More on Stephen King at Marvel.
Newsarama, one of the big comic news sites, recently did an interview with Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, and he went into some depth regarding the new Stephen King deal. An excerpt:
NRAMA: Let’s go back to how it came to be the Dark Tower in the first place – you’d said that his original idea when he came in was that he wanted to tell Dark Tower stories, but how did it work out to the particular stories he’ll be telling? Was there back and forth on that once the deal was done, or did he come in with a handful of stories ready to go?
JQ: First off, I have to say that Dan Buckley not only structured this deal and ensured its smooth rollout, but also delivered one of the most ambitious publicity/marketing/media plans that Marvel has ever undertaken in regards to a comic book launch. Ultimately, I am confident it will all converge in the creation of an exceptional piece of graphic fiction for Mr. King, his fans, and comic-dom at large.
When Mr. King came to the offices – and yes, I totally fan-boyed out on him, we had a meeting to discuss story ideas, and during that, he started thinking about what kinds of Dark Tower stories he could tell, and where things were left untouched. There were a few of us from Marvel, Mr. King, his agent, and on the phone was Robin Furth. Robin is pretty much the keeper of the Grail when it comes to The Dark Tower – in comic terms, she’s the continuity cop for the series, and has written the official Concordances on the series, which track all the characters, the lands, the history – everything.
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.
Of course, on the phone, you could hear Robin typing madly, trying to keep up.
NRAMA: So – mixing this with the creative process – how does the string of stories become what, I presume, will be several projects?
JQ: Right – there will be more than one. 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. 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.
NRAMA: And then the final scripting?
JQ: Right now, we’re concentrating on getting the visual rendering of the story finalized. The actual scripting will be the finishing touch.
So that illuminates just how much of this project is actually written by Mr. King. The full article is right over here.
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