Darwyn Cooke Stealth-Announces ‘Parker’ on iPhone [Wondercon]

Darwyn Cooke's "The Man With The Getaway Face" debuted over the weekend at Wondercon, an oversized adaptation of Richard Stark's novel of the same name, and the first chapter of this fall's "The Outfit." It certainly seems like a grand success, considering how often it came up at numerous convention after-parties and dinners. Inside the book are a couple of surprises for fans of Darwyn Cooke's "Parker" series. They aren't given a position of importance or highlighted as news, but they reveal a few previous unreleased facts.

In "The Man With the Getaway Face," there is a handsome full-page house ad on the inside back cover that reads "new for '62." The art is of a woman in a long dress, black gloves, wearing a diamond bracelet and holding an iPhone with a panel detail from 2009's "The Hunter." Cooke mentioned the iPhone adaptation last year, saying that the book has been broken into five chapters, with the first being free, but it's nice to have official, and enormously stylish confirmation that "The Hunter" is coming to an iPhone, and presumably an iPad, near you.In Cooke's introduction, he also explains that while the original plan was to adapt the first four books, he found himself hungry to adapt two later books in the series, volumes that would "lend themselves to graphic adaptation in unique and exciting ways." He decided to cut "The Mourner," which he describes as a good but visually "unspectacular" type of heist. The second book he cut was "The Man With the Getaway Face," which he reduced to the first chapter of "The Outfit."

In exchange for those two, he added "The Score," which tells the tale of one of Parker's most impressive heists, and "Slayground," which is the story of the time that Parker got trapped in an amusement park while being hunted by goons. Think "Home Alone," but with a Parker-style edge.

As a fan of the novels, I have to say that Cooke chose two of the most spectacular. "Slayground" in particular is a fast-paced, high impact read, and since he's only adapting four books, it is better to go for the best of the best, right?