Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Darwyn Cooke created four graphic novels adapted from the works of Richard Stark (a pseudonym for writer Donald Westlake) featuring a career criminal named Parker. These are meticulously plotted, often violent and morally complex novels with an existential, noirish feel. The first two books in the series The Hunter and The Outfit were republished in an Absolute Edition-sized, slipcased collection Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition with lots of extras: an in-depth interview with Darwyn Cooke, sketches, illustrations, design treatments, promotional and other images, and more. The third and fourth books, The Score and Slayground were similarly collected together for a companion slipcased edition, Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition – Last Call. Like the first collection, Last Call included previously unpublished goodies, including ten paintings created for an illustrated version of The Hunter that never happened, and a new story by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips. 

By contrast with the very deluxe Martini Editions measuring 24 x 35.6cm, Richard Stark’s Parker: The Complete Collection is a standard 16.8 x 25.9 cm softcover book, only slightly larger than the original editions of Cooke’s Parker graphic novels. It is however much wider, at 520 pages. It contains all four of the Eisner-winning books, The Hunter, The Score, The Outfit, and Slayground plus two shorter stories ‘The Man with the Getaway Face’ and ‘The 7eventh’.

That’s a lot of reading, so there are no extras included; no interviews, illustrations or other material, just the stories. That’s not to say this book is without special features. It does feature one extremely nice detail productionwise. To deal with its very thick width, the book is sewn with a special technique called an otabinding, which allows the spine to fold independently of the cover (see alternate cover illos). It looks a little strange if you haven’t seen this before, but the result is a nicely smooth reading experience. The softcover won’t crumble from being repeatedly folded so your copy of Richard Stark’s Parker: The Complete Collection will stay looking pristine on your bookshelf no matter how much you read it. And with a book of this many pages, there is going to be a lot of opening and closing.