Ep. 95: TOMM COKER'S Noir

Tomm is an awesome artist I discovered last year on a fill-in issue of Moon Knight. I dug his work, did some googling and found out he's been doing his thing off and on since the early '90s. Well, kill the off 'cause it's definitely on now. His art on Marvel's new Daredevil Noir mini-series will turn some heads—and with good reason.

Knowing a little about the guy's backstory makes his work all the more interesting. Tomm got into comics at the tender age of 17, worked for several major publishers, made great money, lost his way, then left the business to find it.

Along his journey, he did storyboards for commercials, animated TV shows, movies like The Mummy and The Watcher, and music videos like Aaron Carter's 'How I Beat Shaq' (sadly, we forgot to ask him about that one).

After some years away, he was lured back to his first love in 2003 by Vertigo, to work on a vampire mini-series called Blood & Water. Blood introduced comic fans to a brand new Coker. Tomm's drawing had matured and become much stronger. He was spotting blacks like crazy and his images were grittier and more realistically rendered.

He followed that series up with things like The Monolith for DC, an issue of The Ride for 12-Gauge (sweet), and covers for Exiles and Agents of Atlas over at Marvel. It was all good!

And you can put his current project, Daredevil Noir, up there as well. Written by Alexander Irvine, Noir is a DD story told 'Elseworld' style with a serious crime fiction overtone. Issue #1 is out now and I'm feelin' it big time. Go pick it up!

Now, the other thing about Tomm that I haven't mentioned is, he's a movie director. He made a feature film back in 2007 called Catacombs with his friend, screenwriter David Elliot. It stars the lovely Shannyn Sossamon and pop singer Pink, and it's a horror picture of sorts, set under the streets of Paris.

Tomm rocked it for his directorial debut and while the movie's completion had its hurdles, it's definitely worth checking out (look for the director's cut).

We cover all of the above and more in our very candid talk with this Renaissance Man. Plus, he shares lots of cool stories about comics, art, filmmaking and just...life in general. Hope you enjoy!

**A special shout of thanks to David Elliott for his unplanned appearance on this episode.