I finally picked this up because Darwyn Cooke just recently died, may he RIP, so I wanted to honor his name and work by revisiting a little of his work, and picked something y'all told me was his best stuff. I have not been a huge fan of his work, particularly, his DC stuff, his Before Watchmen work that I found an uninteresting cash grab. This was by far the most interesting work he has done that I have seen, in part because it meets my interests in graphic crime stories at the moment. It's a s...

Darwyn Cooke adapted several of Richard Stark's (pseudonym of Donald Westlake) Parker novels. (Mel Gibson's Payback is based on The Hunter.) Parker has been double-crossed and left for dead. Now he'll stop at nothing for revenge. Parker is just as awful as those he's going after. This is some old school noir at its finest. Cooke's art feels straight out of the 50's where this took place. It's highly stylised, fitting perfectly with the time. There's a lot of violence here, quite a bit directed t...

Man, was this all kinds of awesome.Based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by the late Richard Stark (Donald Westlake), artist Darwyn Cooke adapted it to the graphic novel medium. Parker, set up by a desperate man in need of paying off some sketchy loans, seemingly returns from the dead to settle a score. Running through members of a massive crime organization dubbed, The Outfit, Parker makes it clear he wants his money back - at any cost.I know I've been told 'round these parts that Parke...

I'm a big fan of Darwyn Cooke's art, and his art is amazing in this. However, I didn't enjoy this at all. The protagonist, Parker, is a pretty horrible person. You're supposed to feel sympathy for him as he goes on his rampage of revenge against the people that tried to kill him, but by the end of the story I kind of wish that they had succeeded in killing him. The biggest problem I had with his character is the way that he treated women. He physically and mentally abuses the women that he encou...

Starkly (no pun intended - or was it?) effective crime story that will seem familiar if you've seen either Point Blank with Lee Marvin or Payback with Mel Gibson, both of which used Donald Westlake's first 'Parker' novel for their cinematic screenplays. This was one nasty little piece of sadistic, un-P.C. and probably misogynistic business . . . and I loved nearly every minute of it! (Sometimes you just want to get down in the mud and say "&$#% it, it's time for some rough justice.") It was a pe...

When I heard a comic adaptations were being done to Richard Stark’s stories about professional thief Parker, I had a lot of doubts. There’s been a bad trend of trying to turn any book, tv show, film or video game with any nerd appeal at all into graphic novel form and the results have been mixed at best. So I wasn’t running out to pick this up. But I saw some good reviews on it from fellow Parker fans and when I came across this at the local library, I checked it out, and I’m glad I did.Darwyn C...

Illustrator Darywn Cooke's adaptation of the classic blood soaked revenge fueled noir, The Hunter by Donald Westlake's most renowned pseudonym Richard Stark captures the essence of the novel and manages to better it by adding a layer of grit to the grime, in the process creating a visually perfect picture to compliment he prose. Parker is a professional thief, taking only the most profitable jobs; its high stakes, high risk, high reward. When an opportunity arises to take a cut of a cool 90k, he...

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 i...

Starts off with a helluva quiet bang, but massive punch in the face nonetheless. Slows down some once we start to learn a little backstory, and eases into a slow smoulder with an acrid smokey haze of bitter revenge.The source material is obviously rich, oozing atmosphere, personality and sensuality. I'm impressed as much at how little Cooke needs to extract to tell a tight but layered tale to us, and how well he translates a prose-heavy story into arresting, storytelling imagery.Under the combin...

After watching the Mel Gibson movie again last week, I decided to give this one a try.Both Payback and this graphic novel are based on Richard Stark’s first Parker novel and so they basically tell the same story.Parker has been double-crossed by his partner in crime Mal Resnick, shot at by his wife and left for dead. Resnick took Parker’s part of the loot and used it to pay off his debts to the Outfit, a crime syndicate.But Parker isn‘t dead at all. And now he’s back to get his revenge and take

(Sigh) Why do people like this?What’s it about?Good question. I read this but the storytelling was terrible and I could barely tell what the fuck’s going on.Why it gets 1 star:The story is meh. It’s not necessarily terrible but we’ve all seen it before. Tough guy who associates with criminals has to beat the shit out of and/or kill people to get what he wants.The storytelling is fucking terrible. I get that some prose stories don’t work well when adapted into comics form (I’m sure that would hap...

There are few things I love more then Crime Fiction. There are few things in that genre that I love more then the great Don Westlake’s Parker novels. Written under the pseudonym Richard Stark and spanning twenty four novels, the series follows professional thief Parker from job to job. The books themselves vary little, most follow a pretty set formula Where in, A) Parker takes a job. B) Some poor fool crosses him. C) We follow said poor fool as we watch him try to escape from Parker’s wrath. D)

Years ago, I discovered Richard Stark's 'Parker' thanks to this book. I'd been a fan of Darwyn Cooke's work for years so when I heard about this particular project I decided to check out Stark's novels. I figured I'd read them so that I could then see how close to the source Cooke had stayed in bringing his adaptation to the comic book page.I really liked those Richard Stark novels. But! To read this adaptation was... amazing. The quality of the original story is without question, but to read it...

PROS:- This is a very faithful adaptation to the source material. The few changes that I noticed were made just to work better with the graphic medium.- Beautiful hard-boiled art style, reminiscent of the art of Sin City.- Better ending point than the original novel, which had another job tacked on at the end.- Really nice hardcover book with a book jacket cover.CONS:- Interior art is grey-scale, not in color like the cover.- So similar to the novel that it is redundant to read both.- The entire...

Richard Stark writing plus quality art.A great,great Graphic Novel and now I finally see why Cooke's art is so highly rated.Almost black,white art that makes the story come alive very strong. You can see Cooke is a real Richard Stark fan, Parker is drawn like a mean looking guy which is a copy of my ideal look for Parker that i have in my mind when i read the books.

071110: i have now read/seen this story in 3 media: as a film point blank, as a novel, as this graphic adaption...it is a different experience in each, prompting some thought on its iterations. story is simple, story is slightly different between book and graphic, quite different as film: film follows brief introduction of treachery, concentrates then on revenge, treated in some way as the absurdist theatre it is. book takes a bit more effort, shows up certain implausibilities, while graphic has...

Great hardboiled suspense graphic novel. Darwyn Cooke's art is fantastic. It captures the era, 1960s America, beautifully. If you want a Mad Men style criminal graphic novel, then look no further.

A mysterious man enters New York City in what looks like the 1950s. He's only got the clothes on his back but his wits soon has him attired in new clothes and on his mission again. He's Parker and he's been double crossed by his former partner and his wife out of money from a job they pulled in South America. But when they left him for dead, guess what? He wasn't! A classic revenge setup then. Only unlike similar stories of vengeance (and I immediately thought of Frank Miller's The Hard Goodbye

Richard Stark's first Parker novel, The Hunter, was the perfect story to be recreated as a graphic novel. The graphics are dark and powerful. Parker is a little more handsome than I pictured him. Stark said when he was creating Parker, he pictured someone like Jack Palance. Perfect. The story was written in 1962, so Cooke clearly had a lot of fun recreating those days. The store signs, the clothes, the mid century modern furniture. Lots of great detail.I also enjoyed where they chose to end the

Detective fiction in comics form of this level of quality is quite rare, or at least that's been my experience. Darwyn Cooke has done an outstanding job adapting this classic novel by the great Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark.) I'm only familiar with the Parker books by reputation, but the genre "hard-boiled" definitely applies. Short summary: Parker returns from the dead for some payback. Obviously he's not really dead, and this comes as a bit of a surprise to the folks who thought th...