Winners of 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards of note — well, to me, at least, and readers of this blog — presented at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego include:• Best Adaptation from Another Work:Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter, adapted by Darwyn Cooke (IDW)• Best Comics-Related Book:The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics, by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle (Abrams ComicArts)• And Vault of Midnight comic book store — I’ve followed it in its various locations around Ann Arbor, Michigan, over the years, and I stop in every time I’m in town — won the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award.
Darwyn Cooke, who revived Will Eisner’s The Spirit a few years back, perfectly captures the tone of early 1960s Camelot, with its cocktails and cigarettes, hour-glass-shaped willing women and Space Age hotel exteriors — at least, that world of fictional tough-guy detectives — in his adaptation of crime writer Donald E. Westlake’s The Hunter.
In smoky, moody blues and deep blacks, the protagonist Parker, eyebrows perpetually cocked, pounds the urban pavement as well as his urbane enemies, leaving gorgeous “dames” panting after him — assuming they’re still breathing at all when he leaves them. Listen and you can hear the Miles Davis soundtrack.
The story certainly isn’t populated with Salvation Army types. But these characters grab us (hopefully not by the throat) and stick with us.
“I just got rid of the woman with the bag. I haven’t killed any of these jokers yet, but the next one I will. And if the money doesn’t show, you’re next.” Krak! Bam! Hunf!
