… A couple of months ago, I stated that every so often there would be a column that wasn’t about comics, as such (this particular subject has now got solid links to comics). The main reason for this is if I don’t write about some of the other interests I have, I will go mad and probably axe murder someone in your family. So while I sit around forlornly waiting for more of my non-existent audience to take part in my Most Important Comics poll, you can put up with some other shit from me for a while.

      For my sins, I have been a collector of Stephen King books and stories since about 1980. While I don’t even consider him to be the best horror writer – that accolade would fall to Peter Straub – I did understand that he gave me another collectible outlet other than comics or records.

      Over the course of this column, I want to finally get something off my chest, even if it ends up just sounding like a disgruntled fan. But I’m inclined to think that anyone who has followed King’s career for a number of years might feel the same way.

      I did warn you…

The Labyrinth that became a Theme Park…

It doesn’t take a genius to understand that Stephen King, the foremost successful writer of horror novels, etc., of his and all generations, wanted to leave his mark like the greats. He wanted a shared universe and a location to tell and link his stories, however tenuous, like HP Lovecraft; he wanted to tell an epic tale like Tolkien and he wanted it to be, above all, an American fable, incorporating things which he felt epitomised the USA.

      In 1982, the first part of this epic was published by Donald M. Grant. It was called The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger and it was essentially a western set in a strange, yet oddly familiar landscape. The first part of what would become one of his most controversial stories – albeit for all the wrong reasons – yet the first part is low key, seems overly wordy for a short book and I believe only really won the constant readers over because of the blatant similarity of this deserted land to that of The Stand. The references are littered throughout the book and immediately King fans with imaginations put Roland – the gunslinger – In the far-flung future of a once technologically advanced civilisation that had fallen heavily and been almost wiped out.

      So when the next instalment came out 5 years later, The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three proved to be something of a disappointment. It was greedily snapped up by collectors, as was the first book, and further paperback printings of both editions were needed. The problem with the second book is that it’s all over the place from almost the opening lines. The entire feel of the book is jarringly different from its prequel or sequels – neither Eddie Dean nor Odetta Holmes/Susannah Dean are likeable characters and the book is only really saved by the creation of a paradox, when Roland inhabits the body of the man who will kill Jake Chambers in his own reality. He prevents Jake from dying, thus coming to Roland’s reality and dying again, therefore creating a hiccup in the space time continuum (which isn’t thoroughly explained until a later book).

      There were enough tantalising glimpses of familiar King trademarks for the book to just about continue with the idea that Roland inhabits a post-Stand world, plus it began to do more than hint that there are multiple realities. This theme was continued in my personal favourite King novel, Insomnia, which I still fervently believe was an abridged version of the entire concept of the Dark Tower books. While other novels of his had touched on the concept of the Dark Tower and not as frequently, the Crimson King, Insomnia tackled that concept head-on and for about ten years, I believe it was the most essential Dark Tower clue book. I would have staked my life on King bringing back Insomnia’s main protagonist, Ralph Roberts, on another level of reality or even at the final battle with the Crimson King, when Roland would be joined by all the fallen who stood against the Crimson King. But, of course, that didn’t happen. Despite books like Hearts in Atlantis and Black House, the sequel to The Talisman, further adding to the mystery, in the general tone/theme that King had been adhering to, they would all get washed (or maybe, smashed) away. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

      Four years after the second book, The Dark Tower: The Wastelands came out and with this no one needed convincing; this had to be the world of The Stand but thousands, maybe millions of years into the future. It was also quite obvious that reality was beginning to break down – time and distance no longer seemed to have the same rules applied to them. We started to see the first hints that the barriers between worlds are breaking down. The book was patchy in places, but overall it gave you the feeling of the best was yet to come.

      1997 saw the release of the book that would really revolutionise the way the public looked at The Dark Tower. Despite essentially being another western, it was book-ended with a prologue that told the epilogue to The Wastelands and an epilogue that was the beginning of the last part of their quest. This is the book placed the ka-tet in a world very similar to that of The Stand and reintroduced Randall Flagg into the King universe.

      Flagg was the antagonist in The Stand and he also appeared as main villain in King’s all-age fantasy novel Eye of the Dragon (also linked to The Dark Tower). This was the clearest proof that King’s post-apocalyptic novel was the main cornerstone of the universe Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Oy and Jake inhabited. Wizard and Glass was so well done that King fans were now clamouring for the conclusion, which they knew would be 7 books long. King then announced that he was going to finish the series by writing the last three books back-to-back; he dropped hints that Father Callahan, the disgraced priest from Salem’s Lot would appear, thus bringing that book into the little sub-universe he had created and most importantly for this article, he said book five would probably be called… The Crawling Shadow and that the ka-tet would be travelling to the town of Thunderclap, a place where the locals are terrorised at night by strange creatures – vampires. If anything was going to set pulses racing among aficionados it was another piece of this fantastic multi-levelled jigsaw King was weaving.

      Then he got hit by a drunk in a swerving van and the worlds changed completely…

      There can be no denying that King had something of a Dark Tower epiphany while laying in a hospital bed; one that took the story away from its original roots and placed it in a metaphysical world that King seemed so impelled to create he did something I believe was unforgivable for any writer, especially one who had attracted so many readers through the one idea. He rewrote his own history and subsequently ‘tinkered’ with the first four Dark Tower books.

      When I say rewrote, that’s hardly a fair summation. What he did was completely dissect The Gunslinger, throwing out every single reference to a post-apocalyptic world resembling The Stand; and in came more of the Gilead, ka, khef and tet bollocks. I read the new ‘revised’ version with puzzlement and eventually horror when it became clear that the story was going to change so drastically, all the elements that drew me to this epic in the first place were being replaced by some cod-history of Roland’s world and his quest. I wouldn’t even contemplate buying the new versions of Drawing of the Three and The Wastelands, but I have been told that they to have had The Stand expunged from them, replaced by more Gilead, Roland, thinnies and more of the new revised plot.

      Apparently, Wizard & Glass only had a few lines altered in further printings, but enough to put to rest the Stand theory just as effectively as it cemented it originally.

      The Crawling Shadow never appeared, or was maybe never even finished. King told of how Father Callahan the excommunicated priest from ‘Salem’s Lot finds himself in a village plagued by night monsters, plunging him back into a world not dissimilar to the one he left, while all the time searching for a way to redeem himself. Roland’s Ka-tet arrives, saves the village and liberating Callahan. Every other reference I have or I have seen to The Crawling Shadow has never once mentioned that King himself would appear in his own story and from the plot hints given away, one can only assume that The Wolves of Calla was a virtual rewrite and boy was it rubbish - even down to Doctor Doom like raiders and other pop culture references. For any constant reader of the original four books, this must have felt like they’d wandered into alternative alternate reality, because all the driving elements of the narrative of the first four parts had disappeared, replaced by magic eight balls, liniment and mystics.

      But if Wolves was bad, then Song for Susannah was probably one of the lowest points. At least the previous 5 books told a story, this just acted as a bridge to the final part; it had no real story save Susannah’s childbirth and a way to shoehorn the low men in yellow coats into the proceedings. For readers who had been puzzled by the sudden change in Wolves, then Song must have been really enigmatic. It re-introduced the place visited by Jack Sawyer and the hairy bikers in Black House, but again, it was subtly different, further adding to the confusion.

      The final part offered us something special; the complete and utter destruction of a once grand idea, reduced to nothing more than a predictable mess, with hackneyed shoe-horning of characters into it. Virtually everything hinted at in books such as Insomnia, Black House and even the short story Everything’s Eventual was rehashed; only Hearts in Atlantis’ Low Men in Yellow Coats seemed to have any real bearing on the conclusion. And don’t get me started on Patrick Danville… Well, actually, let’s… Patrick Danville was the cornerstone of the entire survival of existence. His life had to be saved, because 18 years in his future he would die saving the life of someone even more important – more important that Hitler, Churchill, Genghis Khan and Caesar all rolled into one. The Patrick Danville that appears in the Dark Tower isn’t any of these things and the revision pisses all over the memory and legacy of the classic Insomnia.

      I have no idea what compelled King to shit on the goodwill of many of his loyal fans, but by changing direction so hugely he had to rewrite the existing books, it did nothing more than make him more money; oh and lose him most of his standing amongst those of us who desperately wanted the story to have been concluded the way he had originally envisaged it. That aint gonna happen, constant reader.

      Sadly, King didn’t just cop out with the ending of his saga, he also left it open for a sequel. It was weak, predictable ending that was punctuated with the destinies of his ka-tet. He invented characters that you actually did grow to like and then despatched then in almost casual manners.

      Ironically, King’s first major novel after completing the Dark Tower series was Cell which was the first book he’d written, that I can remember, which had absolutely no bearing on anything else in his once uniquely shared universe. It was also probably the biggest piece of shit he had even written, probably even worse than The Dark Tower 5, 6 & 7 and the thing that made it worse was that King had obliterated and expunged The Stand from the Dark Tower myth, so he decided to rewrite that blockbuster novel in Cell, weighing in at around 400 pages it started promisingly then deteriorated into a comical homage to his original post-apocalyptic novel, even down to the sensible, thoroughly likeable major character being needlessly killed two-thirds of the way through. The book was littered with spelling errors and even bad grammar; it looked like Chuck Verrill, King’s long-time editor, had a really bad day at the office with this one, or he decided that King didn’t need editing.

      The Dark Tower, however awful it ended up being, is now almost an industry unto itself; the Marvel comics, the concordances, the dissections, the merchandising, the inevitable film or television series and even a university course due to appear on schedules next year; all are either out there already or waiting in the wings. I find it quite remarkable that a man who dedicated years of his life to one particular idea can just choose to change it and yet there doesn’t seem to be a dissenting voice out there, not even in the wastelands. Am I the only person who thinks this became a commercial enterprise with no respect for the long lasting fans? King told the story of how an old woman dying of cancer had written to him asking for the ending of the saga because she wouldn’t live long enough to read it. King said he couldn’t because he wasn’t sure how it ended. But he clearly had different ideas before eating Maine mud.

      Interestingly, King’s new novel Duma Key is possibly the best thing he’s written for 10 years. It dispenses with all his baggage and tells an interesting ghost story with many of his trademark character studies. It’s likely to be 2010 before we see another novel from him and on current hit rate, it’s unlikely that it will push any buttons for me. I feel as though King has cheated me out of the story he sucked me in with and for that I doubt I will ever forgive him. Not that he gives a flying fuck, but hey, like I give one either, now.

… Mushrooms are always a favourite of mine. I’m sure that come October you will be as fascinated with them as I am. I know, they’re not comics, but why should I bother to write about comics? Next week, I was hoping to give you the results of the Most Important Comics poll, but only three people bothered to contribute, which doesn’t surprise me and is primarily the reason I’m going to write more about things that aren’t comics.

Phil Hall