Parker: The Hunted ~Darwyn Cooke
–July 2009, IDW
–144 pages
–3.5/5 stars
Although I have lived with myself for a little over 40 years now, my reading whims seem to take very curious turns that surprise even me. Earlier this year I read an as-yet-to-be-reviewed mystery novel that sent me down a summer reading path of noir/pulp crime fiction and mystery. The universe seems to have picked up on this trend and has been placing books in my path that have been keeping this trend going, for example, this recently released adaptation of Richard Stark’s (aka Donald Westlake) novel The Hunter, featuring his character Parker.
Being a fan of Darwyn Cooke, who I reviewed back in 2005, this was a no-brainer order for me when I saw it in the Previews order catalog many, many months ago.
Years ago Berkley put out Richard Stark’s Parker novels in a series entitled “The Violent World of Parker”. After reading Cooke’s illustrated, graphic novel presentation of the work, it is easy to see why.
There is no way to do a proper review of this book without once again praising one of my favorite graphic artists. Darwyn Cooke does 50’s/60’s retro like no one else. His women are curvaceous and alive, his men are chiseled and square-jawed. His backgrounds ooze nostalgia. The man has the ability to strip down this retro look to the very core and put out work that excites visually and also enhances the story being told.
I have yet to read any of Donald Westlake’s work, either writing as himself or his alter-ego Richard Stark. To paint these works with a very, very broad brush they fall within the category of crime/noir thrillers that often have a sleazy, gritty, underworld feel to them. My devotion to these novels sprung up entirely because of the wonderful book covers by artists like Robert McGinnis and Robert A. Maguire. Over the last couple of years I’ve had the pleasure of discovering a few of these that are actually ripping good stories. Thus proving the old adage that you cannot judge a book by its cover.
Most of my reading in this genre has been restricted to books featuring a private detective of some sort, though I have some in my collection that fall more closely into the violent, dark, criminal realm that Parker falls into.
This book is done entirely in comic panel format and a great deal of the beginning of the novel is told only with pictures, the words being pushed aside to set the mood and the scene and to slowly draw the reader in to who Parker is and just what he is up to. It is the beginning of the book that is perhaps the only thing I can complain about from a storytelling standpoint. While the concept did work in building up suspense, there were a few panels here and there that were a bit nondescript that possibly could have been edited out to make this portion of the story flow better. That is a very minor complaint.
Cooke uses blacks, whites, and shades of green and grey to emphazise the stark (no pun intended) tone of the book and its effect is to create a mood for this work that matches the story stride for stride. Having not read Richard Stark’s novel I have no idea how close the adaptation is, but I can only imagine that he would be enormously pleased with the interpretation of Darwyn Cooke.
The story is one of revenge, and for all of us who have read or seen good (and bad) revenge tales in our reading and movie viewing, we know that revenge tales are often bitter, brutal, and have a tendency to end badly…at least for some of the characters in the tale. The Hunted is no different. It is a dark, vengeful tale that builds upon its suspense and action to the very climax. I had no issue with that at all as it was a page-turner of a story. Where my one major complaint lies is the female brutality of the book. While it is no doubt a trapping of this kind of violent crime tale, it was too much to see it rendered in this format. Had it been one time it would have been bad, but this happened on more than one occasion in the story. At least one of the incidents definitely served the story, but this kind of thing, in written or visual form is often gratuitous on some level and I just was not comfortable with this aspect of the story.
The book as a physical object is a thing of beauty. From the gorgeous dust jacket to the orange hard cover with a black embossed image of Parker, to the fun end papers (pictured below), this book is award-winning in its presentation. It is a beautiful work. Given that fact it makes it even more difficult for me to judge my feelings of the book. The book as art deserves a 5/5 stars. The mechanics of storytelling in this format deserves a 4.5 to 4.75 out of 5 stars.
But I cannot and will not divorce my review from the way the violence towards women in the story made me feel, regardless of the fact that this is a real element to stories of this time period. I’m certainly no prude, but something about this really bothers me.
I don’t think that makes Darwyn Cooke or Donald Westlake women-haters or proponents of violence towards women. Not at all. This was the style of writing at the time and to honor the original work it makes sense that this aspect was left in tact. Nor do I think anyone who picks this book up and loves it is somehow supporting violence towards women. I enjoyed every other brutal, murderous aspect of the story, so I’m no saint. On another day I may have read right over those aspects and not gave them a second thought. That didn’t occur this time.
So while I do very much recommend picking up anything by Darwyn Cooke, including this book, I don’t recommend doing so blindly. This is the first in a series of Parker stories that Cooke is adapting and I must admit that I do not know what I’ll feel like come time to order book number two. I do know that I am thrilled that a Darwyn Cooke Modern Masters art book is coming out soon. It will be good to bathe in a more wide ranging Darwyn Cooke art pool in the near future.
Despite these concerns, there is no arguing that what Cooke has done here is proven that the graphic novel as novel adaptation is a thing that can be done and done well. Very well.
“Although I have lived with myself for a little over 40 years now, my reading whims seem to take very curious turns that surprise even me.”…Don’t you just love that?!! I so love surprising myself…I think it’s good evidence that we’re still living and not merely surviving.
“I think it’s good evidence that we’re still living and not merely surviving.”
I think you’re right Debi.
Oh, that’s good–I’ve been worrying lately. 😉 Carl you (and Mary!!)need to live for at least another 40 years (preferably longer) and read Donald Westlake as Donald Westlake, especially the crime novels featuring the Dortmunder gang.They are wickedly, wickedly funny–comic noir, if you will. Dortmunder is a complete misanthrope and his gang of mismatched pickpockets, con artists, getaway drivers (including one guy’s mother) make the Keystone Kops look good. Politically correct they are not, but Westlake takes such delight in language and his use of it that you can forgive him. He is definitely one guy who lived, not merely survived.
ds: I had to go back and look. I thought perhaps I had one of Donald Westlake’s books that have been reprinted through Hard Case Crime but it ended up not being the case. The Dortmunder gang sounds fun. I am certainly not waving the banner for PC writing. Far from it. There was just something about this particular thing that rubbed me the wrong way, and again it might have been seeing it portrayed in this style of art that really didn’t let it sit right with me.
As seducing as the retro 60 look and feel is I will not succumb and branch with yet another genre. It’s impossible. I have to say that this is the best retro art I have seen and I am fan of the chiseled men and pin-up women, prevailing in this small era. 🙂
If you would like to continue with this trend of pulp and noir, I suggedt you watch “Noir”. It’s a long anime series that deals with the genre in a modern and fresh approach as Japanese only can. I think there might be a manga series too and if you are interested in reading the manga, I can google for you.
You know, just the art (pretty though it is) made me wonder how the female characters in this book were depicted. I was going to mention the story in Geektastic I disliked, but I’ve just seen the comment you left me! So yeah, I definitely understand why it bothered you.
Nymeth: Not all the women in this story are depicted wrongly, and as I mentioned one of the things that happens to one of the characters turns out to be justified in the sense that it fits the mold of a ‘revenge’ tale, but again it was just a bit too much. I’m a fan of ‘good girl art’ (which you’ll see in tomorrow’s Friday Favorites post) and stories like Ian Fleming’s Bond books and some of the noir/crime fiction that prevailed in this era and certainly both men and women are objectified to some degree and placed in very rigid stereotypical boxes, but the art is still wonderful and there are wonderful stories too. Like your Geekatastic experience, however, this one just didn’t sit well with me. Also, to make sure I represent Darwyn Cooke fairly, I’ve read many books done by him and have never seen the women portrayed in this manner. Usually they are very strong, active parts of the story in addition to their retro beauty. What he did no doubt was an accurate adaptation, that aspect of it just wasn’t for me.
Harry: I’ll definitely check out Noir. I know I can get them through Netflix and it sounds very interesting. I definitely have a soft spot for this time period almost entirely because of the amazing book cover illustrations, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the quality of some of the stories I’ve read. I reviewed Robert Terrell’s Pay Now, Pay Later last year because I loved it. I read (and have yet to review) Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair’s Top of the Heap early this summer and it was great. The Bond books are so far and away better than I ever would have thought. As I said, you cannot judge a book by its cover.
With these cover illustrations one could easily write off all these books as smut, or as sexist, or say that they are low-brow, but the reality is that some are very, very good and some are very, very bad. I read one book earlier this year because I both loved the McGinnis cover and had read another book by the author and liked it, but the book just wasn’t very well done. Like any other genre, these are real hit and miss.
I love the way you think the universe is placing books in your pathway. It sounds very cosmic. It reminds me of The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen, whose main character would find books appearing that the universe felt she should read.
Love the pictures in the book.
I went ahead and read your review because I know it will be awhile before I get a chance to read this book anyway. With my poor memory I will have forgotten everything I’ve read in your review by then except I will be thinking of how the women are treated. I won’t be able to forget that part of the review.
As you know I’m a HUGE Cooke fan and I was so happy when I saw this book come in a few weeks ago. I’m bummed you found the story ruined by the way the violence was portrayed. I think that is one of main benefits of novels over comics. I find that I never portray violence so brutal in my mind when I read a story but when I read a comic or see a movie violence seems so much more graphic to me. I’m curious to see my reaction to this book now going in knowing that kind of violence is coming. Maybe it won’t seem so bad sense I know it’s coming. Anyway, I hope to read the novel soon so we can talk further on the subject. Thanks for the review.
Jeff: You bad, bad man! 🙂 I’m sure it will seem much different to you and probably won’t have nearly the ‘shock value’, for lack of a better way of saying it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it ruined it for me, a 3.5 (which equates to a 7/10 on a 10 point scale) isn’t bad. But I know what you are saying, and you are probably correct if I think about it in that this is a book that I wanted to get on my blog and tell everyone “Buy it, buy it now!!!” because I love Cooke’s art so very much. Although he would probably be really disturbed at the comparison, I have always been a fan of Dan DeCarlo’s work on Archie and grew up loving Betty and Veronica, so this art speaks to that nostalgic part of me and then does something a bit more. So yes, I wanted to give it a 5/5 stars. But I also didn’t feel comfortable with doing so knowing the way I felt about that part of the story.
Vivienne: I am wanting to read The Sugar Queen sometime, I love the cover of that book and have read many good things. And of course my ‘cosmic’ saying is more about the way that things seem to synchronize sometimes, which is always fun. It seems cosmic to me that my summer would be filled with this kind of reading and then this Parker book, the art book I am featuring tomorrow, and another book I am receiving an ARC from soon all have this noir/crime element to them. I find that kind of coincidence really fun!
speaking of noir, have you ever seen the movie Brick? noir mystery set in modern high school. very cool. the art in this looks cool but i always wonder where the whole no nose thing started?
Melanie: No, but I’m so glad you mentioned that because every so often I read about that film and mean to add it to my Netflix queue and then forget. Thanks! And I’m not sure.
ooohhh, that art is great. I love it.
Fence: Glad you like it. Cooke is one of those artists who I definitely want people to be exposed to because his work is so good.