Denys Cowan Explains How Graphic Samurai, His New Art Book, Happened

For the first time in his career, legendary comics artist Denys Cowan is releasing a coffee table art book — but it’s going to be more than just pinups. Created with writer Michael Stradford and his Gizmoe Studios, Graphic Samurai: The Art of Denys Cowan is currently funding on Zoop, a crowdfunding platform that specializes in comics. In addition to a curated selection of art from throughout Cowan’s decades-long career, the book features insights and interviews by Stradford, based on months of conversation with Cowan.

Over the course of the production of Graphic Samurai, Stradford had to manually scan hundreds of pages of Cowan’s original art, building up a library of images that could be used to tell the story of Cowan’s career.

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“Giving credit where credit’s due, it was actually Denys’s wife, Cathy, who said to Denys, ‘I think it’s time for you to do this book,” Stradford told ComicBook. “She said that she thought that I should be the one to write it, and of course I was flattered and honored. Denys and I had kicked it around a while ago, and it wasn’t ready at the time. This time, I guess the time it was right.”

“Mike and I kicked it around before, and I was always uncomfortable with the idea of having an art book, my own art, because it was just like, ‘That’s weird. That’s what famous artists get,’” Cowan agreed. “And then, years go by, and my wife is looking at me like, ‘How come you don’t have an Art of book?’ And I’m like, because. If you want me to write the Art of book, it’ll never happen. I’m not writing a book about myself and my own art.’ She suggested Mike Stratford because he’s done this kind of stuff before. She said, ‘He’s your friend and it’ll be good if he does it.’ That was the only way to really get it done; fi I had a hand in anything, we wouldn’t see anything because I’d reject everything. ‘No, that piece has that foot. I drew that foot wrong on that cover, so we can’t use that one.’ ‘Oh no, the background is faded.’ ‘Nope. That one won’t work either. Sorry.’ So you’d be reduced to five pictures maybe.”

Graphic Samurai: The Art of Denys Cowan is the first comprehensive celebration of Cowan’s work. The artist has left an indelible mark on characters like Batman, The Question, Black Panther, and Deathlok, and co-founded Milestone Media, introducing  Hardware, Icon, Rocket and the comic and character that inspired the hit television show he would produce, Static Shock.

In the book, Cowan walks you through his life and career in his own words and via hundreds of unforgettable illustrations in color and black and white. You can get the book, and plenty of other exclusive perks, over at Kickstarter.

Cowan, for his part, remains a little uneasy about the whole thing. He told ComicBook that he’s “aware of the impact” that his work has had on the comics industry — after all, he’s been around for fifty years, and about thirty of those have been people telling him as much — but that doesn’t make it less weird.

“I was just at a convention, and people were just complimenting me and complimenting me,” Cowan explained. “And I’m cringing, all I see are the mistakes in everything that you like — but I can’t say that and completely crush their experience of meeting me. I’ve had to fight that urge. Doing the book has been a trip, because it’s forced me to go back and look at some of the stuff that I’ve done, and read some of the interviews with people that have said things about me, and relive all that all over again. So thanks, Mike.”

The friendship between the two is obvious when you talk to them. It’s shaped the whole process of the book, not just because it led to the partnership, but because it also led to the workflow that shaped it.

“I wanted it to be a process that didn’t feel overwhelming or annoying, so we had agreed to get together every Saturday for a minimum of an hour and I would interview him,” Stradford explained. “And then once we finished the interview, I would get a bunch of his art, I’d take it home and scan it, bring it back in the next week, and we just went back and forth until we finished. I wound up scanning a little over 2, 000 pieces of art, and then some people online that have had some of his earlier material, and they have been kind enough to send it over, so we scanned it. Now, we’re at a point where myself and Jason Medley, who’s the book designer, have been placing a lot of art in a rough mock up of the book. While art’s still coming in, we’ll move it around, then hen we’ll give it to Denys. He’ll go through it and say, I’ don’t like that,’ or ‘There’s a better version of this,’ or ‘What about that?’ So we’ll do a basic framework so that he doesn’t have to just sift through everything and then we can tweak it, per his direction.”

Obviously, that doesn’t mean that Stradford doesn’t have a vision of his own for the project. In fact, he has had a pretty complete idea for what he wants to make since he started pitching Cowan.

“I envisioned the book a little differently from a number of other art books that I saw,” Stradford told us. “I really wanted Denys to tell you his story, in his own words all the way through, and we would have mirroring images that would compliment what he was talking about. So, the thrust for me was to sit down with him every week, and try to make that hour as good and inquisitive as possible, because there were always surprising things that I didn’t know about him, that I’d find out every time. That would inform the ongoing conversations, and it would also give me new things to look for when I’m trying to scan artwork. The whole spine of it was really Denys telling his story from the early, early days in Queens, up until now in Chatsworth.”

“Mike asked me a lot of stuff that no one’s ever asked me before,” Cowan added. “We were able to get into to a number of areas that have never been discussed in any interview.”

Cowan added that his overall reluctance to do press hasn’t kept him from promoting his comics over the years — but it has historically been difficult to get him to promote himself.

“Curiously, the number of overall big interviews have been less than 10 after 50 years,” Cowan admitted. “Everyone always want to talk about Milestone, and I talked to Mike about Milestone, but there’s so much more of it about what happened before Milestone and what’s happened after.”

Cowan noted that at this point, the story of Milestone is pretty well-trod, and it’s 30 years old.

“Let’s talk about the new stuff,” he joked. “Why are we talking about Milestone again? How do I balance it out? I don’t know. My heroes, the guys whose work I really love, are all producing work well into their 70s, and they’re still vital and strong. Walt Simonson, his stuff is probably better than it’s ever been. Howard Chaykin, Mike Kaluta, all the guys that I grew up loving, they’re still doing very important, profound work that’s great and at a high level. In my mind, that’s all I want to do. I want to be like Walt Simonson and Howard. Getting older, but still doing just great, vital work.”

You can get Graphic Samurai: The Art of Denys Cowan on Kickstarter now at the link above.