RSS
Home
Darwyn Cooke adapting Richard Stark's Parker.
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
What I’ve always appreciated about noir is the layered, yet simple approach to storytelling.
The protagonist is in a bad situation. They know it’s bad, you know it’s bad, and there’s very little the protagonist can do to make it better.
Last Friday at Comic-Con, IDW editor Scott Dunbier moderated the spotlight panel on Darwyn Cooke, and as you would imagine he talked about his latest project set up at IDW Publishing, adapting Richard Stark’s Parker novels. The first of which, The Hunter, was released a week before Comic-Con.
It truly is something unlike what Cooke has done before, but something completely up his alley.
As Cooke started to talk a little about some of his email conversations with Donald Westlake (Richard Stark was his pseudonym) about this project, Cooke tearing a little, tried to change the subjet. “Did you guys see the girl dressed as Pikachu?” he asked everyone.
Westlake died last December 31st, and that all you needed to see to know that Westlake was big a influence on Cooke.
What Cooke has already done with The Hunter, and very likely do with the rest of the Parker novels is give readers a taste, visually, into Parker’s world. Much the same way that movies and television are visual mediums, so are comic books. But there is an intangible quality to comic books that allows its audience the ability to really get into the minds of the characters the same way that novels do, just with visuals as well. It's what makes comic books cool.
An earlier promo piece for the Parker adaptations.
If fact, it’s what makes comic books cooler than the other side of the pillow.
Cooke’s adaptation of The Hunter is still very much a novel, but illustrated. Very lush, and visceral, this has always made Cooke’s work so special in the past, and especially so in this book. But he does so while trying to not be fancy, which is something he expressed at the panel. Saying that he could feel Westlake’s disapproval if he tried any “trick gimmicks.”
At the panel, Cooke told of the description of Parker that Westlake gave to him, to which Westlake likened Parker to that of a plumber, very professional. Moreover, Parker is purpose driven, and of course amoral.
One of my favorite parts of the prose novel was the scene in which Parker’s estranged wife asks him if he would stay the night in the bedroom with her, and he replies, “for you that tree is dead!”
As I continued reading, I realized it was the last shred of human decency that Parker ever lets slip, and when Cooke expressed as much at the panel, I was glad to know it meant just as much to him as well. For his adaptation, Cooke added something very small to the scene just to make sure the point really hits, and it does work.
Something else that Cooke and Dunbier brought up was their goal of trying to figure out how to broaden this medium, and the lengths they went to make sure the presentation of The Hunter was such in a way that a common book reader will feel comfortable reading it, and again, I do believe they’ve succeeded in that regard as well.
Flip through those copyright pages and cover pages, and you wouldn't know the difference.
A key aspect to a successful adaptation of a narrative from one medium to another is if it can keep all of what is essential from what it is originally, as well as standing up on its own in the newer medium. It’s striking that perfect balance of distillation.
Make no mistake. Cooke’s adaptation of The Hunter is as perfect a graphic adaptation of any novel you are likely to find anywhere, and it was a treat to hear him talk about developing this project –as well as the future volumes– in San Diego last week.
IDW's 19-page preview of The Hunter.
For more SDCC info:
SDCC: Batman- The New Dynamic Panel.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
Single, married or something in between? Find what you need for Valentine's Day.
