The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy (37 page)
Read The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy Online
Authors: Bev Vincent
Furth discusses the three kinds of rail transport found in Mid-World: steam trains, such as the one that ran from Gilead to Debaria in
The Wind Through the Keyhole
; subways, such as the ones that used to run on the tracks Roland and Jake are following in this issue; and monorails, such as Blaine and Patricia. The steam trains are the most recent, having been built after the reign of Arthur Eld.
I
SSUE
4: _______________________________________________
T
HERE ARE
O
THER
W
ORLDS
H
AN
T
HESE
Furth discusses the significance of Jake's final words to the nature of his existence and to the structure of the Dark Tower universe. She explains what happens to Jake after his fall, and how Roland's actions later in the series allow the boy to return to Mid-World. Her discussion, preceded by a spoiler warning, encompasses the entire Dark Tower series.
I
SSUE
5: _______________________________________________
G
RASPING THE
I
NFINITE
Furth discusses how passive Roland is in the final installment of the miniseries. Instead of acting, for the most part he is acted upon. She explains how the man in black's tarot reading predicts events in
The Drawing of the Three
and explores the question of why the man in black, who has taunted and tormented the gunslinger for years, should suddenly decide to provide Roland with helpful information.
S
HEEMIE'S
T
ALE
Original release date:
January 2013 through February 2013 (2 issues)
Credits:
â¢
Creative Director and Executive Director:
Stephen King
â¢
Plotting and Consultation:
Robin Furth
â¢
Script:
Peter David
â¢
Color Art:
Richard Isanove
Marvel synopsis: This is the story of one of the more powerful Breakers in Thunderclapâthe mentally handicapped, formerly mute young man known as Sheemie. He possesses the awesome power to shatter the very Beams that hold the Dark Tower in placeâthe fulcrum of existence itself. But Sheemie does not want to destroy the underpinnings of reality. He is in the prison of Devar-Toi, and all he wants is his friendsâhis
ka-tet
to come for him. And one of them is coming for him even now. One of them known as the last gunslinger, Roland Deschain. And all the horrors of Thunderclap will not stand in his way! It's a journey of searching and salvation you won't soon forget.
ARVEL
G
RAPHIC
N
OVELS:
G
UIDES AND
A
LMANACS
T
HE
D
ARK
T
OWER
S
KETCHBOOK
Original release date:
December 13, 2006
Credits:
â¢
Artists:
Jae Lee and Richard Isanove
Two months before the launch of The Gunslinger Born, Marvel released this free sketchbook featuring character designs, penciled pages, commentary and a look at the painting process by which one of Jae Lee's pencils became the final color art.
G
UNSLINGER'S
G
UIDEBOOK
Original release date:
August 8, 2007
Credits:
â¢
Writer:
Anthony Flamini
â¢
Editor and Creative Consultant:
Robin Furth
â¢
Art:
Jae Lee and Richard Isanove
â¢
Series Scripter:
Peter David
The Gunslinger's Guidebook
was released shortly after the final installment in The Gunslinger Born. It details the major characters, concepts and locations that have appeared in the series to date. For each character, the following information is listed: aliases, nicknames, occupation, affiliation, known relatives, education, history, physical description, special skills, equipment. Not all of the information is correctâGabrielle Deschain is said to come from Debaria instead of Arten, for exampleâand other data, like the names of Aileen Ritter's parents, seems fabricated. The book concludes with a one-page Mid-World glossary.
People:
the Great Old Ones, Arthur Eld, gunslingers, Cuthbert Allgood, Cort, Jamie DeCurry, Gabrielle Deschain, Roland Deschain, Steven Deschain, Alain Johns, Aileen Ritter, Vannay, Thomas Whitman, Herk Avery, Eldred Jonas, Clay Reynolds, Roy Depape, Pat Delgado, Susan Delgado, Cordelia Delgado, Rhea of the Cöos, Kimba Rimer, Sheemie Ruiz, Coral Thorin, Hart Thorin, Olive Thorin, Walter o'Dim, John Farson, James Farson, George Latigo.
Places:
Gilead, Hambry, Eyebolt Canyon, End-World.
Things:
The Affiliation, Reaptide Festival, Horsemen's Association, Big Coffin Hunters, Maerlyn's Rainbow.
E
ND
-W
ORLD
A
LMANAC
Original release date:
July 2, 2008
Credits:
â¢
Writer:
Anthony Flamini
â¢
Editor and Creative Consultant:
Robin Furth
â¢
Art:
David Yardin and Val Staples; Jae Lee and Richard Isanove
â¢
Series Scripter:
Peter David
The End-World Almanac
was released shortly after the final installment of The Long Road Home. It begins with a map of End-World, the territory closest to the Dark Tower, which contains some of its most luxurious regions and some of its most horrific terrains. Information from
The Wind Through the Keyhole
placing the western (major) branch of the Whye River far west of any of the Callas wasn't available to the cartographer.
The almanac contains detailed descriptions and illustrations of the Guardians of the Beam, the demon elementals, billy-bumblers, boom-flurries, the low men (aka the
can toi
), mutants, taheen, vampires, Wolves, the Calla region and Calla Bryn Sturgis, Lady Oriza, the Manni, Thunderclap, the Discordia Badlands, Fedic, North Central Positronics, the Dogans, the Devil's Arse, Le Casse Roi Russe, the White Lands of Empathica and the Dark Tower.
Though much of the information is derived from the graphic novels or King's books, some of it is fancifulâlike the temperature observed in Empathica during certain moons.
G
UIDE TO
G
ILEAD
Original release date:
April 8, 2009
Credits:
â¢
Writer:
Anthony Flamini
â¢
Editor and Creative Consultant:
Robin Furth
â¢
Art:
David Yardin and Val Staples; Jae Lee and Richard Isanove
â¢
Series Scripter:
Peter David
Guide to Gilead
was released shortly after the final installment in Treachery. As with the other books of this type, some of the information is incorrect (the name of Gabrielle Deschain's mother, for example) and much of it is fanciful, providing details of places that are mentioned only by name in King's novels and the Marvel comics. The nature of not-men is negated by an incident from later in the Marvel comics.
People:
Stephen Deschain, Robert Allgood, Christopher Johns, Charles Champignon, Chloe and S'Mana, Selena and Morphia, Queen o' Green Days, Raf, Lord Perth, Hax, Grissom's Blue-Faced Barbarians, Kuvian night-soldiers, not-men.
Places:
Barony of New Canaan, Hemphill, Hendrickson, Kingstown, Taunton, Pennilton, Jericho Hill, Debaria, Gilead.
Things:
Gan and Bessa, Buffalo Star, Lesser Demons of the Prim, Nis.
ARVEL
G
RAPHIC
N
OVELS:
T
HE
C
ONTRIBUTORS
I
NTRODUCTION
Like most comics, the Marvel graphic novels are collaborative efforts. Robin Furth writes stories that the pencil artists break down into pages and panels, converting the prose into visual images. Some pencil artists ink their own pages. In other cases, a dedicated inker performs this work. Most of the time, though, the pencil art is passed directly on to Richard Isanove, who digitally colors the work. From Furth's story and the illustrations, Peter David creates a script that includes the dialogue and narrative text that a letterer adds to the colored artwork.
R
OBIN
F
URTH
As the writer for Marvel's Dark Tower graphic novels, Robin Furth has been responsible for translating the story of Roland's early years into scripts from which her collaborators produce the individual installments of the comic. Her comprehensive knowledge of the series has allowed her to expand obscure references from King's text into characters and events. At times she has been forced to compress the story line, condensing most of
Wizard and Glass
down to seven comics, while at other times she has to create stories for times in Roland's life where King's books provide only a loose framework.
Furth is originally from Pennsylvania, but summered in Maine, less than an hour from King's home in Bangor and only a couple of hours from the fictional town of 'Salem's Lot. She moved to England to do a master's degree in English Literature at the University of York, which is where she met her husband, British poet Mark Rutter. They both subsequently enrolled at the University of Maine in Orono, which was King's alma mater. One of her advisers, Burt Hatlen, was one of King's undergraduate advisers from thirty
years earlier, and a close friend of his. When King was looking for a research assistant, Hatlen recommended her.
She continues to freelance for King, is director of the Discordia project for his Web site, and spent time in Hollywood as part of the pre-pre-production team for the Dark Tower films.
The following interview was conducted via e-mail in November 2011.
Q:Â Â Â How did you come to the Dark Tower books and then to the graphic novels?
A:Â Â Â I started working for Steve King back in 2000âthe year after his terrible accident. Steve needed somebody to sort through the thousands of responses he'd received for the
On Writing
story competition. He wanted to help out a grad student, so he contacted Burt Hatlen. Burt knew that I was a writer, that I loved fantasy, horror, and sci-fi and that I was a fan of Steve's work, so he recommended me for the job. That original project lasted about a month. I did some of my work from home, some from the King office, but most of my contact with Steve at that point was through e-mail. (Most of my work was with Steve's assistant, the wonderful Marsha DeFilippo.)
At the end of that particular assignment, I went into the office to pick up my final paycheck and met Steve King himself. I was really tongue-tied, but Steve was very relaxed and kind and asked me if I wanted more work. He was about to return to the Dark Tower series and needed someone to write up lists of characters and places and record the pages on which they could be found. (He wanted to be able to double-check for plot and character continuityâno small job for such a large body of work.) Anyway, when Steve asked whether I was interested in the job, I said yes. (Of course!)
Not only did I create a huge dictionary of characters and places and plot twists, but I recorded Mid-World games, Mid-World languages, Mid-World diseases, and pretty much everything else I could think of. I drew a door labeled
THE AUTHOR
, which was supposed to help Steve reenter Mid-World. I placed the door at the front of the manuscript; then I bound the whole thing in black and taped a key to the front. (The key was so that Steve could open the door.) I wasn't certain how Steve would react to my wild enthusiasm, but he liked it enough to ask whether I wanted to continue working
with his manuscripts. After that, I received draft chapters as Steve wrote them, so that I could continue building my Dark Tower Concordance. I've been lucky enough to live in Mid-World ever since.
The collaboration between Stephen King and Marvel Comics really began when Joe Quesada, Marvel's editor-in-chief, mentioned at a comic book convention that he really wanted to work with Stephen King. Word eventually made it back to King's office, and Chuck Verrill (Steve's editor and agent) contacted Marvel. After many discussions, everyone decided that the best book to adapt would be
Wizard and Glass,
since it told the story of Roland's adventures in Hambry, when he and his friends were fourteen years old.
I was there at the original meeting between Steve, Chuck Verrill, and Marvel via phone link. I'd spent so long in the Dark Tower universe that Steve thought it would be a good idea to have me on board for the Marvel project. I'd never worked in comics before, but I loved graphic novels and illustrated books, so I was excited about the whole thing. I also wanted to see Roland and his friends take on that extra dimensionâto have faces and bodies that moved through space. As you can imagine, my initial learning curve was
incredibly
steep. But luckily for me, I was working with a terrific team of extremely experienced comic book folks. Peter David, Jae Lee, Richard Isanove, Ralph Macchio, and all the other editors and artists who have worked on the series, have been great. I've learned a tremendous amount from all of them.
Q:Â Â Â Your credit on the Marvel graphic novels reads “Plotting and Consultation.” What does that mean?
A:Â Â Â As a consultant, I answer questions about all things Mid-World, from clothing to gun design to landscape and religion. I also answer questions about Roland's history, or the history of the many other characters you meet in the series.
Plotting is exactly what you'd guess. It means creating the stories that are then illustrated by the artists and scripted by Peter David. Basically, for each new arc, I write a detailed story. (We call this story the story arc or the outline.) I write the arc as one flowing piece, almost like a short novella. I make sure that it is broken down into the correct number of issues/comics. I also break each individual issue into scenes. (I often break the scenes down
further into a series of numbered events, which the artist can use as possible panel breaks, but ultimately I always leave the panel breaks/page designs up to the artist, since that is his specialty!)
In my story arcs, the individual issues work like chapters in a book. Reading one of my story arcs is (I hope at least) a little like reading the descriptive breakdown of a film. As I said, each issue is broken into consecutive scenes, one following from the other, and the issue itself always ends with a cliffhanger. The exception is the final comic book of an arc, which must have a sense of closure.
When I'm writing, I make sure that everything in a scene is described in great detail, so that we can remain consistent with Stephen King's world. I usually describe what characters are discussing in any particular panel. Sometimes I include placeholder dialogue so that the artist knows how to illustrate the panels and pages, but the scripts really are Peter David's creation. He does a fantastic job, and I've learned a tremendous amount about dialogue and scripting from him. He is a terrific writer.