To get revenge on a criminal organization known simply as The Outfit, Parker asks his many friends in the underworld to hit the group as hard as they can. Darwyn Cooke uses various techniques to depict the different heists, from newspaper-like strips to simply adding illustrations to pages of text. Each heist works as a gripping short story, while the main storyline is slightly less interesting, if only because Parker is such a hardcase there’s no doubt he will get his revenge in the end. Cooke’s adaptation of Donald Westlake’s novel is perfect for anyone who likes a good crime story, a well-drawn comic, or both.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2011.