Reading – Thief of Thieves & Parker

Comic creator Robert Kirkman seems to have now small amount of magic in what he does. He’s the name behind The Walking Dead (zombie survival horror) and Invincible (super heroes) and numerous other indie titles like Outcast (supernatural horror), Oblivion Song (science fiction), and Fire Power (martial arts – side note, when the first issue came out, Kirkman was literally giving away copies to get it into people’s hands and it worked, I bought the next two trade collections). I might not have enjoyed all his work, but I’ve enjoyed enough of it and took a chance on Thief of Thieves.

It was inevitable that I’d enjoy the book. It kicks off with master thief Redmond celebrating his final heist before retiring. Sure enough, events conspire to pull him back in and playing for the greatest stakes of his life. I’m a sucker for heist stories, be it over the top like Leverage and Oceans Eleven or ‘it takes a thief’ shows like White Collar or the master thief like Lupin. Redmond is cut of a simliar cloth to Richard Stark’s Parker – a professional who knows the the game, the players, and isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty when he must.

Artist Shawn Martinbrough‘s style works beautifully for the noir of the series, a crisp play of light and shadows that reminds me of the ikes of Darwyn Cooke (The Spirit 2008), Mike Mignola (Hellboy), and Eduardo Risso (100 Bullets). For writing, there’s a team that’s working together over the arcs, including the talented Andy Diggle (HellblazerI, Punisher, Daredevil, Losers, and adapting James Bond to comics). Critics were meh about the first arc, but if you happen to like noir heist stories, I’d still recommend checking it out.

Likewise, the classic noir of Parker: The Hunter by Richard Stark (the character being adapted to the big screen three times now) has been adapted to graphic novel format by Darwyn Cooke and is also worth checking out. To my knowledge, only three of the Parker novels were adapted by Cooke but I’d wager there’s more movie adaptations to come for those and for the works of Robert Kirkman.