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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 7: The Outfit

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 7: The Outfit

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The third Parker novel: The Outfit (Pocket Books, 1967)

What is it?

Volume 3 of Richard Stark’s Parker series of crime novels. It is also the third part of the unofficial Outfit Trilogy, the first three books in the series, in which Parker goes up against an organized crime syndicate.

Quick and Dirty Summary

After surviving an assassination attempt by a killer hired by the Outfit, Parker decides it’s time to settle matters with organized crime once and for all.

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By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Marvel Does King Conan

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Marvel Does King Conan

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Even as another Summer of A (Black) Gat in the Hand ran in my Monday morning slot (nine years now!), I’ve been spending a lot of time in Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone on West 35th Street, in Manhattan. But I didn’t feel like I could miss out on Cimmerian September. A few of you may recall that last year I joined in the month-long celebration of Robert E. Howard’s mighty-thewed sword slinger.

Later this month I will be on the third and final Solomon Kane Youtube panel by the Robert E. Howard Foundation (here’s the first one). So, getting my REH on this month.

I’ve said that I came late to REH. I was in my forties and my young son would play with the wooden train sets in the kids playroom at Barnes and Noble. One day I picked up the first Del Rey Conan and read it for a bit. I ended up getting it later. And Robert E. Howard would ascend the ranks to surpass all my other favorite writers, with the exception of John D. MacDonald.

My buddy Howard Andrew Jones would stick a verbal elbow in my ribs that I was a rookie sword and sorcery fan, and never changed that opinion, as I still hadn’t shown any interest in C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry (hey – I’m interested in what I’m interested in). But I made up a lot of Conan ground (I had read Moorcock and Leiber by junior high), and I can hold my own in the REH room now.

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It’s Got Its Ups and Downs: Hercules Unbound #1-#12

It’s Got Its Ups and Downs: Hercules Unbound #1-#12

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Hercules Unbound #1, by Gerry Conway, José Luis García-López, and Wally Wood (DC Comics, November 1975). Cover by José Luis García-López

Live long enough, it seems, and you will revisit the pleasures of your youth. You wonder if they still hold up, or perhaps you’re looking to learn if (or how) they shaped the person you’ve become. Which is why — for the first time since the mid-1970s — I recently reread Hercules Unbound #1-#12 (1975—1977), the complete run of a cancelled DC Comics series aimed at the 1970s’ booming sword & sorcery market.

DC’s Hercules is the demi-god of Greco-Roman myth, transposed to a post-apocalyptic then-future. The published issues of this solo series feature scripts by Gerry Conway, Cary Bates, and David Michelinie, and art by José Luis García-López, Wally Wood, Walt Simonson, and Bob Layton.

If the sheer number of creators on such a short run makes your spidey sense tingle, well, yeah. It’s not a great sign. But on this, more anon.

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 6: The Man with the Getaway Face

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 6: The Man with the Getaway Face

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The second Parker novel: The Man With the Getaway Face (Pocket Books, 1963)

What is it?

Parker has gone to a lot of trouble and expense to get a new face. Now he has to fight to keep his identity hidden, while also planning and executing an armored car heist.

A treacherous waitress and a punch-drunk former boxer complicate those matters tremendously.

This is Volume 2 of Richard Stark’s “Parker” series of crime novels. It is also the second part of the unofficial Outfit Trilogy, the first three books in the series, in which Parker goes up against an organized crime syndicate.

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The Unfinished Monument: The Steranko History of Comics

The Unfinished Monument: The Steranko History of Comics

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The Steranko History of Comics, Volumes One and Two, front covers

Imagine Mount Rushmore with only one president on it. Picture a Washington Monument that’s only 185 feet tall instead of 555. How about a Statue of Liberty missing two arms and a head? No takers? I don’t blame you; there’s nothing more frustrating than a great beginning that remains incomplete.

Take The Steranko History of Comics, a work that was intended to fill six volumes. The first two came out in 1970 and 1972… and then, nothing. It’s been fifty-four years now and I don’t mind telling you, I’m starting to lose hope.

Certainly no one was (or is — he’s still with us at the age of eighty-eight) more qualified to write a history of comics than Jim Steranko. Active in the industry as an artist and writer since the late 50’s, he did his most famous work for Marvel on their Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. title. Charging through the door that Jack Kirby had kicked open, Steranko created some images (especially his Nick Fury covers) that have become icons of the psychedelic 60’s as essential as anything by Andy Warhol or Peter Max.

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 4: The Hunter

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 4: The Hunter

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Parker’s first appearance: The Hunter (Pocket Books, 1962)

What is it?

Parker begins!

He’s angry. He’s determined. He’s out for blood. And he’s got big hands!

He’s walking across the George Washington Bridge into New York, scaring motorists who glimpse him out the window as they drive by.

Later he will decide he wants the money that was taken from him. At the moment, however, he just wants revenge.

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David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part Two: Red Sonja

David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part Two: Red Sonja

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Red Sonja by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney (Ace Books, December 1981 – May 1983). Covers by Boris Vallejo

In addition to his Black Vulmea and Bran Mak Morn stories, David C. Smith collaborated with Richard L. Tierney (1936 –2022) on six novels in a series about Red Sonja. Though often described as Robert E. Howard pastiches, that label is not completely accurate. Red Sonja (spelled with a J), is not a Howard character, although she is based on a couple of female swordslingers Howard did create, particularly — it seems to me — on Valeria, from the Conan story “Red Nails.” (A very similar character named Valeria appeared in the first Conan movie — Conan the Barbarian.)

Howard did create a character named Red Sonya (spelled with a “y”), who appeared as a secondary character in one historical tale — “The Shadow of the Vulture,” from the collection Sowers of the Thunder. She had red hair instead of blonde like Valeria, but otherwise is less reminiscent of Red Sonja than is Valeria.

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 3: Why Can’t Anyone (Except Darwyn Cooke) Get Him Right?

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 3: Why Can’t Anyone (Except Darwyn Cooke) Get Him Right?

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Payback (Paramount Pictures, February 5, 1999)

In the first two installments of this series, we looked at the master criminal known as Parker, and at his creator, Richard Stark, the pseudonym Donald E. Westlake used when writing spare and stark but hard-hitting prose.

Now let’s look at some of the many attempts to bring Parker to a wider audience.

The novels are extremely popular with a segment of the population, and so studios and directors have come calling from time to time, with attempts to adapt the character and his stories to film.

But they never quite get Parker right.

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A New Beginning: Bowling With Corpses by Mike Mignola & Dave Stewart

A New Beginning: Bowling With Corpses by Mike Mignola & Dave Stewart

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It all started because I wanted to draw a kid bowling with corpses

Mike Mignola

Maybe it was John Fultz who mentioned them on Facebook. He’s always mentioning things that lead me to acquiring more books. Maybe it came to me in a dream. I’m not really sure. Either way, I discovered that Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, the World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator ®, had drawn and written (colored exquisitely by Dave Stewart) two collections of dark fantasy stories; Bowling With Corpses (2025), and Uri Tupka and the Gods (2026). I bought them almost at once.

Bowling With Corpses is a collection of stories, some fairytale-inspired and some detailing the setting’s complex cosmogony, opens with the following dedication:

For all those who transported me to lands unknown way back when — Howard, Smith, Lovecraft, Dunsany, Leiber, Moorcock, Lee and Kirby. And so many others. I realized now this book was inevitable.

From the first page all those influences are apparent, though I think Dunsany’s dreamlike stories such as those I reviewed from At the Edge of the World. Some follow fairytale logic, and others, dream logic. Mignola’s dark and shadow-filled art brings them to life, or death, as the case might be. In the later years of Hellboy, Mignola’s art took on a very stylized look. His work here has stepped back from that towards the more detailed style of his older work. In the afterword, Mignola describes himself as semi-retired until he realized:

“The hell with this. I love drawing comics so I’ll just keep drawing comics.”

 

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 2: Parker the Barbarian!

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 2: Parker the Barbarian!

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Richard Stark’s Parker by Darwyn Cooke

Last time we discussed the character of Parker, Donald E. Westlake’s master thief and heist planner.

This time, we’ll look at why we’re talking about Parker at all, here in the hallowed spaces of this fine magazine.

Parker might seem like an odd fit. Allow me, however, to draw some parallels that will help to illustrate how and why the master criminal Parker fits in with classic sword and sorcery characters like Conan the Barbarian. For these two gentlemen have far more in common than one might guess.

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