Essential Darwyn Cooke interview on The Outfit (and other things)

When Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of The Hunter was released, the Comics Reporter landed the must-read interview with Darwyn Cooke on the subject. For The Outfit, that honor falls to Comics Alliance and this terrific interview by Tucker Coe Stone.

Some things mentioned:

If you’ve been following this project, you know that the original plan was to adapt the first four Parker novels, and that changed into the current plan to adapt the two now in print plus The Score and Slayground. Cooke does not rule out that plan changing again. Possibilities mentioned are doing more than four books and incorporating Slayground into an adaptation of Butcher’s Moon.

An interpretation of Parker and The Hunter that’s very much valid but that you may well disagree with (I wonder what Westlake would think?):

“This is a guy who has been in love. He got up and got married. He had a honeymoon. He had friends. And what happens to him in [The Hunter] wipes all of that out.”

“There’s nothing more horrible than having to read your own work.” Boy, do most writers in any area know that feeling.

And, last and least, this bit:

TS: I’m curious about Grofield — you changed his name just a little bit? You took the “i” out?

DC: You know what, I’ll just cop to it right now. That was a complete mistake on my part! Just a blunder, a total blunder. And it’s funny, because there’s a website, The Violent World of Parker, and Trent gave it a quick review. He nails the reason for it, he said “he changed Grofield to Grofeld. I can’t imagine why, but I don’t think it will bother many people because that’s how most people say it anyway.” And that’s exactly what it was! I’m just hand-lettering onto my page, and in my head, it’s Grofeld. Nobody caught it. So yeah, it was just a complete screw up, and I’ll just cop to it now rather than come up with an elaborate lie.

TS: When did you actually catch it?

DC: When Trent pointed it out.

TS: [Laughs] [Not as hard as I am! – Ed.]

DC: See, because to me, it just looked right! [Laughing] On some sort of spastic level, I’m dyslexically lettering it over and over again, so it just looked right over and over again. I guess now the big question is whether it becomes Grofield or stays as Grofeld in the next book.

You’ll definitely want to read the whole thing.