Darwyn Cooke, who to my mind is one of the most entertaining writer/artists working in mainstream comics today, just announced that he’s adapting the Richard Stark Parker novels into comic book form starting in 2009. Richard Stark was a pen name for Donald Westlake, and Westlake is going to be involved in helping Cooke with the adaptation.

The Parker books are a dark series of crime novels about a violent man named, um, Parker. Many of his missions involve vengeance, and they’re all incredibly violent. Most people probably know them by the movie adaptations. Both the gross Mel Gibson movie Payback and the brilliant Lee Marvin movie Point Blank are very loose adaptations of a Stark novel. I can’t wait to read these comics, but to tide me over, it looks like the Parker novels, which have been in and out of print over the last few decades, are being reissued starting in September. If you like crime or suspense novels, you should check them out.