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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
I grew up reading pulp novels from the 50s and 60s that my uncle collected, and while this isn't in novel form, it took me back to those days.
The artwork for this graphic novel is excellent, often substituting for the narration and you don't miss those empty worded panels at all! You get the atmosphere and grittiness of underworld NYC from the black and grey images Cooke supplies us with. My only real complaint is the font wasn't always easy to read. I'll definitely be looking out for the next in the series.
Parker is a hard nosed professional thief, only taking the well paying jobs. When he starts running low on dough, he seeks out another score. This gets him by until he is double crossed by some of his cohorts and his lady out of his share of 90 grand. After some time in the slammer, Parker is bent on revenge. Just how many bodies will pile up until Parker gets his man and his dough?
The artwork for this graphic novel is excellent, often substituting for the narration and you don't miss those empty worded panels at all! You get the atmosphere and grittiness of underworld NYC from the black and grey images Cooke supplies us with. My only real complaint is the font wasn't always easy to read. I'll definitely be looking out for the next in the series.
Parker is a hard nosed professional thief, only taking the well paying jobs. When he starts running low on dough, he seeks out another score. This gets him by until he is double crossed by some of his cohorts and his lady out of his share of 90 grand. After some time in the slammer, Parker is bent on revenge. Just how many bodies will pile up until Parker gets his man and his dough?
Ugh. The third or fourth time someone smacked some chic in the face or stood her up by pulling her hair I realized: this is not the book for me. Yuck. The artwork here is lovely but Parker & I are parting ways.
Read this graphic novel when it first came out in 2009. Read it again in 2018 for a book club. Didn't much like it either time.
The art is very nice and really evokes the 1960's Mad-Men era while using only black, white and blue. The most effective section is the beginning. Although adapted from a text novel, the beginning goes for quite a while with no words and tells the story beautifully and effectively. In later sections sometimes there is too much text. Either way, I just don't enjoy reading about this character. He is an amoral criminal bent on revenge. Not really my kind of story, but what really bothers me is that he is too perfect in his violence. He simply never fails and is never really in danger, so there is no suspense.
Some of the book group adored this, so your mileage may vary. For crime-story comics, I find the characters more compelling in [a:Ed Brubaker|37450|Ed Brubaker|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1230612199p2/37450.jpg]'s books, such as [b:Criminal, Vol. 1: Coward|106033|Criminal, Vol. 1 Coward (Criminal, #1)|Ed Brubaker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348189021s/106033.jpg|102209].
(Somewhat confusingly for librarians, there is also a fully-text version of the novel which includes images from this graphic novel.)
The art is very nice and really evokes the 1960's Mad-Men era while using only black, white and blue. The most effective section is the beginning. Although adapted from a text novel, the beginning goes for quite a while with no words and tells the story beautifully and effectively. In later sections sometimes there is too much text. Either way, I just don't enjoy reading about this character. He is an amoral criminal bent on revenge. Not really my kind of story, but what really bothers me is that he is too perfect in his violence. He simply never fails and is never really in danger, so there is no suspense.
Some of the book group adored this, so your mileage may vary. For crime-story comics, I find the characters more compelling in [a:Ed Brubaker|37450|Ed Brubaker|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1230612199p2/37450.jpg]'s books, such as [b:Criminal, Vol. 1: Coward|106033|Criminal, Vol. 1 Coward (Criminal, #1)|Ed Brubaker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348189021s/106033.jpg|102209].
(Somewhat confusingly for librarians, there is also a fully-text version of the novel which includes images from this graphic novel.)
I've never read any of Richard Stark's (aka Donald Westlake) 24-book Parker series, but I have seen a few of the films based on the character (including Point Blank and Payback, both based on this first in the series), so I was familiar with the plot before I cracked its pages. The novel was published in 1962 and this version is faithful to time, both in story and style. Cooke's two-tone black and gunmetal blue palette combine perfectly with his retro-cool illustration style which has the flexibility to denote the full spectrum, from realism to cartoon action, and of course, Parker's square jaw, the huge cars, and long legs of various dames all look great here.
The story opens with a 10-page montage showing someone (we never see his face) making his way to Manhattan and forging a new identity. Then-- Bam! -- a full page panel of a disheveled and furious man glaring into the mirror. After another mostly wordless ten pages of him forging checks and getting properly attired, we finally get to the story. A beautiful woman, some kind of betrayal, and a man named Mal (not exactly subtle with the naming here) who Parker very much would like to catch up with. Finally, on page 46, we get a flashback to the job that went wrong and the betrayal. This is handled nicely visually, using a moire filter to create a kind of haze on the artwork for the 15-page flashback. With all the setup complete, the second half of the book picks up steam as Parker tracks down those involved in his betrayal and metes out his own brutal revenge. It's a perfect marriage of art and story, and it's easy to see why this adaptation is the only one (film or otherwise) in which Stark/Westlake allowed the main character to use the Parker name. I'll definitely seek out Cooke's other Parker adaptations, The Outfit and The Score.
The story opens with a 10-page montage showing someone (we never see his face) making his way to Manhattan and forging a new identity. Then-- Bam! -- a full page panel of a disheveled and furious man glaring into the mirror. After another mostly wordless ten pages of him forging checks and getting properly attired, we finally get to the story. A beautiful woman, some kind of betrayal, and a man named Mal (not exactly subtle with the naming here) who Parker very much would like to catch up with. Finally, on page 46, we get a flashback to the job that went wrong and the betrayal. This is handled nicely visually, using a moire filter to create a kind of haze on the artwork for the 15-page flashback. With all the setup complete, the second half of the book picks up steam as Parker tracks down those involved in his betrayal and metes out his own brutal revenge. It's a perfect marriage of art and story, and it's easy to see why this adaptation is the only one (film or otherwise) in which Stark/Westlake allowed the main character to use the Parker name. I'll definitely seek out Cooke's other Parker adaptations, The Outfit and The Score.
Darwyn Cooke, Parker: The Hunter (IDW, 2009)
I am a Parker fiend, and I'm fond of Darwyn Cooke, so this seemed like a natural pairing to me. And it is; this is a lovely (if such a term can ever be used for Parker's adventures) little volume, as full of action, drama, and violence as one would expect. My only real problem with it is my only real problem with every graphic novel I adore (with the arguable exception of Bone): it's too damn short. The Hunter is a relatively short novel, and rationally I have no problems at all with Cooke's futher distillation of it into a hundred-forty-four page comic; the pacing is solid, the dialogue loses nothing, the characters are excellent. But if you grok Parker's world from the get-go, and if you're a noir fan you most likely will, then this is a world in which you willw ant ot stay for as long as possible. That is the only aspect of this book that doesn't deliver. *** ½
I am a Parker fiend, and I'm fond of Darwyn Cooke, so this seemed like a natural pairing to me. And it is; this is a lovely (if such a term can ever be used for Parker's adventures) little volume, as full of action, drama, and violence as one would expect. My only real problem with it is my only real problem with every graphic novel I adore (with the arguable exception of Bone): it's too damn short. The Hunter is a relatively short novel, and rationally I have no problems at all with Cooke's futher distillation of it into a hundred-forty-four page comic; the pacing is solid, the dialogue loses nothing, the characters are excellent. But if you grok Parker's world from the get-go, and if you're a noir fan you most likely will, then this is a world in which you willw ant ot stay for as long as possible. That is the only aspect of this book that doesn't deliver. *** ½
A beautifully-drawn graphic novel based on Donald Westlake's Parker books. I'd read Firebreak, a Parker novel by Westlake, and felt there was something *missing* from that book. Seeing the graphic novel adaptations (Hunter and The Outfit) of other Parker novels, my problem is clearer. Parker lacks heart, which is deliberate since the graphic novel tells us he feels emotion less than most people. No one around him seems to be anything other than a violent sociopath. The result are books that lack heart too. What keeps the pages turning is the reader's fascination with a force of nature - ruthless, relentless, driven and unforgiving. Parker kills almost everyone he meets. Over two graphic novels, he kills maybe 100 people in a few months - mostly in the heat of the moment. Where are the police? The relentless killing detracts attention from the story's climatic killings. I didn't care when he got even with Mal and Bronson from The Outfit. They were just another dead body...
Donald Westlake as adapted by Darwyn Cooke? It doesn't get much better than that.
Picked this up again for a re-read. For obvious reason. I’ve gone through this book about three times now, I think, and I love it more each time. One day I will pick up the novel by Richard Stark (a.k.a Donald E. Westlake) upon which this is based, in order to compare and contrast and whatever, but to be honest, Cooke’s work has so much depth and density, and moves at such a tight pace (this novel is built like a Swiss watch) that you are just left feeling like there’s really no need to go back to the original.
Something I found mighty interesting: Richard Stark’s Parker has been portrayed on screen dozens of times over the years since his literary debut in the early sixties. More or less, anyway. See, the character always appeared under a different name. Stark felt comfortable enough giving Hollywood his thrilling capers, but never trusted the hunter himself over to anybody.
Until Darwyn Cooke came along.
Stark died before the completion of this graphic novel, but he had apparently seen enough of the project that it convinced him, finally, to entrust Parker to somebody else. Cooke, Stark felt, was the first person to come along who just got Parker. And this goes back to what I wrote a couple of days ago, about Cooke’s uncanny ability to distill a character into their purest, most essential form, before letting them loose on the page and the unsuspecting populace.
This is the kind of storytelling the world lost earlier this week, and it is a much, much poorer place for it.
A note: The Hunter is an extremely enjoyable and stylish as hell crime thriller, to be sure, but it is also a story set in the fifties, and in some respects it is very much Of Its Time -- by which I mean there are some scenes (not a lot, but some) wherein women are treated like dirt. Cooke doesn't doesn't adapt these scenes to better reflect modern sensibilities, and thus they can be quite jarring. So, you know, watch out for it.
Something I found mighty interesting: Richard Stark’s Parker has been portrayed on screen dozens of times over the years since his literary debut in the early sixties. More or less, anyway. See, the character always appeared under a different name. Stark felt comfortable enough giving Hollywood his thrilling capers, but never trusted the hunter himself over to anybody.
Until Darwyn Cooke came along.
Stark died before the completion of this graphic novel, but he had apparently seen enough of the project that it convinced him, finally, to entrust Parker to somebody else. Cooke, Stark felt, was the first person to come along who just got Parker. And this goes back to what I wrote a couple of days ago, about Cooke’s uncanny ability to distill a character into their purest, most essential form, before letting them loose on the page and the unsuspecting populace.
This is the kind of storytelling the world lost earlier this week, and it is a much, much poorer place for it.
A note: The Hunter is an extremely enjoyable and stylish as hell crime thriller, to be sure, but it is also a story set in the fifties, and in some respects it is very much Of Its Time -- by which I mean there are some scenes (not a lot, but some) wherein women are treated like dirt. Cooke doesn't doesn't adapt these scenes to better reflect modern sensibilities, and thus they can be quite jarring. So, you know, watch out for it.
Darwyn Cooke does some fine artwork. 50% "The Spirit" and 50% Mad Men.
The story looks like it might be a good one, but the adaptation seems a little thin.
I would normally be hot to trot to read "The Hunter" novel, but I'm kinda sick of rage-aholic anti-heroes, so I think I'm going to give it a skip, unless one goes on special.
The story looks like it might be a good one, but the adaptation seems a little thin.
I would normally be hot to trot to read "The Hunter" novel, but I'm kinda sick of rage-aholic anti-heroes, so I think I'm going to give it a skip, unless one goes on special.