CW Cooke tells The Pitch about his Kickstarter comic book, Solitary, in this week’s questionnaire

Name: CW Cooke

Hometown: Overland Park
 
What I do (in 140 characters): I work in insurance, and I write comic books and create worlds of my own! One is clearly better than the other.
 
What’s your addiction? I have a ton of comics all over my apartment and have been collecting since I was a kid. Thankfully, it’s not cocaine.
 
What’s your game? Probably Grand Theft Auto and any variations on that. It’s a good way to de-stress after a very long day of working insurance. Australian-rules football. That stuff is pretty nuts, and I love watching it.
 
What’s your drink? Dr Pepper, white Russians and car bombs. And water, lots of water.
 
Where’s dinner? Kansas City has the best barbecue in the world. Either that or Westport Flea Market for burgers or any number of bars around town. I’m pretty easy.

What’s on your KC postcard? The Nelson-Atkins. Have to represent the Shuttlecocks, ha.
 
Finish this sentence: “Kansas City got it right when …” I was born. Or Sporting Kansas City’s Cauldron and the way our city responded to the World Cup.
 
“Kansas City screwed up when …” We missed out on bringing the now–Oklahoma City Thunder to KC as our team. Still burns.
 
“In five years, I’ll be …” On top of the comic-book world, or writing comic books full time, at least. That’s the goal anyway.

“I always laugh at …” I’m pretty warped, so my friends and wife remind me that I laugh constantly at the way people die in films. Especially if it’s a remarkable death or if someone is dispatched in a hilarious way. And I’m laughing loudly in a full theater, too.

“I’ve been known to binge-watch …” If it’s TV, cartoons like Regular Show or shows like Psych and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Movies? Comic-book movies or action movies, and definitely Kurt Russell movies.

“I can’t stop listening to …” “All the Rage Back Home” by Interpol from its upcoming album.
 
“I just read …” Reading the Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad novels by Alex Grecian.
 
The best advice I ever got: To never give up. That I’ll hear a million people telling me no, but it only takes one person to say yes.

My brush with fame: In 2009, I was on a panel at a film festival and comic show and onstage with the likes of Steve Niles, creator of 30 Days of Night. That was pretty incredible. The other was being featured on an MSNBC program called Power Lunch a few years back discussing my work. Hopefully, more to come, too.
 
What was the last thing you had to apologize for? I apologized last night at a bar for making a bartender’s last night more difficult, with random drink orders she didn’t normally make.

My recent triumph: My first creator-owned comic-book series and my first Kickstarter is fully funded. In a little over a week’s time. That was a pretty incredible thing.

Tell us about Solitary, the comic you’re trying to fund: Solitary is the story of Tim Hill, a man wrongly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. The basic premise is this: What if Superman was on the Green Mile? What if a superhero was on death row, learned that he couldn’t die and had to live out his immortality behind bars? It’s a superhero-prison-crime drama, and I’m loving getting to tell this tale.

For more on Solitary, see kickstarter.com.