PARKER by Darwyn Cooke

Thanks for the heads up. These actual novels in print anywhere?

Stark was a pseudonym for Donald Westlake who passed away last New Year's Eve. His novels under all names are classics and most are generally always in publication. Cooke is just the right guy to adapt them.

An interview from last year's SDCC:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=17362

I've never read any of the books (apparently there are 24 Parker books), but I'll check out anything Cooke does.

Can't wait. Should be fun.

I'm curious what size/format these will be in--looks like they'll be hardcovers, but I'm hoping they go manga-sized.

This could be better than Point Blank. /hyperbole

Anyway, so much want.

Goddamn he's so good.

The portability would be nice, but I'd hate to see Cooke's art shrunk down like that.

I was at a bar in Toronto back in 2006 post-con, and Cooke was there with a bunch of other Toronto-based guys, Cameron Stewart, J Torres, etc. Lingering perhaps a little too closely to him, I overheard him say that he predicted that he had maybe 3-4 years to use his mojo to work on personal projects in the comic business, tops, on the strength of his work on The Spirit.

Thankfully, looks like he was wrong on that one.

Its quality that he's been given the chance to do this and that Westlake was involved before he passed away.

Cooke's Selina's Big Score had a Lee Marvin lookalike called Stark who i always thought was a nod to Parker (googling confirmed it), that's a pretty good heist story. I'm going to sound like an advertisement now but i bought the hardcover of Cooke's Batman: Ego and other tails off Amazon Marketplace for £7.00 brand new, that's a bloody bargain right there, it includes Selina's and is definitely worth the pennies, possibly a good taster (albeit more softer) for what we have in store with his adaptations.

Not out officially until 7/22.

Comes out tomorrow. I'll be picking it up.

One adaptation of a novel in comic form I wont be picking up though is Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep? from Boom! Comics.

Apparently its 24 issues, and isn't quite an adaptation but a word for word reproduction of the novel with pictures. The art would have to be pretty damn fucking amazing for me to give a shit about that. 24 issues at 3.99 a pop, or 6 bucks for the same thing without pictures? I already have the latter.

I've seen the first issue. It is ungood.

Where are you guys seeing that this comes out today? It's not on Diamond's shipping list for this week.

When it does come out, new Cooke is essential.

Amazon has it listed as coming out this week, but that's wrong. Should be next week.

Are they making this a series? Is Cooke doing several adaptation?

I absolutely have to get my hands on this, not only for myself, but also as gifts for people.

The idea was for Cooke to do four...I think the next one will be an adaptation of The Outfit. He also wants to do The Score and Slayground.

Amazon always has such things a week later. Its some Diamond thing.

I picked it up at my LCS today.

Well, damn.

I dig it. Really solid adaptation. I like the way he translated the source material. For example, little things like the way the girl in the car looks at Parker as he's crossing the bridge ('He looks tough') half in awe, half in fear. Cooke got it perfectly and didn't feel the need to exclude it (it's also perfect because we haven't even gotten a good look at him yet). Parker seems just a wee bit too young for my taste (or, perhaps I always imagined him slightly more...weathered) and sometimes the art looks a little too cartoonish for me (especially, for some reason, the women) but overall, very, very solid.

Cooke has considered incorporating the opening scene of The Man With the Getaway Face - the aftermath of Parker's plastic surgery - into the opening of The Outfit. Good idea.

Slayground is so action-driven, so visual a novel with a Hollywood "high concept" that ended up ripped off and recycled endlessly in the 80s/90s, I'm really surprised it never got the movie treatment it deserved (a 1984 British adaptation starring Peter Coyote has a tenuous connection to the source material). It will look terrific as a graphic novel. I like the comic book-ish cover art of this edition:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ima...8134506&sr=1-1

A related note...

MADE IN U.S.A. arrives on DVD today from Criterion. Not a very good film, but worth catching for the unusual experience of seeing Jean-Luc Godard parody a Stark novel.

I don't like it. The sample sketches from the Cooke interview were exciting, but taken as a whole I find the artwork lacks dramatic momentum and is never really sleazy, brutal or humorous enough to faithfully capture Westlake's terse yet evocative prose.

Someone has already commented on Cooke not getting Parker's 'look' right, and I agree. The mirror reveal in Book One - the first time we see our protagonist's face - is a huge disappointment. Parker resembles a surly Golgo 13, not the cold, slightly dead-looking middle aged criminal Westlake described so specifically in the book's opening pages. There's a wonderful moment in the novel where Parker has to fake a smile so that he can seem personable to a bank employee, essential to understanding the character's emotional distance. It's one of the few things Brian Helgeland got right in PAYBACK, but Cooke doesn't even bother to include it here. A mistake.

Speaking of PAYBACK, as flawed as that movie can be - even in its director's cut - I thought Helgeland and his editor totally nailed the pacing and momentum of the opening montage, and Mel Gibson the cold anger Westlake mentions on the jacket sleeve for this version. Cooke gets neither right.

And why does Lynn look like Marilyn Monroe circa THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH? If she has to be modeled on a Monroe, it should be the alcoholic pill-popping burnout of THE MISFITS.

Cooke has emphasized his painstaking faithfulness to the text, but he inserted unnecessary cursing in a few scenes that really pulled me out of the moment. He also misses some great little details (e.g., Fairfax's compulsiveness about his moustache), forces moments that are supposed to be casually violent (Mal's death) or has Parker doing things that are not even true to the character (spitting on Mal's corpse). I even had problems with the way people move in the drawings - the way they walk, punch, kick, and nervously gesture. Has Cooke ever looked at what Jim Holdaway did with Modesty Blaise? He should.

Also, the ending's been changed! Taking POINT BLANK and both versions of PAYBACK into account, that means we now have a total of four alternate endings. And guess what? This one doesn't work either!

It's an attractive volume and a nice tribute to Westlake. But it's not the novel.

Just read the novel and am ready to delve into this!

One thing that I've been wondering about: so this was officially approved by Westlake, but now that he's passed away, do you guys think it will lead to Cooke being slaveishly faithful in the other adaptations? I mean it's sort of a tough weight to bear...

One could argue that Cooke has chosen not to be slavishly faithful, considering that he changed the ending to The Hunter.

I don't imagine The Score or Slayground would be tough to adapt. Neither book has chunks of back story to be gotten out of the way, both are action and visual-oriented, cleanly told with straightforward characters and situations. This is probably why both were optioned to be made into motion pictures (with Westlake himself writing several drafts of the former in the mid-60s). The only problem I see with The Score is that Cooke will probably have to agonize over the 'look' of Alan Grofield, considering how important that character is to the Stark novels and the fans.

The Outfit could be a toughie, though. Parker is out of the novel for a large section while his associates (some of whom become semi-regulars in the series) knock off various syndicate operations. The John Flynn/Robert Duvall film adaptation got around this by having the Parker character hit the syndicate targets himself. That might end up being Cooke's approach as well.

I wonder if the plastic surgery from the Man with the Getaway Face that's getting squeezed into The Outfit will give Parker a better look. It's grown on me a little, but it still doesn't quite seem right.

I liked the changed ending. Not as good as the ending in the novel (or Point Blank) but I liked it better than both of the endings to Payback. Bug I guess that's not saying much...

Well yeah, but in that case Westlake was still alive to give his ok.

The Man with the Getaway Face is now available. Parker's plastic surgery gave Cooke another chance to get the face right, and looks to me like he did:

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources...8/Parker-2.jpg

Review: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources...ace-rambo-3-5/

The Outfit is up for pre-order at Amazon.

Good news: The Man with the Getaway Face is only $2 at your local comic shop.

Bad news: Cooke only covers half the novel.

I'm actually a little disturbed about how closely that resembles my imagined version of the character.

Only half? Is he breaking Getaway into two parts, or did he just pick and choose which parts to include? Either way, for two bucks, I'll pick it up.

Time to change your avatar.

The latter. He eliminated Dr. Adler's murder, dim-bulb Stubbs' hunt for the killer, Parker's hunt for Stubbs ... basically, the second half of the novel. What we're left with is a routine heist thriller.

Oh well. Two bucks, and it looks nice on my bookshelf.

I really dug THE HUNTER and can't wait for THE OUTFIT. Admittedly, I've never read any of Westlake's Parker novels, so I'm coming at this series from a different place than some of you guys.

The Outfit was available at my local comic book shop here in The Netherlands, so I have no doubt you guys should be able to get it too right now! It's pretty awesome. I have to do a comparison with The Guy With The Getaway Face, I don't think all those pages are included.

None of them. It's The Outfit, and The Outfit only.

Kidding! Wanted to see if people were awake.

The Getaway Face material is presented as a flashback. But one whole page is missing, some of the panels are different (e.g., in place of where the title appeared in the standalone, we now see Parker's POV of the doctor cutting away the bandages), and the colors went from orange to blue. And, of course, the size of the volume is smaller and easier to store.

There's a comparison here:
http://violentworldofparker.com/?page_id=3840

Grofeld?!

It was a (consistent) mistake that Cooke never noticed until it went to print.

OK, so it will come as little surprise to many of you that I absolutely despised Cooke's version of The Outfit.

But rather than bitching all over again, I'm just going to mention that Westlake's first Dortmunder adventure, The Hot Rock, has been adapted and illustrated as a graphic novel (by Christian Lacroix). It was published this past summer, and you can see panels here:

http://www.selfmadehero.com/resource...ROCK_PR_lo.pdf

Available through Amazon UK.