Victor Cook

Cook (second to last on the left) with the crew of The Spectacular Spider-Man at the 2007 Comic Con International.

Victor Cook is an American television director, writer, and producer. Cook is perhaps best known for producing and developing for television the animated television series The Spectacular Spider-Man along with Greg Weisman.^[1][2]

Victor Cook is Director and Supervising Producer of Ben 10 Destroy All Aliens, a CGI made for TV movie scheduled for a late 2012 broadcast.

Cook also is a Director on Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated, currently airing on Cartoon Network. Cook's past animated projects include: Atlantis: Milo's Return, The Legend of Tarzan, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Darkwing Duck, and Hellboy: Blood and Iron.^[3][4][5]

Cook was called by Sony Entertainment alongside Greg Weisman to help develop a DVD project about Spider-Man. Both of them wanted to use a style from the early comic book publications of the character that showed him younger, which Cook had never seen done before in any adaption. The idea was reformatted to an animated television series, but they still kept a similar chronicle style where, as Cook describes, "each episode stands alone as its own story, but like the comic book itself it’s a saga. Then each three episodes is a story and those three episodes are what would be on the DVD releases."^[6] The original title for the series was The Amazing Spider-Man, based on the comic series of the same name, but by mid-2007 the name was changed to The Spectacular Spider-Man, as well a Spider-Man comic series.^[7][8]

Both Weisman and Cook wanted to use the style of Sam Raimi, director of the Spider-Man films, as it had "set the bar" for the fluid movement for Spider-Man.^[6][9] As they were on a specific budget, they wanted to allow the animation to "move" more than anything, giving it simple and stylistic designs.^[10] He also looked back on Blood and Iron, which had a "fresh, young, look to it" that appealed to him visually. Cook wanted to make an "iconic" Spider-Man for both new and older generations and "really wanted this to be a two dimensional Spider-man that moved like we’ve never really seen him move in animation before."^[6] The Spectacular Spider-Man became very successful in its first season on Kids WB! and entered its second season in America in 2009 on Disney XD.^[11]

With The Spectacular Spider-Man cancelled, both Cook and Weisman are currently working at Warner Brothers Animation. Cook On Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated, Weisman on Young Justice for the CN network. According to Weisman, the show's version of the character Artemis was partially based on Victor's daughter Hanah, who like the character is half-Asian and half-white.^[12]

References