Richard Stark and Darwyn Cooke's PARKER: THE OUTFIT

Some years ago, when I was still a young man, I was reading Stephen King's DARK HALF about a writer dealing with his pseudonymous identity, his pen-name and false front behind which this writer published a series of brutal, vicious crime novels starring a dude named Alexis Machine.

King was influenced in real life by Donald Westlake, a superior crime novelist of the 1960s and all the way until his death in 2008. Westlake's body of work is outstanding enough, including screenplays for THE GRIFTERS and THE STEPFATHER, until you realize Westlake also wrote, as many writers of that era did, under another name: Richard Stark.

This was where Westlake got his vicious on, allowing his anti-hero "Parker" to emerge forth from his Richard Stark identity. Parker is the star of 25 novels from 1962 to 2008 with a ten-year gap where Stark didn't write about Parker at all.

Anyway, all this is common knowledge for anyone who knows about Westlake/Stark. Darwyn Cooke, one of the more interesting men working in the comic book biz, shifted completely away from whatever popularity he had garnered as artist for CATWOMAN and JLA: THE NEW FRONTIER for a mysterious project not involving superheroes. I remember thinking that was a shame. Then it was revealed Cooke was adapting Richard Stark's first Parker novels into graphic form.

PARKER: THE HUNTER arrived last year, a textured and flint-sharp piece of work with a retro sensibility that almost made you cry to look at it. Cooke was adapting the books in their contextual time period of the early 1960s, making use of all the brilliant graphical flavor of the time. With a modern society retro-crazed over the "Mad Men" fashions and drama, Cooke's Parker book arrived as a reminder that men were a core audience of cheap mass entertainment in previous times. But the cheapness only defined itself as authenticity, and no one could mistake Parker for a summation of manliness. Parker, as a character, is a unique beast, more than man, less than human.

Now PARKER: THE OUTFIT slapped its way into my hands this week. Cooke goes all-in on this book. Where THE HUNTER involved Parker's last card game with human emotion and vulnerability, THE OUTFIT begins just as Parker has received plastic surgery to alter his appearance. He is a "new" man, a man who cannot be found by a vengeful Mafia, still pursuing him for the events of the first novel. Where the original Parker was an anvil, the "new" Parker is the hammer. The strokes of this hammer are precise and unrelenting but completely devoid of human emotion. To forge his world of uncompromising morality, Parker begins a systematic hammering of the Mob who has continued to dog him. The whole book is about Parker forging a place for himself with the steady shattering force of a mallet. By the end, we have seen the hot iron remolded into exactly what Parker believes it should be. As it cools, we are left with an immutable satisfaction. Parker is unchanged utterly, but everyone around him is reshaped.

This goes for the reader too. THE OUTFIT is educational, a lesson in criminal ethics. This is the way things are and this is the way things will always be. Parker embodies that while completely wholly and bestially alien to this Earth. He might be an invader from Mars, for all the traits of humanity he shares. No one wants to be Parker, but everyone wants to know what he is going to do next. And that is a powerful and literate advocacy for human endeavor.

Nice interview below about Cooke's journey, techniques, and opinions on this work.

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/10/05/darwyn-cooke-outfit-interview-tucker-stone/

2009 About Done, And About Godd*mn Time!

I still haven't gotten so old that I start to wax nostalgic about all the past years that have come and gone in my 39 pulse-pounding years of life.

No, I still see the end of 2009 and say, "F*ck it! Let's get to 2010!"

Frankly, there's nothing about 2009 to hold up and study, or reflect on. No Horatio's Skull to be found here. A whole bunch of people crying over the economy. A blizzard in Virginia for the first time since 1996 or whatever it was. I busted up with a girl. I injured the tissues in my chest and thought I had a heart attack, but it was just a sign of getting older. I'm nearer the end of my life than the beginning. These are high points in an otherwise non-detailed year.

Nothing I saw or read as entertainment utterly changed me, though I had some mind-boggling moments. The best thing I read all year was Darwyn Cooke's adaption of Richard Stark's THE HUNTER. It's a fabulous taste of severe criminal. I can't say Cooke is doing anything but the Lord's work in his endeavor to reproduce Stark's blocky, uncompromising prose into illustration. You just cannot imagine two things going together better than Cooke and Stark.

Other notables are the ongoing SCALPED trades, each one of which gets more sweaty and desperate than the last.

One of the best things I watched all year, for certain, is this made-for-Internet video from some flick called 500 DAYS OF SUMMER. It's magic, no joke.



Though not movies released in 2009, some of the more memorable, flat-out fun ones were:

PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, which illicited all kinds of pissing and moaning from "fans" of the property. I dislike the Punisher visually and in conceit, in comics, but this movie provided mounds of action value. WAR ZONE is homage movie about the 1980s action genre, without all the snide self-awareness.

David Mamet's REDBELT, a well-done movie about Mixed Martial Arts, for all intents. Mamet always goes over the top and doesn't hesitate to do so here. But it's Mamet and it's almost impossible not to be thrilled by Mamet-Speak and the strong assured hand he brings to directing his own work.

Another solid action entry is TAKEN, about Liam Neeson doing what you know Liam Neeson can do: give an intense goddam stare in the seconds before beating down on a man until you hear the man shit his pants. The whole movie is just that, and I had a wonderful time. I might have shit my pants while watching it, in fact.

I watched a Chinese ecological "animals gone wild) horror movie from the early 1980s called CALAMITY OF SNAKES. If you have an aversion to hundreds of real "attacking" snakes being killed, don't watch it. If you're ready to freak out, do watch it.

Mario Bava's BAY OF BLOOD was another head-slapper. Some things have to be seen to be seen.

MORITURI with Marlon Brando and Yul Brenner was the best Man on a Mission movie I saw. Fantastic production and Jerry Goldsmith score. Just superb.


The one flick I did see released this year, CRANK 2: HIGH VOLTAGE, was so insane and visceral that, again, it was hard to tell if it was really happening or if it was all in my head. Again, like WAR ZONE and most of the other high-point flicks here, not many are expected to love these movies. I loved them because they all did something different and affected me in different ways. They created unforgettable images, and wonderfully fun quotes, and I can't thank most of them enough.

So anyway, I'm ready to be done already with 2009. Like I was ready to be done with 2008. And like I'll be ready to move on from 2010. But at least there is the hope, the geniune hope, of some kind of unknown disaster or critical happiness or essential success, somewhere in the future. Or if not, at least the ability to say, "F*ck it! Next year will be better!"

And maybe it will.