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Review: Parker - The Hunter
Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter GN
Adapted and Illustrated by Darwyn Cooke
Published by IDW Publishing. $24.99 USD
I don't know that I could have asked for a more perfect adaptation of Stark's (Donald Westlake's) first Parker novel. Oh, sure, I'm a grown man and I realize that if this was a relationship, it would be better if there were some surprises, some areas of mild conflict where our tectonic plates could cause friction with each other, some areas of mystery we could explore as our hair turned gray and our skin lined and coarse. That's great for longterm happiness. But in terms of, say, a testicularly challenging weekend, a brief but shattering fling you'll remember at odd moments until someone's changing your Depends and your memories are all but gone, then this book is like that.
Every thing about this book screams 1962 right down to the jacket and even the asymetrical boxes around the author bios, and it's a loving scream. There's nothing camp or kitsch about Cooke's approach--he loves this era and he's determined to bring it back to life. It's kind of a wonderful thing, the imagination--the author photo outs Westlake as a pencilneck who probably never even shoplifted, Cooke is a Canadian, where there's absolutely no history of crime fiction much less mobsterism, and the non-Italian "syndicate/outfit/organization" is pure fantasy, and yet this reads as an authentic thriller, albeit one with more of a superhero bent. We have no doubt that Parker is going to get his way, it's just a matter of how many men he will have to kill along the way.
Cooke finds the right style from the start and his joy at recreating this world is palpable. The black-and-white with the cold blue--what could work better? Any ideas? Not me. Sure, it might be a little better if Parker had more of a distinctive face--Westlake always pictured Jack Palance. Cooke goes for more of a generic, handsome-but-dangerous mug for Parker, and it works fine, but you don't remember his face afterward. But on the plus side, you remember a number of great touches, such as the break in format to show the map of his travels, or the leafy shadows on Parker's wife's face, foreshadowing the post-mortem he's going to give that face with his knife. It's a shocking book, even 40+ years later, but the shocks are delayed because the plot moves so quickly, inexorably. As much as I love John Boorman's film adaptation, Point Blank, with its strange editing and black humor, it's great to get the unadulterated jolt of the original story here. And I don't know the other Parker stories at all, so I'm even more excited about the further Cooke adaptations to come.
Adapted and Illustrated by Darwyn Cooke
Published by IDW Publishing. $24.99 USD
I don't know that I could have asked for a more perfect adaptation of Stark's (Donald Westlake's) first Parker novel. Oh, sure, I'm a grown man and I realize that if this was a relationship, it would be better if there were some surprises, some areas of mild conflict where our tectonic plates could cause friction with each other, some areas of mystery we could explore as our hair turned gray and our skin lined and coarse. That's great for longterm happiness. But in terms of, say, a testicularly challenging weekend, a brief but shattering fling you'll remember at odd moments until someone's changing your Depends and your memories are all but gone, then this book is like that.
Every thing about this book screams 1962 right down to the jacket and even the asymetrical boxes around the author bios, and it's a loving scream. There's nothing camp or kitsch about Cooke's approach--he loves this era and he's determined to bring it back to life. It's kind of a wonderful thing, the imagination--the author photo outs Westlake as a pencilneck who probably never even shoplifted, Cooke is a Canadian, where there's absolutely no history of crime fiction much less mobsterism, and the non-Italian "syndicate/outfit/organization" is pure fantasy, and yet this reads as an authentic thriller, albeit one with more of a superhero bent. We have no doubt that Parker is going to get his way, it's just a matter of how many men he will have to kill along the way.
Cooke finds the right style from the start and his joy at recreating this world is palpable. The black-and-white with the cold blue--what could work better? Any ideas? Not me. Sure, it might be a little better if Parker had more of a distinctive face--Westlake always pictured Jack Palance. Cooke goes for more of a generic, handsome-but-dangerous mug for Parker, and it works fine, but you don't remember his face afterward. But on the plus side, you remember a number of great touches, such as the break in format to show the map of his travels, or the leafy shadows on Parker's wife's face, foreshadowing the post-mortem he's going to give that face with his knife. It's a shocking book, even 40+ years later, but the shocks are delayed because the plot moves so quickly, inexorably. As much as I love John Boorman's film adaptation, Point Blank, with its strange editing and black humor, it's great to get the unadulterated jolt of the original story here. And I don't know the other Parker stories at all, so I'm even more excited about the further Cooke adaptations to come.
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