Donald Westlake's "Parker: the Hunter" by Darwyn Cooke

Make no mistake about it, Parker is not a good guy. He is a criminal who has been double crossed by his partner and by the woman he loves. "Parker: The Hunter," Darwyn Cooke's graphic adaptation of the first novel in Donald Weslake's series about Parker, is a smashing introduction to this character. The classic setup, a betrayed man seeking vengeance, does nothing to diminish the freshness of the character and of Cooke's approach to him.

Cooke, familiar to comics readers as the writer/ artist of "Catwoman: Selina's Big Score," "The Spirit" and, especially, "DC: The New Frontier," is perfectly suited to this tale. His drawings easily evoke the early 1960s, and the monochromatic palette is perfectly suited to the story.

"The Hunter" is dark, briskly-paced, and told with economy, as a good noir novel should be, and Cooke presents it with panache. As in the Mel Gibson movie "Payback," which was based on this book, we pull for the bad guy because, as bad as he is, he's better than those he fights.

I generally steer clear of graphic adaptations of prose works. It seems to me that they always lack a certain something that made the original work. I have not (yet) read the original novel, but I am left with the sense that, in Cooke's hands, the essence of the novel has been captured. It is telling that this is the first adaptation of a Westlake work that has been allowed to carry the Parker name.

Cooke says Parker will return in summer 2010. I'll be waiting.