Victor Cook
Cook was born in the early 1960s, one of five children on the Johnson Air Force Base in Saitama, Japan His parents met in a Air Force cafeteria while his father was enlisted. He is half-Korean through his mother. After leaving Saitama, the family lived in San Antonio, Texas; Florida; Forth Worth, Texas; Euless, Texas; Okinawa, Japan (at Kadena Air Base); and Atwater, California. After high school, he briefly attended a junior college in Central California before transferring to California State University, Long Beach. As a child and into college, his goal was to be a print cartoonist, but was dissuaded after reading about Jack Kirby's career. While at the junior college, a life drawing teacher gave him the contact information for a former student who went on to work for Hanna-Barbera. He only called once he was already into his career. The student suggested taking an animation class at The Animation Guild. After graduating college, Cook worked as a graphic artist and political cartoonist for Costa Mesa's "Daily Pilot" then as an assistant animator at Filmation. At Filmation, he found himself drawn to storyboards because they reminded him of comic cels. He worked on "BraveStarr" during the day and took storyboard classes at night until Filmation folded. He was able to find a job working on "ALF Tales" and "ALF: The Animated Series". This experience helped him eventually land at Disney Television Animation, where he worked for 16 years. After leaving Disney, he worked with Greg Weisman to create "The Spectacular Spider-Man"; worked on "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated"; and started at Hasbro, where he helped develop "Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters" alongside writer Kevin Burke and producer Chris "Doc" Wyatt. In the late 2010s, he was hired onto "T.O.T.S." by Disney Junior. He is the creator of the "Mecha-Nation" comic books. It is the first comic book he's worked on. Cook was called by Sony Entertainment to develop a DVD project about Spider-Man. Cook developed it with Greg Weisman, they wanted to base it on 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 maintained 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." 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." There is also a Spider-Man comic series based on the show. Cook wanted the animation to be squash and stretch style, and the action to be as good as the first two live action movies Sam Raimi directed as they had "set the bar" for the fluid movement for Spider-Man. As they were on a specific budget, they wanted to allow the animation to "move" more than anything, giving it simple and stylistic designs. 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." "The Spectacular Spider-Man" became very successful in its first season on Kids WB! and entered its second season in the US in 2009 on Disney XD. He and his wife Sonia, who is also half-Korean, have been married since the late 1980s. They have two children: Hanah and Jackson. His daughter is an animator and, according to Victor's friend and colleague Greg Weisman, served as the inspiration for Artemis Crock in "Young Justice". As an animator, Cook admires Charles M. Schulz, Jack Kirby and Hayao Miyazaki, and was a Hanna-Barbera fan growing up.
Career
Mystery Incorporated" (2010–13) and "Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters" (2017–2018), and as an executive producer of Disney Junior's "T.O.T.S."