A Brief Guide to Stephen King (24 page)

Verrill suggested to King that he remove the references to the Covenant Man being another incarnation of Marten Broadcloak, and just confine Marten’s involvement to the letter from Roland’s mother. The characterization of Maerlyn was drawn in part from T.H. White’s portrayal of Merlin in the novel
The Sword in the Stone
.

The Wind Through the Keyhole
– a description of ‘time’ according to King’s assistant Robin Furth – was the first ‘Dark Tower’ story written after Marvel had begun releasing their comic book series. King wasn’t concerned about contradicting continuity established in those stories, but it is perhaps a little surprising that he has Roland telling a tale that includes references to Dogans, Directive Nineteen and North Central Positronics – all of which seem new to the ka-tet when they are mentioned in
Wolves of the Calla
.

‘The Little Sisters of Eluria’ (1998)

Roland is searching for clues that will lead him to the Tower, and encounters a hospital marquee run by an unusual group of nuns after he is attacked by a group of slow mutants. They are vampires, who feed on their patients once they’ve recovered. With the help of Sister Jenna, who wants to leave the Little Sisters, Roland is able to escape, but Jenna disintegrates into a mass of tiny bugs – which the Sisters used to ‘cure’ their patients – after declaring her love for Roland. Alone once more, Roland continues his quest.

This prequel to
The Gunslinger
was written for the anthology
Legends
in 1998, and then reprinted in
Everything’s Eventual
four years later. The story was commissioned by Robert Silverberg, with King claiming that ‘in a moment of weakness I agreed to do a
Gunslinger
novella for the book’. The ‘doctor’ bugs reappear in
Song of Susannah
and
The Dark Tower
, while there are explicit crossovers with
The Eyes of the Dragon
(one of the other patients comes from Delain), and with both
The Talisman
and
Black House
. The Sisters use the same unformed language as Tak, the evil at the heart of
Desperation
and
The Regulators
, with Eluria stated to be near the Desatoya Mountains, the site of the mine in
Desperation
.

The popularity of Roland of Gilead’s quest for the Dark Tower has extended across various media: Marvel Comics produced a long-running comic book, with varying degrees of involvement from Stephen King; and King’s own website has hosted a computer game,
Discordia
, to which levels continue to be added. The most important missing element has been a large or small screen adaptation – but there have been many people interested in transferring Roland’s adventures into that medium, in some cases combining elements of both cinema and television to tell the story to the best advantage.

The Comic Book (2007–2013)

Marvel produced two series of comic books based on ‘The Dark Tower’: the first ran for thirty issues chronicling Roland’s adventures between his trip to Mejis (as related
by Roland to the ka-tet in
Wizard and Glass
) and the Battle of Jericho Hill, where the gunslingers were wiped out. The second batch of thirty, known as
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
, picks up the story a dozen years later and runs through to the end of Stephen King’s first novel in the saga, with various additional side stories.

The stories were plotted by Robin Furth, Stephen King’s assistant, with reference to King as appropriate: in a 2012 interview, King noted that he hadn’t taken note of how the comics handled the Battle of Jericho Hill since he knew that if he were to return to the ‘Dark Tower’ series at some point in the future, that was the story from Roland’s life that he wanted to tell. The scripts were mostly written by comics veteran Peter David.

The comics also had a considerable amount of additional value material in their original printings – everything from new stories about the training of gunslingers to transcripts of panels from conventions discussing the saga. Some, but not all, of these were included in the trade compilation graphic novels.

The series was meant to start in April 2006, according to the official press release in October 2005, with King commenting, ‘As a lifelong fan of Marvel comic books, and as an adult reader who’s seen comics “come of age” and take their rightful place in the world of fantasy and science fiction, I’m excited to be a part of Roland’s new incarnation.’ Within a couple of months, the launch had been pushed back to February 2007. ‘Given the size of the project and all the creative talent involved, I want to give the Marvel series all the room to breathe it needs and deserves,’ King explained. ‘The Marvel series is going to be a blast, and I want to have the time to enjoy it.’ A
Dark Tower Sketchbook
, with designs, pencilled pages and a primer for new visitors to Mid-world, was released free in December 2006.

Marvel’s ‘Dark Tower’ proved the adage that Jake says in
The Gunslinger
– ‘there are more worlds than these’.
Furth’s plotting altered some of the characters, giving some more space than they had received in the original storyline, reducing the roles of others, and in the case of Walter O’Dim, Marten Broadcloak and Randall Flagg, making them different aspects of the same being (which doesn’t always tally with the way they are portrayed in the books).

‘The Gunslinger Born’ (February–August 2007) adapts the flashback from
Wizard and Glass
as Roland and his ka-tet are sent to Mejis. ‘The Long Road Home’ expands the young gunslinger’s journey back to Gilead (March–July 2008). ‘Treachery’ (September 2008–February 2009) covers the period between their return home and Roland shooting his mother – including elements from ‘The Little Sisters of Eluria’ short story. After a single issue, written solely by Furth, focusing on ‘The Sorcerer’ (April 2009), the story continues with ‘Fall of Gilead’ (May–October 2009) (the continuity of which clashes with the later story
The Wind Through the Keyhole
) charting the deaths of Steven Deschain and Cort, as well as many others in the court. The series concludes with ‘Battle of Jericho Hill’ combining elements from many of the stories that Roland told his ka-tet about the deciding conflict across the saga.

‘The Gunslinger’ starts with ‘The Journey Begins’ (May–October 2010), using the famous opening line from the first book to begin an extended version of that tale, filling in some of Roland’s story after the Battle of Jericho Hill. ‘The Little Sisters of Eluria’ (December 2010–April 2011) is a faithful rendition of the short story. ‘The Battle of Tull’ (June 2011–October 2011) tells the story in a linear form, rather than as a flashback, as it is in
The Gunslinger
. ‘The Way Station’ (December 2011–April 2012) adapts that short story from the book, although incorporating some of the details as given in
Wizard and Glass
. ‘The Man in
Black’ (June 2012–October 2012) completes the tale, with a few alterations to suit the graphic medium.

The final five issues were the two-part ‘Sheemie’s Tale’ (January–February 2013; originally announced as coming in 2011); the two-part ‘Evil Ground’ (May–June 2013), which was a prequel to ‘The Little Sisters of Eluria’; and the final single-issue ‘So Fell Lord Perth’ (August 2013), which relates the story of young Arthur Eld and the giant Lord Perth.

When ‘So Fell Lord Perth’ was solicited in May 2013, Marvel noted that the issue ‘concludes its epic Dark Tower saga’. When concerned fans took to the message board on Stephen King’s website to query this, the moderator announced that ‘There aren’t any plans for another publisher to do Dark Tower comics’. Writer Peter David confirmed in early August 2013 that he was unaware of any plans to continue the saga in comic book form.

Discordia
(2009/2013)

Although Stephen King has made it clear that, as far as he is concerned, the end of Roland’s story has been told, there has been a semi-official continuation in the form of the interactive computer game
Discordia
, hosted on
stephenking.com
. According to Bev Vincent’s
The Dark Tower Companion
, the events during Phase II of the game happen contemporaneously with what occurs after
The Dark Tower
finishes.

Discordia
can be found via the Dark Tower page on
www.stephenking.com
, and is described ‘as an adjunct to the Dark Tower series as a whole’, with ‘an elaborate storyline authorized by Stephen’. The blurb on the site, combined with careful watching of the trailer, gives the backstory: the Tet Corporation was set up in 1977 (per
The Dark Tower
) to guard Stephen King, protect the rose and sabotage the Sombra Corporation. Following Richard Sayre’s disappearance, the Sombra Corporation hired former mobster Arina Yokova as CEO, after she believed
she had discovered that King’s ‘Dark Tower’ books talked about a real place. She masterminds the corporation’s rise in the early twenty-first century by selling weapons of mass destruction brought through from Fedic Dogan on the black market, then she absconds with a large amount of funds which she hides in Mid-World.

Chapter 1
of
Discordia
(subtitled ‘For Callahan’) sees Op19 investigating the Dixie Pig restaurant in New York in the aftermath of the battle at the start of
The Dark Tower
, and entering the tunnels beneath.
Chapter 2
, released in summer 2013, follows three years later in Mid-World as Arina Yokova reveals her true plans, and how they intersect with Roland’s quest.

Designed for those who loved the ‘Dark Tower’ books by webmaster Brian Stark, working with King’s assistants Marsha DeFillipo and Robin Furth, as well as artist Michael Whelan (who illustrated the first and last volumes of the saga),
Discordia
is filled with ‘Easter eggs’ for Constant Readers. It is not really a good place to start if you don’t know the storyline.

The Dark Tower on Screen

The problem that has been faced by the various film-makers who have wanted to produce a screen version of the ‘Dark Tower’ series is that, unlike
The Chronicles of Narnia
, it doesn’t comprise discrete stories, which can stand alone. It’s one huge story, dwarfing even J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic
The Lord of the Rings
.

Over the years, many have expressed an interest, including
Star Trek
and
Star Wars
director J.J. Abrams. Abrams’ frequent collaborator Damon Lindelof admitted in an interview in May 2013 that once he began discussing details with Abrams, he ‘just became filled with, like, “Oh my god, I’m going to screw up this thing that I love. It’s so hard to do it exactly right, and I’m just going to say that I’m too busy on
Lost
.” ’ He had mentioned the difficulties he was experiencing
to MTV in 2009: ‘My reverence for Stephen King is now getting in the way of what any good writer would do first when they’re adapting a book, which is take creative license in changing stuff’ and announced his decision in November 2009 to pull out of the project. ‘I’d do anything to see those movies written by someone else,’ he told
USA Today
. ‘My guess is they will get made because they’re so incredible. But not by me.’ (Abrams wasn’t as invested in the project: Lindelof claimed he had to explain the significance of the $19 fee that King charged to the director.)

Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman’s suggestion of a combination of films, TV series and videogames appealed to King. (Full details of what they contemplated can be found in
The Dark Tower Companion
.) Javier Bardem, then best known for his role in the Western
No Country for Old Men
, but now recognized for his bewigged villain in the 007 film
Skyfall
, was in mind to play Roland. All seemed to be progressing steadily until August 2012, when Warner Bros. elected not to move forward with the project. Over the following year, Media Rights Capital offered financing for a single movie with Russell Crowe as Roland, although another ‘Silicon Valley investor’ was potentially interested in the original proposal.

Speaking to
Empire
magazine in mid-September 2013, Ron Howard revealed that ‘We’ve all taken a vow of silence about the progress, the headway, what we think our timetable is, because I don’t think I realized how much media interest there was in the title and how much excitement there was.

‘It’s a fascinating, powerful possibility and even Stephen King acknowledges it’s a tricky adaptation, but to be honest, from a financing side, it’s not a straightforward, four-quadrant, sunny superhero story – it’s dark, it’s horror. That edge is what appeals to me, the complexities of those characters is what appeals to all of us . . . We’re not going to give it a timetable.’

Night Shift
(Doubleday, February 1978)

‘Jerusalem’s Lot’* is an epistolary short story, set in Preacher’s Corners, Maine in 1850; it’s a prequel to
’Salem’s Lot
, and a tale of witchcraft and sacrifice in the eponymous village. ‘Graveyard Shift’ pits rats against workers at a mill. ‘Night Shift’ concerns a group of teenagers who have survived the plague of Captain Trips (linking it loosely to
The Stand
). ‘I am the Doorway’ is a rare SF tale from King about a manned mission to Venus. ‘The Mangler’ is a nasty machine at an industrial Laundromat that demands sacrifices. ‘The Boogeyman’ is haunting Lester Billings, as he explains to his psychiatrist Dr Harper. ‘Gray Matter’ takes over the body of an injured man, while the ‘Battleground’ is where a professional hit man gets his comeuppance.

‘Trucks’ come to life and start killing everyone, and ‘Sometimes They Come Back’ to get revenge from beyond the grave. ‘Strawberry Spring’ marks the time when
Springheel Jack will return, while Stan Norris tries to save his life from crime boss Cressner by walking around ‘The Ledge’. ‘The Lawnmower Man’ has a highly unusual way of cutting the grass – and anyone too near it – and ‘Quitters, Inc.’* has an equally unusual method of keeping people from starting to smoke again. ‘I Know What You Need’ is the claim of social outcast Ed Hamner, Jr. but how is he achieving that? Burt and Vicky meet the ‘Children of the Corn’ in rural Nebraska (and there are further links to
The Stand
here). ‘The Last Rung on the Ladder’* is a meditation on trust and sibling love. ‘The Man Who Loved Flowers’ is not someone you want to meet in a dark alley. ‘One for the Road’ is a brief sequel to
’Salem’s Lot
, and the collection concludes with ‘The Woman in the Room’*, whose fate is at stake.