I can't remember why I picked "Hardboiled / Noir" as my genre. When I looked back at my choice a few months later, I was a little baffled. I had basically picked two format specific genres that really aren't part of comics although they have quite a bit of inspiration for them over the years.
Hard Boiled crime was a genre born on the streets of east coast American cities in the late twenties. Prohibition at this time was all but a joke; men and women did more together than they had ever before in America: "dancing, smoking and drinking stand out (Marling, 3)." For entertainment, hard working modern American's turned to the tabloid media where they found sensationalized trials drenched in sex, crime and tragedy (Marling, 5). Hard Boiled crime was product of these new, scandalous times. Published in the cheaply produced pulps, Hard Boiled crime authors were paid by the word to create short, gritty crime stories that pulled no punches. For what these stories lacked in heroism, it made up for with disillusionment, selfishness and a disregard for law and order. Protagonists of these stories were often deeply flawed, made poor moral choices and it was never certain if they would come out on top (Horsley).
Film Noir, the genre I was probably referring to when I chose Noir, followed Hard Boiled crime novels. Some even argue that Noir is essentially the visual or cinematic version of Hard Boiled stories. Popular film critic Roger Ebert created a useful list of characteristics that define Film Noire, some of which include:
- A Movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.
- Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all.
- Cigarettes. Everybody in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, "On top of everything else, I've been assigned to get through three packs today."
- Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.
- Movies either shot in black and white, or feeling like they were (Ebert).
I'm not really familiar with either genre, but there share many aspects with the crime comics that are currently being published.
I would be remiss, if I did not also point out that comics and comic strips have had noir and hardboiled crime aesthetics going back to the thirties when Chester Gould's Dick Tracy began its syndicated run in the Chicago Tribune. They steadily increased in popularity until they were vilified by the media in the mid fifties and never really recovered (Gravett, 10). Today crime comics are a small but growing genre. Major publishers such as IDW, Marvel, DC, Oni, Image and Dark Horse each produce a few crime comics each year, but nowhere near the amount produced in the genre's heyday during the 40's.
Here is what I feel the characteristics of a Hard Boiled / Noire comic could include:
- Dark moody art
- To the point, economic dialogue
- Basic art, not too fancy, the more rushed looking and sketchy the better
- No guarantee of a happy ending
- Something illegal happens
There also many other intangibles that led me to the books I chose for this assignment, but I have found that there is really no right or wrong when it comes to people's opinions of genre, so I would prefer to keep my definition fairly broad. In retrospect, it would have made more sense for me to simply choose Crime as a genre, and then my limits would have simply been "a crime happens somewhere in the story" and then this introduction would have only been a sentence long. I would probably make a poor "hard boiled" author, which is okay, because I want to be a librarian.
Search Strategy
I didn't have a search strategy other than my mind. I consulted with a few books to jog my memory about the books I wanted to choose such as Paul Gravett's Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know and Michael Pawuk's Graphic Novels: A Genre Guide to Comic Books, Manga and More but I was already aware of most of the books I wanted to used in the bibliography. Originally I had picked about 20 titles, but as I refined my definition I added and subtracted titles until I was happy with my final selection. Usually I took out books because I didn't think they were moody enough such as Naoki Urasawa's Monster series and Jean Vanne Hamme's Largo Winch series. Other titles I took out because I felt they were already fairly well known and were already covered in the comics to movie assignment such as Sin City, Road to Perdition and History of Violence. I was also going to include Brian Michael Bendis' Torso, but I accidently lent it to a friend's husband and I'll be lucky if I get it back. I wavered a little on the books that had superheroes in them, and in the end decided to only include one.
Fortunately, there were quite a few titles for me to choose from, so I was able to be picky. Crime graphic novels have been published fairly steadily since the 90s in North America, with more coming out every year. I didn't look into international graphic novels at all, but an interesting characteristic of many of the books I chose was that the artists came from countries outside of North America.
Titles Chosen
Aaron, Jason (Writer) and R. M. Guera. Scalped: Indian Country. New York, Vertigo Comics: 2007. Print [Entire First Issue!]
- [I became aware of Scalped when I started hearing some of writers such as Garth Ennis, Brian Wood, Brian K. Vaughan and Brian Azzarello say that Scalped was one of the favorite books they were reading. They're not the only ones, it's getting great reviews from lots of sources such as Publishers Weekly and even Playboy has been singing Aaron's praises. Scalped is edgier than most of the other books on this list, because it is set on a native reserve in the US, featuring a fairly bleak portrayal of native life.]
Abel, Jessica. La Perdida. New York, Pantheon Books: 2006. Print. [Preview!]
- I first noticed La Perdida when I worked a bookstore, I flipped through a couple of times and was going to buy it until one of my co-workers did. But I was so hooked on the story that I went to a rival bookstore and bought it. La Perdida is about a naïve young American woman who travels to Mexico and wants to fit in with the locals, so much so that she begins taking more chances with the law.
Azzarello, Brian (Writer) and Eduardo Risso (Artist). 100 Bullets: First Call Last Shot. New York, Vertigo Comics: 2000. Print. [Entire First Issue!]
- [Someone told me the premise of the book, so I checked it out and couldn't put it down. Agent Graves goes around America giving briefcases to the down and out: failed gamblers, drug addicts and recidivist gangsters. In each case is irrefutable evidence of the person who ruined these people's lives and a hundred untraceable bullets. The recipient of the briefcase must then decide what they are going to do with the information given to them and the power to kill without retribution. ]
Brubaker, Ed (Writer) and Sean Phillips (Artist). Coward: A Criminal Edition. New York, Icon Comics: 2007. Print.
- [I picked up this book a few years ago because people kept on telling me to. Unlike many of the other books in this list, it is in color, but that doesn't diminish from the edginess of the book, in fact most of the tones are grey and dull except for the black which jumps out at the reader from the page. Coward is the first book in a series of books that can be read individually or as a series. Each volume focuses on a different character, and sometimes even a different time and adds to the overarching stories of betrayal and crime in the Criminal world. Coward focuses on Leo, a criminal who has been labeled a coward because he is willing to run away from a fight he can't win.
Brubaker, Ed. (Writer), Greg Rucka (Writer) and Michael Lark (Artist). Gotham Central: In the Line of Duty. New York: 2004. Print.
- [This is the only superhero book that picked for the list. Set in Batman's world, Gotham Central is a gritty portrayal of what life is like for the police who have to deal with the fallout of the actions of Batman and the Criminals he faces. Featuring a wide cast of characters, some of whom are criminals themselves, Gotham Central is a pessimistic world where any given night could be a cop's last.]
Cooke, Darwyn (Writer, Artist). Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter. San Diego, IDW: 2009. Print. [Preview!]
- [ This is an adaptation of the popular crime writer Donald Westlake's The Hunter. This was not its first adaptation, as it had previously been adapted into two movies including Mel Gibson's Payback. Cooke's adaptation was the first one that Westlake allowed to use the original name of the character: Parker. I discovered this book because I will read anything by Darwyn Cooke. It was also recently featured on Publisher Weekly's top ten Graphic Novels of 2009]
Koike, Kazuo (Writer) and Goseki Kojima. Samurai Executioner Vol. 1: When the Demon Knife Weeps. Oregon, Dark Horse: 2004. Print. [Preview!]
- [Samurai Executioner is the most distinct title out of all my choices. It is set in feudal Japan, it was originally published in the 70s and none of the narrative or art is derived from Noir or Hard Boiled fiction. I picked this book, because I feel like it still shares many of the characteristics of North America crime, the lines in the art are stark and thin, the characters are unsavory, the endings are rarely happy. The series focuses on Yamada Asaemon who is the Sword Tester of his village and is responsible for executing criminals, and is usually the last person to hear their cries for mercy. One reviewer neatly summed up why I chose this book for my Hardboiled / Noir book list: "[W]hat distinguishes [Samurai Executioner] is all the dazzling plentitudes of angles of vision, the masterly use of shading…Koike's dialogue, in which the diction reflect ths character's personality and status, burnishes each story's noirish sheen (Olsen)."
Lapham, David. Silverfish. New York, Vertigo Comics: 2007. Print. [Preview!]
- [Silverfish was written by David Lapham, one of well known, least read crime comic creators in the world. His series classic Stray Bullets has been out of print for years, yet on the cover of Silverfish Lapham is credited as "The Creator of Stray Bullets." So basically I chose this book because Stray Bullets is no longer readily available and Silverfish is. Also Silverfish features great black and white art, and a great story about a girl who starts digging into her step-mother's past and finds a dark secret that could cost her entire family's life.]
Rucka, Greg. Whiteout. Portland, Oni Press: 1999. Print. [Preview!]
- [The art of Whiteout is in stark contrast to the other books here, in that the characters in the story are not lurking in the shadows, instead they freezing out in the open. The most dominant color is not black , but rather white and I found this just as chilling. Set in Antarctica, a U.S. Marshall is trying to solve a murder, but every time she steps outside anything she's just as likely to die from the cold as she is about to be murdered herself. I think originally read this book because it had a Frank Miller cover and I saw it in a comic book store. ]
Schutz, Diana., ed. Noir: A Collection of Crime Comics. Oregon, Dark Horse: 2009. Print. [Preview!]
- [I discovered this book flipping through Diamond Previews, the catalogue comic retailers use to order comics and graphic novels two months before they come out. I think I may have actually been thinking of this assignment when I decided to order it, but mostly I picked it because of the diverse group of creators working on this book from around the world which include Alex De Campi (England), Ed Brubaker(America), Fabio Moon(Brazil) and Jeff Lemire (Canada). Each story is in black and white, and with only a few pages per story no inch of space is wasted to punch the reader in the gut. ]
A closer look at Darwyn Cooke's Richard Stark's The Hunter
Darwyn Cooke wrote and drew Richard Stark's The Hunter. Darwyn Cooke is a Canadian Cartoonist who had a started his comics career in the mid eighties only to leave for greener pastures as a magazine art director and graphic art designer. By the nineties, Cooke had entered the world of animation working on shows such as Batman the Animated series and Batman Beyond as a story board artist. However, by 2000 Cooke had returned to Comics, and helped to revamp the Catwoman series and was eventually giving the writing and artistic duties for DC Comic's relaunch of Wil Eisner's The Spirit series ("Darwyn Cooke").
Cooke's style is well known for his cartoony style that harkens back to comics and cartoons from the sixties. I feel like there is almost a Hanna Barbera element to his art that creates a weird mash up of art deco and Bruce Timm style art. In the past Cooke has listed creators such as Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Alex Toth and Jack Kirby as being some of comic book influences (Mautner).
When creating The Hunter, Cooke was cognizant of the market's he was reaching out to when making the book. Feeling that the audience within the direct market was too small, Cooke consciously tried to create a book that would do well in the book store market by designing a book that would more like a novel than a graphic novel hoping that bookstores would shelve The Hunter with crime fiction instead of with other graphic novels. While Cooke has had a passion for Westlake's work, he also chose to use Westlake's work to help get his name out to markets other than the direct market (Kilpatrick).
I feel that Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of the Hunter is significant for the medium. However, the lasting impact of the book remains to be seen. Adaptations such as Cooke's The Hunter and Nicki Greenberg's adaptation of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby which were created by artists who have genuine passions for the works they are creating could have a positive impact on graphic novels being sold in book stores. Ideally, comics and graphic novels in the future will no longer be shelved in a section with other comics, but rather with the genres they are relevant to.
Darwyn Cooke's art style is very basic and straightforward, the panels are rectangles and in a grid, readers don't really need to guess which panel they need to read next. The panels themselves are not very complicated, each one displaying usually one action by one character. I would argue that reading The Hunter is not unlike reading a good hardboiled novel, the panels come fast and furious, and there is rarely time to linger on one because the reader needs to complete the sequence by moving on to the next one.
As discussed earlier, Darwyn uses a limited palate for his art. Other than tones of black and white there is graying blue used in wide brush strokes to add shadows and textures to the art. But other than that nothing else that will get in the way of the story. Cooke is the first person to admit that he is a story teller first, and an artist second. He doesn't spend too much time worrying about worrying about angles or backgrounds, not unlike an old black and white film where the camera's don't move often, the backgrounds in Parker rarely change and are sometimes little more than solid line of black or blue. Cooke doesn't need to waste time on the backgrounds anyways, all the action is in the foreground.
The style Cooke uses for drawing the characters is consistent with the art style he has been using since his days as a storyboard artist for Batman Beyond. The faces are big and blocky, with little detail beyond the big eyes and mouths. But the simplicity in Cooke's style makes it easy for the reader to see what kind of emotional state a character is in, even if there is no dialogue. Cooke himself, was conscious of how he drew the character's actions:
"The original novel was really an experiment to see if he could tell a story without any real emotional content. You're only clue to the protagonist — if you want to call Parker that — and his emotional state would be physical action that might betray it. All of his emotions were internalized and that led him into an area where he was stripping things out. The clean, direct prose style brilliantly leaves things for the reader to fill in for themselves. I needed art that matched that (Cooke) .
Of the first 15 or 16 pages of The Hunter, only one or two panels have any dialogue. The rest of the story telling is visual. You see Parker as he stomps through New York putting himself back together after a heist has gone wrong. Much of the story through is part is depicted through the eyes of Parker himself, so while you don't see what he is doing, you can see the reactions as he stiffs a waitress, jumps a turnstile and cons his way into a new suit.
When there is text or dialogue, it is only to compliment the story.
Works Cited
Cooke, Darwyn. "The Hunter: Darwyn Cooke and Donald Westlake Pull of the Perfect Crime". Interview by Geoff Boucher. LA Times Blog: Hero Complex. 18 July 2009. Web. 6 November 2009.
"Darwyn Cooke". N.D. Lambiek.net. Web. 6 November 2009
Ebert, Roger. "A Guide to Film Noire Genre." Roger Ebert. Com 30 January 1995. Web. 5 November 2009.
Gravett, Paul. Introduction. The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comic. Edited By Gravett. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2008. Print.
Horsley, Lee. "American Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction, 1920s-1940s". Crime Culture. N.D. Web. 5 November 2009.
Kilpatrick, Conor. "The Darwyn Cooke Intreview: The News Highlights". iFanboy. 27 August 2009. Web. 6 November 2009.
Marling, William. The American Roman Noir: Hammett, Cain and Chandler. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Print.
Mautner, Chris. "Graphic Lit: An Interview with Darwyn Cooke". Panels and Pixels. 22 January 2007. Web. 6 November 2009.
Olsen, Ray. Rev. of Samurai Executioner , Kazuo Koike (Writer) and Goseki Kojima (Artist). Booklist. 101.17:1530(2005). Academic Search Elite. Web. 5 November 2009.
