Former animator-turned-comic book artist and writer Darwyn Cooke adapted the crime novel "The Hunter" by Richard Stark (a pen name used by the late, great crime fiction writer Donald E. Westlake) that introduced Stark's signature character, Parker, a professional thief who was betrayed by his wife and his criminal partner after a heist and left for dead. Now Parker wants revenge. And his money. This novel has been twice adapted into films; "Point Blank" starring Lee Marvin as the main character (renamed Walker ) and "Payback" with Mel Gibson (renamed Porter). The graphic novel stays as close as possible to the original text (it's also the only adaptation in which Westlake allowed the main character to keep the name Parker.
From the first moment Parker appears, it's made perfectly clear that he is not a good guy, a thief with a heart of gold or a code of honor. Parker is an unrepentant criminal who wants the money that he feels is owed to him. He wants revenge too, but mostly he wants to get paid. Parker is not above killing people to get what he wants, whether it's a guard to effect his escape from a prison farm, members of the criminal organization known as "The Outfit," or his sadistic former partner Mal Resnick who bullies Parker's wife into shooting her own husband. Because the surrounding characters are even more corrupt, it’s not so much that we root for Parker to win, as much as we root for his enemies, especially Resnick, to lose. Cooke effectively balances powerful graphics with the right amount of text and dialogue to create an effective crime story.