Comic Book Dream Team: Introducing Gilbert Hernandez and Darwyn Cooke’s The Twilight Children

This is the first joint project for the pair, each of whom is a comic legend in his own right. Hernandez is the co-creator of the acclaimed indie series Love and Rockets, and Cooke is known for DC: The New Frontier and his graphic novel adaptations of the Parker novels, by Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake).
So what is their collaboration like? “Magical” is the word that comes to mind. With this creative team, there was no question that The Twilight Children would be good, but it’s also unique—a story that’s as much about the everyday lives of the residents of a fishing village as it is about the appearance of a magical glowing ball which seems to vanish and reappear at will. It’s about the three children who dare touch the ball. It’s about the woman having an affair torn between two lovers. It’s about the town drunk responsible for accidentally starting a fire that killed his family. It’s about a whole cast of characters who have yet to show their true colors.
In a joint interview with Hernandez last weekend at New York Comic Con, Cooke said he has no idea where the story is going. “I get the scripts and I’m completely surprised at what happens next.”

Hernandez said he intended the magical elements of the tale to be like the iPad his character possesses in the 1980s in his graphic novel, Bumperhead: “There’s a weird and surreal element, but it’s always about family.”
This dream team was brought together by Vertigo editor Shelly Bond, who hooked them up on a conference call after hearing Cooke wanted to work with Hernandez. Both have distinctive styles, but also much in common. Their characters are always complicated and well-drawn—including the women.
“If there are more women in the world than men, why is it so hard to put them into stories?” Hernandez asked.
Cooke had clear inspirations in mind when writing the female characters. “Even when I started, I had my grandmother in mind, and I knew I had to satisfy her, and I knew she and my other family members were watching.”
There’s a scene with two lovers in bed that scene is emblematic of their approach to writing women. It’s natural, it’s not drawn as a cheesecake fantasy, and it’s organic to the story.

Cooke, who was a co-creator of the Catwoman revamp commonly known as the “goggles Catwoman” costume, said when he worked on that series, he often changed scenes of Selina Kyle in the shower to show her making tea in the kitchen. He said probably one of his biggest mistakes was putting “that damn zipper” on the costume, because as soon as he left the book, down came the zipper…and back came the focus on Selina’s cleavage.
Because they’re both artists, I asked Cooke to compare his collaboration with Hernandez to working with other comic writers. Hernandez said he doesn’t write scripts like a writer. Instead, he gives Cooke cartoons and drawings with some words, and trusts him to flesh out the story.
“Gil’s a cartoonist, and that makes a huge difference. No writer will give you two pages of no words in the beginning,” Cooke said.
That sequence—the opening of the series, which walks the reader through the community and introduces its residents—is emblematic of the power of the graphic medium to use visuals to tell a story.
Issue #1 ends with many questions, including the motives of a stranger in town to study the phenomenon, and with the children altered in an unexplainable way. What happens next won’t be predictable but it no doubt will be as fascinating.