STEPHEN KING's "The Dark Tower," a magnum opus about a haunted gunslinger on a quest for a mysterious spire, stretched out over 22 years, seven novels and a staggering 4,272 pages of eerie adventure.
But here's the really spooky thing: King fans want more.
Now they're about to get it, although this time around King is taking his readership to a new place that might scare some of them off. "The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born," the Marvel Comics series, launches next week, and more than 100 retailers nationwide are opening their stores for midnight release parties. Despite that intense interest, King knows he will have to persuade many of his longtime readers that comics are now more than juvenilia.
"These comics aren't junk food; they're more like delicacies," King said. "Sushi for the mind, if you like. You have to teach yourself how to read 'adult comics,' which are actually comic/novel hybrids.... and even then you have to give yourself to the experience, which means accepting the idea that you'll need to work a bit as you do with any good novel."
As with his novels, King's move into comics is fraught with subplots. One big one: "The Dark Tower" famously finished with a fizzle in 2004 -- many fans complained of a letdown with the saga's final pages and the fuzzy fate of its hero, Roland Deschain, the nomadic hero armed with Winchester revolvers in the face of mutants and magic.
The new "Dark Tower" project provides a chance for King "to make it right," noted Jud Meyers, co-owner of Earth-2 Comics in Sherman Oaks, one of the retailers that will be open Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning to sell the comic.
"With the last novel's ending, there really was a sense of 'You must be kidding,' so that certainly adds to the anticipation for the comics," Meyers said. "This is Stephen King's first dip into this pop-culture medium, and there's a lot of excitement. You haven't seen anything like this in comics, so we're getting this 'Harry Potter'-style event.
"Absolutely, we will be selling to people that don't usually buy comics. King is part of wave of writers from outside comics who are coming into the scene now, and that's very exciting."
Novelists, filmmakers and television writers have been increasingly turning to comics not only as a moonlighting lark (among them "Clerks" director Kevin Smith, bestselling novelist Brad Meltzer, director and BET President Reginald Hudlin and screenwriters such as Miles Millar and John Ridley) but also to take care of unfinished business.
