Article 10: King's Shilling

Marvel have caused a stir with the announcement that they're working with Stephen King on a line of DARK TOWER comics - but what does 'working with Stephen King' actually entail? Paul O'Brien takes a closer look.
07 November 2005

Goodness, what excitement Marvel have provoked with the official announcement of their Stephen King comic. Marvel, it seems, are to publish a comic book based on King's hugely popular DARK TOWER books. It's a major breakthrough for the industry! It's a big name writer, working with Marvel! Readers shall flock! Joy shall abound!

Why, to read some of the reaction, you'd think Stephen King was writing it. What an amusing notion.

The reality is a little more complicated, and rather less impressive. Not that you'd know it from reading the the official press release, which seems to be doing everything in its power to imply that King is writing the comic, without actually saying so.

Next to a piece of promotional art clearly labelled 'Stephen King', in the style of a book cover, we have the headline ,"Stephen King breaks new ground at Marvel with original comic series based on his epic THE DARK TOWER". Below that, we're assured that this series marks the "first time Stephen King has produced original content for the comic book format". What an interesting choice of words. "Produced original content." You'd have thought "written" would be quicker.

And indeed, the press release continues in the same tone. Marvel and Stephen King "join forces this spring to launch" the comic. Uh-huh. Once again, we're reminded that it's the first time King has "produced original content" for a comic. Uh-huh. "King's unparalleled storytelling power will inform new stories." Inform...? And then, there's this:

"The comics will work in conjunction with the novels, further supplementing and defining the saga's mythology under the direction of the acclaimed author himself." Whoa there. "Under the direction" of Stephen King? What does that actually mean?

Jae Lee is named as the artist, and King is quoted as saying, "I love Jae Lee's work, and I think this is going to be a dynamite partnership". Joe Quesada, meanwhile, tells us how thrilled he is "to have [King] join Marvel on this exciting project". And the whole thing rounds off by plugging some of King's upcoming novels.

In fact, despite doing its level best to give the impression that DARK TOWER is a comic by Stephen King and Jae Lee, the press release is beautifully worded to avoid ever actually saying so. And after all, it's not like it mentions anyone else as the writer.

But for a clear explanation of exactly what Stephen King's contribution is, you have to turn to Joe Quesada's rather more candid interview with Newsarama. Here's how Quesada puts it. There's a meeting to discuss story ideas, attended by some guys from Marvel, Stephen King, his agent, and DARK TOWER continuity cop Robin Furth.

"Mr King just kind of looked up at the ceiling, and off the top of his head, started rattling off stories and stories and stories. ... Literally, in ten minutes, he rattled off enough stories [to] fill up roughly four or five trade paperbacks. He just did it offhand - the stories just poured out of him, and all of them middle, beginnings and ends. ... After he told the stories, Robin encapsulated them all and has done her best to break them down into issue-by-issue chunks. After she's done that, I took a pass at it and broke things down into page-by-page structure to give to Jae - something written in the Marvel style. ... And of course, Mr King was involved each step of the way."

Um.

So let's see if I'm understanding this right.

Stephen King rattles off some story outlines. Robin Furth breaks them down by issue, and Joe Quesada then turns them into a traditional Marvel-style plot. King hangs around in some sort of consultant role. And that's the writing process. The interview omits to mention who's doing the scripting, although I'd hazard a guess about who it won't be.

Of course, I should be absolutely fair here. The project Marvel is actually delivering is, commercially speaking, still a good product. On a spectrum from "Stephen King writes a completely original comics" through to "somebody you've never heard of writes a licensed spin-off book", it's undeniably at the better end. It is, after all, still based on a genuine original plot by Stephen King, with at least some degree of active involvement on his part.

But it's not, in the sense that most people would understand it, a comic written by Stephen King. It sounds rather more like a comic written by Robin Furth and Joe Quesada, based on a story outline by Stephen King. I realise that in these post-modern cynical days, nobody actually expects press releases to be wholly accurate, but the promotion of this one really does seem to be exaggerating King's actual role. If King dashed off the outline of a novel and then gave it to somebody else to write up, you hopefully wouldn't see it being promoted under his name.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. SUPERMAN: TRUE BRIT was heavily promoted as written by John Cleese. In fact, it was predominantly the work of his credited co-writer, mention of whom was curiously missing in the promotional material. And ULTIMATE X-MEN has, for some years now, been promising a storyline by director Bryan Singer. The last anyone heard of this project, Singer was co-writing with Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, and Brian K Vaughan, none of which has ever stopped the arc being referred to as a Bryan Singer storyline.

It's entirely understandable that publishers would want to play up the big name contributors, of course, since that's what leads to big sales. King has particular promise, since he has such a large fanbase, and he's providing Marvel with something he's prepared to endorse as part of an ongoing series of books. This ought to guarantee impressive sales, largely in the bookstore market. And it remains to be seen how Marvel will promote the book to those readers. The proposed title of the book, STEPHEN KING'S DARK TOWER, is entirely unobjectionable - titles in that format are regularly used by well known genre novelists endorsing spin-offs in which they had almost no involvement, after all. And King is certainly involved.

The present promotion is really aimed more at the direct market comics audience, and the hardcore Stephen King fans. It's building a buzz around the project, but it runs the risk of disappointing them when they realise what it actually involves. Marvel have an eminently good project here. Why over-sell it?

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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