Review: ‘Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter’ by Darwyn Cooke
Richard Stark’s Parker, Book One: The Hunter
Darwyn Cooke
IDW, July 2009, $24.99
Richard Stark’s Parker novels come out of a particular
period in literary history: the heyday of the disposable paperback for men.
Paperbacks had appeared in their modern form just before WWII, and servicemen
got used to carrying small paperbound books in whatever pockets they could jam
a book into. The boom continued through the postwar years, with a flood of
short thrillers, detective stories, and soft-core porn – all to stave off
boredom for a man waiting for dinner time on a business trip in some hick town,
or hanging out at the PX on his army base, or riding the streetcar home at
night.
[[[The Hunter]]] was
published in 1962, at the height of that boom – a good decade before the ‘70s
taught publishers that women were even more dependable consumers of paperbacks,
and the long shift to romances and their ilk began. At first glance, Stark’s
hero is right out of the mold of the great hardboiled Mikes (Hammer &
Shayne) – tough, violent, single-minded, implacable. But Parker was less
emotional than the usual hardboiled hero – cold where they were hot,
calculating where they were impetuous. Parker could kill when he had to – and he
did it quite a bit – but he never killed for fun, or just because he could. As
the Parker novels went on he avoided killing as much as he could, simply
because deaths attract more attention than he wanted.
Hardboiled heroes came from both sides of the
law – Mike Shayne and Mike Hammer were detectives, but there were plenty of
law-breakers before Parker, from writers like David Goodis and Jim Thompson.
They usually weren’t series characters, though: Parker’s amoralism went beyond
his own actions to his world, and his stories told how a master criminal could get away with it – if he was smart and tough
enough.
Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way first: Yes, ComicMix is publishing lots of stuff with IDW Publishing. Doesn’t matter, 
We’ve just received word that 
The Emmy nominations 
or 
It was the job everyone admired, but no one wanted to try: following in the footsteps of Will Eisner on The Spirit. For over a year, Darwyn Cooke stepped up to take on the task and in an exclusive ComicMix Radio interview, he talks about the good — and bad — moments, plus:
Following Marvel’s lead, DC Comics is entering the direct-to-DVD animated feature business with the first of a slate of programs featuring their popular heroes.
