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Saturday, December 25, 2010 ( 12/25/2010 10:01:00 AM ) Bill S. HOLIDAY MUSIC VID: As first heard by me on Rhino's aces Hipsters' Holiday disc, it's Lambert, Hendricks & Ross' classic take on a "Pogo" evergreen. # | Friday, December 24, 2010 ( 12/24/2010 03:10:00 PM ) Bill S.  “IT WAS AN UNRELIABLE GUN. PARKER FIRED THREE TIMES.” If ever there was a writer/artist made to adapt Donald E. Westlake’s Parker books into graphic novels, it’s Darwyn Cooke. The Canadian born comic book artist has long shown an affinity for the crime writer’s lean hard-bitten caper novels. His 2002 Catwoman GN, Selina’s Big Score, could’ve even been a Parker book, and Cooke nailed the connection even more firmly at the time by naming one of Selina’s partners after the pseudonym Westlake used on these books and drawing him so he looked like Lee Marvin from Point Blank, the first movie made from a Parker paperback. But just because the man feels an obvious connection to the material doesn’t mean he’s the right guy for the job. Fortunately, in Cooke’s case, his skill as a scriptwriter and as a draftsman seal the deal. This is Parker as he’s meant to be seen.The second volume in a projected series of graphic novel adaptations, Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit (IDW) follows up on The Hunter, Cooke’s retelling of the character’s debut appearance. Combining two Parker paperbacks, The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit, the book can’t help but come across as more episodic than the first -- a fact made even more apparent by the writer/artist’s decision to depict three different capers in distinctly different storytelling styles (the most amusing being a heist done in the big-shnozzed style of a UPA cartoon) -- it’s still held together by its compelling pulpish lead. As created by Westlake, Parker is a no-nonsense s.o.b. with a justifiably jaundiced eye toward his collaborators. From the opening caper in this volume, an armoured car heist that ends in betrayal, his cynicism is warranted. The motor-vating plotline in The Outfit kicks into gear quickly when our anti-hero, thinking that he has negotiated a truce with the mob after the rampaging events in the first book, rolls out of bed to escape a hitman who has shown up in his Miami hotel room. Said gunsel has been sent by vengeful East Coast boss Art Bronson, who is held up in his upstate New York, playing Monopoly with his bodyguards. Parker sets up a set of robberies to get the Outfit’s attention before going after Bronson himself. Along the way, we’re provided edifying economic dissertations on how bookmaking, money laundering and the numbers racket worked in the early sixties. Never let it be said that pulp fiction can’t be educational. Cooke’s art, shaded in orchid, captures the early sixties milieu beautifully: particularly the motels and diners where our outlaw characters spend so much of their lives. His Parker, wearing a new face thanks to plastic surgery, remains a believably amoral tough guy, while his visual treatment of the rest of his cast is wittily diverse. I’m especially fond of Skim, whose name right away tells you just how trustworthy he is, and his even more duplicitous waitress girlfriend Alma, who figure prominently in the armoured car job. An economically worded sequence depicting that heist and its aftermath is a model of no-nonsense graphic storytelling. Cooke has promised more Parker adaptations in the years ahead. The Outfit even ends with a Bond-ian blurb stating that “Parker will return in 2012.” At this point the artist has plans for only four adaptations of books in the twenty-plus volume series: a wise move since even the prolific Westlake took a 23-year break between Parker books in the seventies. (Leave ‘em wanting more.) Me, I’m ready to take as many of these slam-bang crime noir comics as Cooke is willing to produce. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Thursday, December 23, 2010 ( 12/23/2010 06:31:00 AM ) Bill S. AU REVOIR, DIRK: Couldn’t let the week go by without briefly commenting on the news that Dirk Deppey, former editor and longtime blogger for The Comics Journal, has been laid off. His essential blog of comics news and occasionally trenchant opinion, Journalista, had its last entry posted Wednesday. It will be missed. Though I haven’t been as active a participant or a reader in the comics blogosphere as I used to be, I always made a point to read Journalista as a part of my a.m. wakeup routine. Dirk had an international perspective on the comics scene that suited my growing appreciation of comics art beyond mainstream American comic shop fare, and he always could be counted on to link to provocative comics-related writing. In his occasional forays into personal or political writing, he came across as a no-bullshit guy. Once describing himself as an old-fashioned “Goldwater conservative,” he wasn’t afraid to take that perspective to places that would make more contemporary conservatives nervous. He also, during his stint as the editor of the print version of The Comics Journal, briefly brought me back to writing for that mag, helping me in expanding my then-still-new explorations into manga at the time. Big moves, life changes and a shot-loose capacity for time management kept me from continuing to write for the print mag after Dirk left, but I’m grateful for his giving me the opportunity to once more write for TCJ. When we first moved to Southeast Arizona from the Midwest, Tucson resident Dirk sent a comment to this blog inviting me to lunch at a great Mexican restaurant in his neighborhood. Three years later, and we haven’t made it into the city long enough to take him up on the invite yet. One of these days, I keep deceptively telling myself – provided Dirk’s next job doesn’t take him out of his home state . . . # | Wednesday, December 22, 2010 ( 12/22/2010 06:58:00 PM ) Bill S. MID-WEEK MUSIC VIDEO: Simply put, one of the of the great modern Christmas songs, Pogues and Kirsty Macoll singing "Fairytale of New York." # | Sunday, December 19, 2010 ( 12/19/2010 09:51:00 AM ) Bill S.  “I’M THE ONE WHO’S GOING COMPLETELY BONKERS.” The third in a succession of side volumes focusing on secondary characters in the Dungeon series, Sfar and Trondheim’s Monstres: Heartbreaker (NBM) proves to an exceedingly grim entry in this funny animal fantasy storyline. Both of the book’s tales center on women who are abused and mistreated. The first, the title story, features the shapely assassin Alexandra as she is captured and imprisoned by a former lover; the second, “The Depths,” follows a somewhat privileged young girl whose parents are slaughtered in the midst of a factional undersea war and who is subsequently forced to impersonate a soldier to survive the harsh conflict.The second entry proves particularly grueling: we never doubt Alexandra’s abilities in the first tale to endure her mistreatment -- as a professional in the League of Assassins, she’s clearly tough enough, after all -- but our girlish oceanic protagonist is definitely out of her depths. Pretending to be a soldier pointedly named “Ballsy,” the young girl faces sexual assault and bloody death as she struggles to survive in the midst of a genocidal slaughter. This is clearly not a fuzzy bunny story. The Dungeon graphic novels have always had a good portion of sex and violence to ‘em -- starting out as parodies of Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy, it’s inevitable -- though compared to the satiric tone of NBM’s previous Dungeon entry (Twilight Volume Three), this is pretty bleak fare. Guest artists Carlos Nine and Patrice Killoffer are up to the demands of their Women in Peril stories: though I prefer the latter’s more hard-edged plastic style to Nine’s sketchier pen work, it tends to add to the harshness of “The Depths.” Lots of great imaginatively detailed undersea creatures and landscape in that second tale, though. Monstres Volume Three is probably not the book I’d give to a newcomer to this sprawling ten-plus volume French series since part of the intent behind these tales is to fill in events between the primary storyline. The title story, for instance, ends with an act that has major ramifications for one of the series’ leads, though to a less familiar reader the moment may feel rather arbitrary. Dungeon regulars -- or readers like myself who’ve been working to catch up -- will find it a fascinating, if not always pleasant, expansion of Sfar and Trondheim's rich graphic novel fantasy world. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # | |
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