THE HUNTER
Richard Stark’s Parker novel The Hunter has been expertly turned into a graphic novel (140 6x9-inch pages, two colors; IDW hardcover, $24.99) by the extremely able Darwyn Cooke, who both wrote and illustrated the adaptation. Parker is a thief, whose partner, Mal Resnick, double-crossed him, convinced Parker’s wife to kill her husband and then ran off with both the wife and the loot. But Parker wasn’t dead. He survived somehow, and this book is about how he came back from the dead to hunt down Resnick and get back his share of the boodle. He might also want to kill his former wife, but before we know his intentions on that score, he visits her, and she kills herself, saving him the trouble.
The book
opens with a stunning wordless sequence as Parker arrives in New York by
walking across George Washington Bridge, refusing an offer of a ride, then
walks to mid-town Manhattan, takes a subway to the motor vehicle department and
acquires a driver’s license under the name Edward Johnson. He stops at a diner
to get a cup of coffee and insults the waitress who had smiled at him and given
him a cigarette — ungrateful bastard. Then he goes to the men’s room in a tavern,
where he “ages” the license and washes his face. We don’t see his face until
the next page, the 20th in the book. Until page 20, the protagonist
is a faceless figure whom we see always from the back, lurching, head down,
through sidewalk crowds and street traffic, then Cooke arranges a dramatic
revelation: on page 19, we see the man’s hands over the sink in the men’s room,
under the flowing faucet; then we turn the page, and there he is, ta-da! a
full-page portrait — we see him as he sees himself, in the mirror over the sink,
water streaming down his face as he stares, full of hate and anger, at his
reflection.
Throughout the book, Parker proves himself an absolutely irresistible malevolent force of nature, beating people up, maiming and killing without the slightest compunction. And Cooke proves himself a master storyteller. For this novel, Cooke abandons his typically precise and defining line — no loose ends — adopting instead a sketchy manner in which forms are modeled and shaped by shadows, color swatches and ellipsis. With a sure instinct, Cooke keeps his story dashing headlong to its conclusion, alternating long shots and close-ups for narrative purposes and dramatic impact, deploying pictures for storytelling as well as illustration.
Cooke is reportedly a fan of crime fiction and has often said the Parker books are a great source of creative inspiration. In short, we’ll be seeing more of Parker. The character is not at all an admirable personality: he’s scarcely any kind of a role model; he’s a lout and a thug. But there’s something about him, some morbid fascination that attracts and holds us. Perhaps it’s his ruthless dedication to whatever his purpose is at the moment: nothing diverts him or frustrates his ultimate triumph, however brutal and nasty. Maybe we like Parker because he wins against foes that are almost as bad as he is. And it’s nice to know someone can. It’s not so nice, however, to realize that to win against their ilk, you must become like Parker.
A longer
review, with examples, resides at the
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