative stuff and spread my wings. If it's the opposite, it usually works out that I can crank out a non-fiction comic and that immediately makes me think of something that I need to do on the fiction side.
I also keep a small moleskine journal on me at all times. Any ideas I get I write in there. Any time I have a block, I can usually pick that up and it will spark something in me.
JMH: How did you get involved in the Prince Harry biography?
CW COOKE: It's pretty simple really: I got asked to do it. Ha! I wrote the Royals: Prince William and Kate Middleton and once I was finished with that, I was asked to do the Prince Harry book as there was a lot to say about him too. I know it seems relatively cut and dry, but that's really how it happened.
JMH: What's it like working for Darren Davis and Bluewater Productions?
CW COOKE: I've had no issues yet, thank God. Just kidding. I've been working in comics fairly steadily since 2008, all for Bluewater, and I've had no arguments. No concerns. No issues. I'm pretty much free and clear to do whatever I want. I can pitch a comic idea to them and get to work on it usually within the span of a few days. I've been given carte blanche to do what I want for them and as I'm working on my own creator-owned ideas and trying to find artists to finish the projects for me, I keep doing whatever I'm asked in order to stay in those good graces and not fall off the face of the Earth. Hope that answers that question!
JMH: Do you research your story ideas? If so, how?
CW COOKE: I do. I use Google searches for just about anything and everything. I google news on people like Prince Harry or Kate and William, I watch videos, I read interviews, if there's books or movies about their lives, I'll watch those too. Usually, I do anything and everything I can to find anything and everything I can about the person I'm investigating. It's fun because it helps me to learn more about these people and who they really are.
JMH: What is your writing process like?
CW COOKE: My writing process all starts with the research, whether it's fiction or non-fiction. Non-fiction research can take a few days or a few weeks, depending on the person we're talking about. In a serious time crunch when something needs to get solicited and published in a hurry, I'll do research as I write. But for the most part, it's research for days, and then outline and begin writing.
The writing process can then take anywhere from a day to a month, depending on the topic and the story that's being told. Prince Harry and the Royals comics were all pretty similar. The good thing about Prince Harry's comic, as I think I mentioned previously, was that a lot of the research about his childhood was already done when I researched Prince William. That made his comic infinitely easier to write and research.
As for fiction comics, the process can involve research but not always. I have a prison book I'm working on and I spent months researching a specific prison and also researching capital punishment and the death penalty. That's a story for another day and hopefully you'll get to see that comic very soon. But on other fiction comics, I'll write an outline for the entire series (be it an ongoing or a mini), then an outline for each specific issue, then a character breakdown, and then I'll begin to write. In the course of writing the one issue of Vincent Price Presents I've written so far, all it took was getting the idea and writing it out. That comic was a blast to write and I hope to get to do more of those as well.
JMH: Do your stories carry a message?
CW COOKE: I'd like to think so but I feel that depends more on the reader. The message I try to convey with any and all of the non-fiction comics I write is that these are real people and I'm going to show them as they are. I'm not going to sugarcoat and I'm also not going to paint a negative picture of that person. I'm going to show them as they are and let the reader decide how they feel about the main person.
With my fiction comics, the message varies based on the book. I like writing comics and I like having fun with them, and when I worked on the book Violet Rose, there was a message presented there. It was a message of acceptance and understanding, and that message continued through to my work on the Myth Adventures of the Muses. That book is all about how gods, muses, and humans can all work together to further the world around them, and all it took was understanding the other group. I loved that. I loved writing that. I loved remembering what it was like to be a young kid reading comics and what it meant to me and trying to deliver that for someone else.
JMH: Do you feel more comfortable with writing prose or comic book sequential storytelling?
CW COOKE: That is the $64,000 question. I'm honestly not able to decide. I jump back and forth so often that I'd like to think I can just slip in and out of both when needed. I love writing comic books because I use the full script method. Panel breakdowns, narration, dialogue, all that good stuff just flows out of me when I'm writing a comic. Sometimes when I'm writing prose I get stuck in a rut and need to change things up, so a lot of my prose gets really weird, really fast. Different narrators pop in and out of books. Different viewpoints can even sometimes fill a page. I like to play around with the written word and see what people can accept from the written word.
But I've written short stories, poems, screenplays, comics, and am working on a novel (just like everyone else is). I hope that I can make a living being a writer because that is what I love, and would honestly work in any of these fields because I love to write so much.
JMH: What future projects are in the works?
CW COOKE: I'm not sure how much I can state outloud. I'm working on a sequel to VSS for Bluewater, another sequel to Violet Rose for Bluewater, I wrote adaptations of the novels Taming the Star Runner and Anne of Green Gables which will hopefully come out any day now. I'm working on a super-secret project or two for Bluewater that hasn't been announced yet but I'm very excited for. There are still 8 issues left of the Myth Adventures of the Muses comic to be published, printed, and put in your hands as of this interview. Issue 1 came out recently and I'd like to believe that people loved it.
I've got a four-issue mini-series called Baneberry Academy for Wayward Fairies that is due out in stores very soon as well (I think October) and it's one of the first things I ever wrote for Bluewater (alongside Violet Rose). I've got quite a few more biography comics coming out. Steve Jobs is coming out in September. Conan O'Brien just came out. So did Madonna. General David Petraeus just got announced and I'm sure in the near future more announcements will make their way out on the fiction books as well.
And I've got a number of creator-owned books I'm working on. I have a set of 4 mini-series that are all akin to the old 50s horror movies that I'm writing and trying to get out in the hands of the comics reading public as soon as possible. I have artists for two of the books and have 2 more to go. I have a number of short stories I've recently written for anthology comics that I hope to see come out in the near future. I've got an ongoing series of my own about a superhero that I would love to tell you more about but I always worry someone will try to steal my ideas, and I'm always pitching comics to publishers around the world in the hopes that this can be made my day job. So if you know anyone who needs assistance on a comic, I'm always available. I love comics and love writing them so much.
JMH: Where can fans get a hold of your books?
CW COOKE: Lots of places. Comicshoplocator.com is your best bet for finding a local comic shop in your area. I love that place as it alerted me to 4 comic shops I never even knew existed in my hometown. Amazon is another great place to buy them, as is Barnes & Noble. I'm a big fan of the local comic shops though, so support local businesses, step into the local comic shop in your area, and if they don't have it on the shelf, ask them to get a copy for you. And if I ever meet you, I'd be more than happy to sign it for you.
JMH: Anything else you'd like to mention that we haven't covered yet?
CW COOKE: There are numerous things we didn't talk about but I'm not going to go into all of them here. I'm always available to work on a comic or assist in working on a comic. I'm also available if you have questions about your own comics. A great friend of mine gave me amazing advice which put me on the road to creating comics and helped me realize this dream, and if I can help just one person do the same thing, then it was worth it.
So you can email me at [email protected]. You can find me on Facebook as Cw Momarvandercamp Cooke. You can find me on Twitter as Robocop_Murphy. You can throw up a bat signal in the sky and I might try to answer you somehow. And no one uses messenger pigeons anymore, but I'm game for those as well.
JMH: CW, Thanks for your time! All the best!
CW: Thank you John! I had a blast doing this and would love to do it again at any time. I've made it pretty clear that I love comics, so I'm always available to talk about them. It's my favorite hobby and I hope we can keep getting the word out and get people out there to either try something new or just check them out. Thanks for letting me have a chance to do that on your site!
Discovery CW Cooke's comics here:
The Royals: Prince Harry
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