The Man With the Giveaway Face
April 5th, 2010 by david brothers | Tags: contest, darwyn cooke, idw, parker, richard stark, the hunter
The Outfit is the latest volume of Darwyn Cooke’s ongoing adaptation of Donald Westlake/Richard Stark’s series of books starring Parker. Last year’s The Hunter made most of the Best Of lists. We did a podcast on it, I reviewed it, and Tucker Stone tells you exactly why you should read it. If you haven’t read it… get with it, mayne, it’s only sixteen bucks
. Skip the Siege and Brightest Day tie-ins, they’ll be there when you get back.
The Man With the Getaway Face is a prelude to The Outfit. It’s the first chapter of the novel, a story complete unto itself, and is a great lead-in to what’s sure to be a great work. Westlake and Cooke are masters at what they do and IDW knows how to package a book. October feels far away, but Cooke’s adaptation of The Man With the Getaway Face has me convinced that The Outfit will be just as good, if not better, than The Hunter.
Here’s an excerpt from The Outfit, which is one of my most favorite bits of writing. You can see this scene with Robert Duvall in the Parker role, playing a man named Macklin, in 1973’s The Outfit, but I think the book still wins out for sheer poetry.
The receptionist knew that no one was supposed to come behind the desk. If anyone tried to without permission, she was to push the button on the floor under her desk. But this time she didn’t even think of the button. She reached, instead, for the package. Suddenly, the mailman grabbed her wrist, yanked her from the chair, and hurled her into a corner. She landed heavily on her side, knocking her head against the wall. When she looked up dazed, the mailman had an automatic trained on her. “Can you scream louder than this gun?” he said in a low voice.
She stared at the gun. She couldn’t have screamed if she’d wanted to. She couldn’t even breathe.
The outer door opened and the four men came in, two carrying shotguns, and two machine guns. The girl couldn’t believe it, it was like something in the movies. Gangsters carried machine guns back in 1930. There was no such thing as a machine gun in real life. Machine guns and Walt Disney mice, all make-believe.
The mailman put his gun away under his coat, and removed the mailbag from his shoulder. He took cord from the mail sack and tied the receptionist’s hands and feet. She gaped at him unbelievingly as he tightened the knots. They were in the wrong office, she thought. It might be a television show shooting scenes on location, they must have wanted the office next door and these men had come into the wrong place. It must be a mistake.
The mailman gagged her with a spare handkerchief as one of the other men brought the two musical instrument cases and two briefcases in from the outside hall. The mailman took the briefcases. The men with the machine guns led the way. They all walked down the inner hall and stopped at the door next to the book-keeping room. The mailman opened the door, and all five of them boiled into the room.
This was the room where the alarm buzzer would have rung if the receptionist had remembered to ring it. Four men in brown uniforms wearing pistols and Sam Browne belts, were sitting at a table playing poker. They jumped up when the door burst open, then they all froze. They believed in machine guns.
The Man With the Getaway Face is the only look you’ll get at The Outfit until its release in October
Except… I have two extra copies of the The Man With the Getaway Face oversized preview. So, who wants them? Who is ready to work for them? Here are the terms. You need to give me answers to one of the three prompts below this paragraph. Use your real name when you answer, not your pseudonym. Make sure your email address is legit, too. And please be from the United States– overseas shipping is pricey.
1) What is your favorite scene from a book Darwyn Cooke drew, wrote, or created on his own? Why is it your favorite?
2) What is your favorite scene from a crime comic, movie, or novel, and why? Make sure to tell me the title, author, and actors involved, depending on the medium.
3) Tell me why you liked The Hunter.
Sound good? Hit the comments, let’s get it going.
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1) The John Henry Irons scene in New Frontier where he gets caught because of the little white girl. Cause it’s heart breaking and sad and paced perfectly.
2)Jules talking to Ringo explaining why he’s trying to be the sherpard in Pulp Fiction by Tarentino
3)I liked Hunter because it was a great story told really well in a great and thought out package from reading to feel of the page.
Well I guess I got my answer. Bought mine and then got Cooke to sign it. Cooke is a very nice fellow in person.
“Skip the Siege and Brightest Day tie-ins, they’ll be there when you get back. ”
How about I get all 3?
“The Man With the Getaway Face is a prelude to The Outfit. ”
Also worth pointing out that Getaway is the 2nd Parker novel, its simply one of Cooke’s least favorite books and he would rather adapt the 5th Novel “The Score” (his deal is only for 4 books). But its so important to the series Cooke felt he had to adapt it and give it his best shot. Which I respect
also the book itself was good too, definitely looking forward to Outfit
Oh and just to entice people to enter David’s giveaway
Cooke says Getaway Face won’t be on sale in comic shops until SEPTEMBER
so yeah, snatch em up here
I’ll grab prompt 2 for this. Because, for me, it will always be the scene in I. Jury by Mickey Spillane where Mike Hammer is brought in when his best friend, Jack, has been killed. I mean you start the scene with Hammer being brought to the body:
Pat motioned me over to him and pointed to the bedroom. “In there, Mike,” he said.
In there. The words hit me hard. In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle. Jack, the guy who said he’d give his right arm for a friend and did when he stopped a bastard of a Jap from slitting me in two. He caught the bayonet in the biceps and they amputated his arm.
And then it just builds, Hammer reacting and reeling and yet still finding clues and centering himself. But you can feel, in the prose, the tightening of his world as he processes. And it all builds to this capper:
“You dealing yourself in, Mike?”
“I’m in. What did you expect?”
“You’re going to have to go easy.”
“Uh-uh. Fast, Pat. From now on it’s a race. I want the killer for myself. We’ll work together as usual, but in the homestretch, I’m going to pull the trigger.”
“No, Mike, it can’t be that way. You know it.”
“Okay, Pat,” I told him. “You have a job to do, but so have I. Jack was about the best friend I ever had. We lived together and fought together. And by Christ, I’m not letting the killer go through the tedious process of the law. You know what happens, damn it. They get the best lawyer there is and screw up the whole thing and wind up a hero! The dead can’t speak for themselves. They can’t tell what happened. How could Jack tell a jury what it was like to have his insides ripped out by a dumdum? Nobody in the box would know how it felt to be dying or have your own killer laugh in your face. One arm. Hell, what does that mean? So he has the Purple Heart. But did they ever try dragging themselves across a floor to a gun with that one arm, their insides filling up with blood, so goddamn mad to be shot they’d do anything to reach the killer. No, damn it. A jury is cold and impartial like they’re supposed to be, while some snotty lawyer makes them pour tears as he tells how his client was insane at the moment or had to shoot in self-defense. Swell. The law is fine. But this time I’m the law and I’m not going to be cold and impartial. I’m going to remember all those things.”
I reached out and grabbed the lapels of his coat. “And something more, Pat. I want you to hear every word I say. I want you to tell it to everyone you know. And when you tell it, tell it strong, because I mean every word of it. There are ten thousand mugs that hate me and you know it. They hate me because if they mess with me I shoot their damn heads off. I’ve done it and I’ll do it again.”
Nobody did it like Spillane, not really. Thompson comes close and Stark shoots for the moon with it, but Spillane owns this ground. That scene right there made me want to be a writer, and whenever I get down and lose my way I grab I, Jury, and normally that scene, and try harder, just to learn to focus down so hard and bring everything to the plate like that? It’s visceral fiction. It has blood pumping in its veins and bones, with flesh pulled taut over them. There’s everything in the world right there in one short scene.
What a cool contest! Thanks for doing this!
3) Tell me why you liked The Hunter.
The Hunter is an amazing example of comic book storytelling and pacing. Cooke’s art is, as always, beautiful. His sense of design, drawing chops, and his obvious respect for the novel and writer Richard Stark/Donald Westlake make it something special. He’s a top notch comic book creator doing work he clearly enjoys, and that shines through.
Good lord, the opening of the book, the way he trusts the art to tell almost the entire opening the story alone still blows my mind. This is really just a badass book, plain and simple.
Now that you’ve gotten me thinking about it, I want to read it again. Really looking forward to The Outfit, too.
I’ll go with prompt number 2, thanks.
I really dug Gil Brewer’s The Vengeful Virgin, which you can track down through Hard Case Crime. Brewer knew how to keep a story churning by and this book is pure noir at its finest and most fucked up.
Our main man has to get rid of the snooping next door neighbour and after she’s stabbed to death he realises he needs to hide the body. This is where the neat part comes in, he gets in her car and drives off swerving all over the road so hopefully some people will notice that her car, and hopefully as hidden by the nighttime dark the lady in question, was not looking so stable. He drives it into a creek and continues to push her body under. He knows she’ll be found, and a knife wound will look pretty suspicious in a car accident so he rips up the soft top and then impales her on the metal strut just as the car disappears. That’s the act of a desperate man and I admit I loved every moment of it.
Thanks for offering up this competition, you’re a legend. I loved Parker and will be buying the next books as they come out for sure!
“And please be from the United States– overseas shipping is pricey.”
Damn you, Brothers. Damn you! 😉
I will go with 3.
I liked the Hunter because of Parker. Not entirely because of the character himself; We do not see much in the way of characterization, and most of it that is there is extremely subtle.
So Parker can be said to be barely relatable, but he does not need to be. In that comic, he was less of a character and more of a force of nature. The fun is not in seeing Parker carry out his revenge, it is seeing everyone else that he runs into: From the people who are terrified that he is coming for them, and try in vain to stop him, to the people who underestimate or belittle him, not understanding what they are dealing with, to the poor bastards that happened to get in the way.
Parker is a violent storm. He comes, he does what he wanted to do, and he left. Leaving some people dead, others ruined, and everyone else a little confused and more than a little terrified.
“And please be from the United States– overseas shipping is pricey.”
hey! Darwyn and Calum Johnston from strange advetures sent a HC here to australia, signed.
I even offered to send restitution – Calum said ‘no dice I’m paying’.
bad form.
but thanks for the info that the new one will be here soon.
1) What is your favorite scene from a book Darwyn Cooke drew, wrote, or created on his own? Why is it your favorite?
There are a lot of standout moments in Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier, especially any time J’onn J’onzz or King Faraday are on panel. The page from the fifth issue where J’onn shape changes to wearing a suit nails both their characters and their relationship up to this point.
I hope I’m not too late to submit to the contest, and just because I really would like to win a copy of the preview comic, I hope nobody minds my tackling all three questions.
I apologize in advance for the length, but even if I don’t win, it’s always good to share my passions with like-minded people: not for nothing am I a regular contributor for a fan blog for Brubaker and Phillips’ Criminal.
1) While I adore The Hunter — I asked Darwyn Cooke for a quick sketch of Parker at last year’s Dragon*Con — and while I really like Cooke and Ed Brubaker’s work in Catwoman, my single favorite scene is from Batman: Ego. It’s the one splash page (page 46) showing the confrontation between Batman and the Joker, a shot over Batman’s shoulders, looking into the murderous glee of the Joker and down into a canyon of Gotham’s cityscape.
The entire book is really good, with page layouts where the overall composition of the page is sometimes greater than the sum of its parts (e.g., page 34), and with a worthwhile story where Bruce reaffirms his difficult but noble mission after all the alternatives have been eliminated, from the futile attempt to deny the “Batman” (the manifestation of his own fear) to a self-induced psychosis that would let the “Batman” kill without remorse.
But that one splash page is especially good, in part because it highlights the “sweet spot” where all the most resonating Batman stories converge. With the cursive font for the first-person narration, the story could be a continuation of Year One. Its clean lines and moody “dark deco” architecture remind me of Burton’s first film and ESPECIALLY Batman The Animated Series. The whimsy of Sprang is seen with a brief appearance by Robin and a cameo shot of the giant penny. Beyond all this, the focus on Bruce Wayne’s own fear and the “escalation” of Gotham’s super-criminals even seem to point forward to Nolan’s movies.
All of those allusions, forward and backward, can be seen in the one splash page: Batman, almost hidden in shadows in the foreground; the Joker, smiling maniacally while weilding a pair of long knives; and Gotham with its imposing skyline tempered by a giant prop coffeepot for “Sprang Coffees.” The one page is almost a distillation of, not a minimalist Batman, but the ESSENTIAL Batman, in a world dangerous enough to need him but off-kilter enough to support his existence.
Beyond all this is the primal reaction I have to the image: here, the Joker is genuinely terrifying, and the perspective on Gotham below is vertigo-inducing.
2) I have a couple favorite scenes from Brubaker and Phillips’ Criminal — from the very first issue, a moment of quiet contemplation on an elevated train; and the first time Phillips broke the three-row page layout, for a full-page scene to open “Second Chance in Hell” — but my favorite “crime scene” remains the coffee shop scene at the very middle of Michael Mann’s Heat.
The scene is the first time two of film’s greatest actors share a scene, and they both portray masters of their respective trade: Al Pacino as a driven detective and Robert de Niro as a very professional thief.
Frustrated with his crumbling personal life, the cop made use of the department’s 24-hour surveillance to track down the criminal, flash his car over to the curb, and offer to buy him a cup of coffee. They both know each other through surveillance and counter-surveillance, intel and counter-intel, but it’s the first time they actually meet.
It’s also the last time they will meet before the deadly showdown in the film’s climax.
It’s an amazing scene because the two men are more comfortable and more frankly vulnerable with each other than they are with their women and their partners. They even tell each other about their recurring nightmares, and we see their similarities and their differences. Both are driven to be the best at what they do professionally, and their personal lives necessarily suffer as a result.
(“A guy told me one time, ‘Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.’ Now, if you’re on me and you gotta move when I move, how do you expect to keep a marriage?”)
At the same time, the literally sociopathic thief has nightmares about himself and his own fears, that he’s drowning because he doesn’t have enough time to do what he would actually like to do, but the empathetic police detective is haunted by the memory of all the victims of all his cases.
It’s the essential scene of a movie that focuses on the balance between work and family, and on the razor’s edge on which sometimes fatal decisions are made. Everything else in the movie points forward or backwards to it, and while there’s the credible threat of violence…
“You know, we are sitting here, you and I, like a couple of regular fellas. You do what you do, and I do what I gotta do. And now that we’ve been face to face, if I’m there and I gotta put you away, I won’t like it. But I tell you, if it’s between you and some poor bastard whose wife you’re gonna turn into a widow, brother, you are going down.”
“There is a flip side to that coin. What if you do got me boxed in and I gotta put you down? Cause no matter what, you will not get in my way. We’ve been face to face, yeah. But I will not hesitate. Not for a second.”
…it’s not that threat that makes the scene so important, but the characterization it reveals.
3) While I think Cooke’s book made Parker seem almost too perfect by omitting an important subplot that comes to a head in the novel’s last few pages, I really, really enjoyed his adaptation of the Hunter. Even down to the hardcover binding, it’s an obvious labor of love, and there are moments that remind me of Heat in showing the very human fears behind the main character’s tough facade, as when we see that he’s still very much afraid of his feelings for his treacherous wife.
I think what I like most about Darwyn Cooke’s The Hunter is that, like Parker himself, the book is efficient and unapologetic about what it is. First, nothing is extraneous to the story or the atmosphere; the image and the word don’t redundantly convey the same information, and we’re sometimes left with silent scenes or lengthy descriptions because that’s about all we need. Second, the book doesn’t try to fit in with the twenty-first century, either in being less politically incorrect *or* in being more graphically violent.
Take it or leave it, it is what it is. I love it, so, as I’m catching up with Paker through reissues from the University of Chicago Press, I’m anxiously awaiting the next chapter from Darwyn Cooke.
I’ll take a shot at answering #1.
My favorite Cooke scene has to be from The Spirit #6. It’s the scene where the young boy hears punk music for the same time. It’s not just that it’s well written and beautifully drawn (which it is on both counts); it’s that it is able to do something I’ve never seen replicated in a comic book: it conveys music. I can almost hear the guitars playing, and I can feel the energy behind it. The excitement of finding something so new that little boy feels is something we’ve all felt before, and the scene plays on that perfectly.
1.) “I’ve been watching you, Mister Jones. I know all about you. Except where you came from. My instincts tell me you’re to be trusted, but make no mistake – It took a seventy-thousand dollar sliver of meteor to stop the one in Metropolis. With you, all I need is a penny for a book of matches.”
-Batman, _DC: The New Frontier_
2.) Man, many to pick from. Ness finding the hidden house in Bendis’s _Torso_, or the random eerie glimpse into the anachronistic window in Moore’s _From Hell_. But for movies, the only thing that edges out _The Usual Suspects_ is the buildup to the climax at the Victory Motel in _L.A. Confidential._ My heart starts racing just thinking about them putting the pieces together and figuring out what they have to do.
And ask me #2 four weeks from now, and I’ll give you four different answers, I’m sure.
Real name: John Velousis
1) “The New Frontier” Martian Manhunter, enraged at the death of his friend King Faraday, loses his shit and bloodily bisects a flying dino-monster.
2) “Death of a Citizen,” the first Matt Helm novel by Donald Hamilton. Helm’s former OSS lover, Tina, has had his baby daughter kidnapped. He goes to the meet with her confederate (Hans? this is from memory) and before the guy can say a word, helm puts 5 slugs from a .22 into his chest. Then, he goes to meet with Tina. She expects that he’s been given his instructions and is ready to meekly cooperate. Instead, he starts off by slugging her in the jaw.
She snarls at him, “If Hans were here, he would tear you apart with his bare hands!”
Helm snorts. “If this bed had wings, we could fly it.” Then he tortures the hell out of her and finds out where his little girl is.
3) Because my goddam blood is red, and “The Hunter” is made of meat.
Huh. “one of the three prompts…” Me am stupid. I got all het up reading that excerpt you quoted. Crap! I just realized that in Parker’s world THERE IS NO FORGIVENESS. So much for winning the contest. Ahhh, bazz-fazz.
I’m going to go with number 2: “What is your favorite scene from a crime comic, movie, or novel, and why? Make sure to tell me the title, author, and actors involved, depending on the medium.”
My selection comes from Richard Stark’s novel BUTCHER’S MOON. It’s a Parker novel, the sixteenth in the series and in my opinion one of the best. I love the scene because it’s almost a short story in itself, and shows what kind of man Parker is to perfection. Incidentally, it was a favorite of Westlake’s as well:
“You have some sort of message for me.”
“Right.” Shevelly reached into his jacket pocket, and Parker showed him a pistol. Shevelly froze, then said, “It’s all right. I’m taking a package out.”
“Slow.”
“Very slow.”
Being very slow, Shevelly withdrew his hand from his pocket, bringing with it a small white box. “This is it,” he said, and extended it toward Parker.
Parker still had the pistol in his hand. “You open it,” he said.
Shevelly considered, then nodded. He took the top off the box, and showed Parker what was inside it.
Parker looked at the finger. The first knuckle was bent slightly, so that the finger seemed to be calm, at ease, resting. But at the other end were small clots of dark blood, and lighter smears of blood on the cotton gauze.
Shevelly said, “Your friend is alive. This is the proof.”
Parker looked at him and waited.
Shevelly seemed uncomfortable now, but to be pushing himself throught the scene out of some inner conviction or determination. Almost as though he had a personal grudge against Parker. “The deal is,” he said, “that you come to Buenadella’s. That’s where Green is. They’ve got him in bed there, and they called a doctor. You come there by noon tomorrow, you can have your money, and you can take Green away with you. Buenadella will supply the ambulance to take him wherever you want out of town. Even two or three hundred miles from here.”
Parker glanced at the finger. “That’s no proof of anything,” he said.
“If you don’t get to Buenadella’s by noon tomorrow,” Shevelly said, “they’ll send you another finger. And another finger every day after that, and then toes. To prove he’s still alive, and not a decomposing body.”
“And if I go there by tomorrow I get him and the money both, and an ambulance to take him away in.”
“That’s right.”
“Parker said, “Do YOU believe that, Shevelly?”
“He’s alive,” Shevelly said. “I saw him, he doesn’t look good, but he’s alive.”
“The deal is Buenadella’s way of doing things,” Parker said, “but Buenadella isn’t in charge any more.” He gestured with the pistol at the finger in the white box. “Calesian’s running things now.”
“It was a stupid thing to kill Al Lozini,” Shevelly said.
Parker frowned at him, looking at the coldly angry face. “Oh. They told you I did that, huh?”
Shevelly had nothing to say. Parker, studying him, saw there was no point arguing with him, and no longer possible to either turst him or make use of him. He gestured with the pistol toward Shevelly, saying, “Get out of the car.”
“What?”
“Just get out. Leave the door open, back away to the sidewalk, keep facing me.”
Shevelly frowned. “What for?”
“I take precautions. Do it.”
Puzzled, Shevelly opened the door and climbed out onto the thin grass next to the curb. He took a step to the sidewalk and turned around to face the car again.
Parker leaned far to the right, aiming the pistol out at arm’s length in front of him, the line of the barrel sighted on Shevelly’s head. Shevelly read his intention and suddenly thrust his hands out protectively in front of himself, shouting, “I’m only the messenger!”
“Now you’re the message,” Parker told him, and shot him.
1) The scene from Justice League: The New Frontier where, just after Superman steps out of Aquaman’s ship, we see Lois’ face as the realisation that he’s still alive after all hits her. The purity of the emotion and the perfection of how it’s shown chokes me up every time I see it.
2) The passage from Stewart O’Nan’s book A Prayer For the Dying where the protagonist has to shoot a cow that has been wounded too badly to save:
“You raise the barrel, sight on her eye, the black dot a target. A breeze floats through and the shadows dance across her face. Just one shot. You don’t feel it now, but later you know you’ll see this as merciful. Now you’re not so sure. Why agonize? It’s a responsibility, not a choice. But you do. More for yourself, you think; this hesitation’s a luxury in the face of another’s pain. You shrug the thought off, still clinging to some dream of innocence, blamelessness, even as you release it. You turn back to this world. You do what’s right.”
That book drives an icepick down my spine every time I read it. Brilliant work.
3) Because if you’ve seen Point Blank, it’s almost impossible not to hear Lee Marvin’s voice in your head while you read it, just like how, by the end of the 9/11 issue of Spider-Man, it’s absolutely impossible not to hear Andreas Katsulas’ voice narrating.
[…] reconsider The Hunter). If David Brothers hasn’t already given out his extra copies, enter the contest on his site. Posted in Blurbs · Read more by Jamaal […]
1. The wordless sequence at the beginning of “The Hunter” is my favorite Cooke scene. I love the sequence because it is a perfect example of the “show don’t tell” philosophy of writing, Cooke tells you what you need to know about Parker without cluttering his pages with text, a parallel to Westlake’s own economical prose.
2. I don’t think crime fiction gets much better than James Ellroy. If i had to pick a scene It would from “American Tabloid” when failed idealist turned Mob lawyer Ward Littel blackmails Bobby Kennedy into silence regarding his brothers assassination. It is a wonderful scene mixing crime fiction with historical events and characters. Ellroy takes the Kennedy assaination and turns it into byzantine conspiracy thriller that while fiction never feels implausible.
3. I liked “The Hunter” for many reasons; the art is fantastic, Cooke perfectly captures the spirit of the book with his adaptation, and the source material is a great example of the genre. What I enjoyed most about “The Hunter” was the characterization of Parker, a kind of zen thug. Parker follows his own moral code and completes jobs with a kind of ego-less obsession that I find fascinating. Parker steals because that is just what he does. When you cross him he will settle the score because that is just what he does.
Prompt 2
My favorite scene is from Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Nicolas Pileggi. The scene features Billy Bats (Frank Vincent) and his buddies, Tommy Devito (Joe Pesci), Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro) and Henry Hill (Ray Liotta). Billy jokes around with Tommy, but Tommy, as usual, takes it too seriously and kills Billy’s buzz. Billy retaliates by provoking Tommy even more. The best part is after Billy and Tommy exchange apologies, Billy sharply adds “now go home and get your f***ing shine-box.” This is one of those oh snap moments, when everyone knows the guy just crossed the line. Tommy, of course, flips out and shouts “motherf***ing mutt!”
There are two reasons why this scene is my favorite. First, this scene is another fine example of how the characters/gangsters are so unpredictable and unstable. There’s no telling who, what or when these guys will freak out and cause havoc. Since they are so fickle, they help make a story dramatic and surprising. Second, this part sheds light on the origin of the man in the trunk from the beginning of the film. A small argument snowballs into a crazy plot and climax.
[…] for Comixology. David explains why the Outfit was the right choice for the next adaptation, here. I’m going to go re-read The Hunter […]