The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook

Cook, Darwyn. Richard Stark’s The Hunter. San Diego: IDW, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-60010-493-0

Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) introduced hardboiled thief Parker in a series of novels in the 1960s. The novels have been adapted to film, but Darwyn Cook’s comic book adaption is the first authorized to use the name Parker.



Parker is not a gentleman thief, which is an oxymoron anyway. He is probably a sociopath. At the least, he has no regard for human life, property, law or much of anything else. He is as heartless and hardboiled as they come.

In The Hunter, Parker is on a cross-country mission of revenge. He narrowly escaped being killed, at the hand of his beautiful but week-willed wife, in a double-cross after a job to rob gunrunners. He cut was to e $90,000. He walked from California to Chicago and killed his way through a gaggle of gangsters to claims his cut and drive away with a price on his head.

Parker is horrible, but he is interesting and The Hunter is full of action. It’s understandable how the character became popular.

In this adaption, one can enjoy both a classic hardboiled story and the art of Cook. Cook is one of the greatest hardboiled illustrators in comics. His drawing conveys the sensibility of this type of story. In this book, he makes the bold choice of using just two colors, which conveys a sense of the graphic design of the ‘60s. The style is both simplified like a cartoon and complex, carefully designed, even painterly.

Many comic adaptations are not very good, just abridgements with colored drawings, but this book delivers. Cook tells the story with art and words. His drawings don’t just illustrate events; they convey the action information about the characters. There is a long sequence at the beginning of the book that that tells the reader a lot about Parker without words or even showing his face until the end, like a shot from a movie. Even the opening page, with just a few words and a composition reminiscent of Will Eisner, shows a lot about what kind of man is Parker.

Darwyn Cook also wrote Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett