FLEEING ACROSS THE DESERTThe oft-rumored announcement of Stephen King writing for Marvel Comics has been
offically confirmed today, and it's exciting news for
Dark Tower fans: a new prequel (and perhaps prequels) to King's epic, illustrated by the phenomenal Jae Lee. Sounds like a win-win situation for everybody: the readers get the pairing of a writer and artist who should do great work together, and Marvel will most likely get an influx of new readers itching for more Roland adventures. But look a little closer at the announcement and at
Newsarama's interview with Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada, and a few troubling signs emerge.
The first,
as Jog noted, is that King may not actually be writing this series. Spake Quesada:
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. He was telling about parts where Roland would go and do this and such, and then meet the villain here, and on and on. Literally, in ten minutes, he rattled off enough stories 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. It was amazing to watch, and basically, hear Stephen King tell us original stories that no one, before then had ever heard before....After he told the stories, Robin [Furth, continuity cop for the
Dark Tower series]
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. From there, Jae and Richard Isanove will be collaborating on it to produce the look that they’re famous for when they get together. And of course Mr. King was involved each step of the way. And the kicker:
Right now, we’re concentrating on getting the visual rendering of the story finalized. The actual scripting will be the finishing touch.
We can only assume (or hope) that that final scripting will be done by King himself, or else Marvel might find themselves with a whole lot of disgruntled fans who came for a new work by the man himself but found instead someone else's interpretation of a ten-minute session of "And then Roland did this, and then he did this, and then..." Without his words, what's the point? Might as well go read a
Star Wars novel.
And looking at it from a less commercial standpoint, part of the appeal for
Dark Tower fans who are also comics readers, like myself, is seeing how King tackles the challenges of a new medium. Look at the preview pages included in both of the articles linked above--those are Quesada's interpretation of a single sentence from King's book: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." (Four pages for a sentence! And people say Bendis is decompressed.) While I certainly think it works, I'd much rather see how King himself would handle it. Would it be the same? Would he stretch it out even longer? Would it be one panel? Questions like that might be of little interest to the hypothetical reader who is merely hungry for continuing Roland adventures, but for those who like to examine the telling as well as devour the story, this can't help but seem like a missed opportunity.
The second interesting and/or troubling thing about the announcement is the art. I think Jae Lee is a brilliant artist, who has done great work in the past and is constantly pushing himself, and of Marvel's entire stable of artists his is the sensibility most suited to collaborating with King. That said, though, what I enjoy most about his work is his use of ink, the way he seems to build everything on the page out of shadows, and the contrast between the open spaces and the precise swatches of black. This collaboration with digital painter Richard Isanove, however, robs his work of that element. Lee provides only pencils; the shadows are no longer pure black. Though Isanove gives the art a golden Hollywood sheen, it is missing the crispness and power that Lee usually achieves.
The presence of Isanove on the creative team also points to Marvel's hopes for this project, and illustrates how they view comics' place in the larger realm of pop culture. He is their go-to colorist for "prestige" projects, the kind that might attract readers beyond the usual fanboys (i.e. the kind of people who complain about stuff like Jae Lee not inking his own work). He worked with artist Andy Kubert on
Wolverine: Origin and
1602, written by Neil Gaiman, Comics' Most Famous Writer. There's no denying that, in tandem with a talented penciller, Isanove can produce some gorgeous images; but so much of the resulting work is lifeless, almost fuzzy and out of focus. It's the comic-book equivalent of Vaseline on the lens. It gives the art an aura of false prestige or class that it neither warrants nor needs. It's a way of saying to the general public "This isn't comics; this is art. This is no children's pamphlet; this is for discerning adults like you. Just look at how everything is sepia-toned to remind you of classy things." And certainly, a comics neophyte will open
Origin or
1602 and say "Wow, I didn't know comics could look like this;" the trouble is, it's a way of making comics look "pretty" without actually considering what kind of art would best suit the story. Combine this painterly look with Marvel's new branding for the project--"Graphic Fiction"--and it begins to look like Marvel is desperately hoping to convince readers that what they're about to buy isn't comics at all, no sir. This is serious business.
