Lilja's Library

by Hans-Ake Lilja

  Lilja: It’s very nice to see the different covers because, as far as I have seen, they are very different from each other.

  Joe Quesada: Yeah. The other thing is that we have so many artists. So many of our top artists at Marvel are such huge fans of Stephen King and The Dark Tower that they were all a bit jealous, and we figured, here is a chance to get a bunch of them to do some covers as well.

  Lilja: You are also releasing something called Gunslinger’s Guidebook.

  Joe Quesada: Right.

  Lilja: Can you tell me what that is?

  Joe Quesada: It’s particularly for the fans who are not really aware of The Dark Tower, who are learning about it for the first time. It’s just a guidebook that shows you who the characters are, the world of The Dark Tower, just more merging into the world.

  Lilja: Is it something like Robin’s The Dark Tower Concordance?

  Joe Quesada: Yeah, it’s very similar to that, only with significantly more illustrations.

  Lilja: Are you going to do more special issues like the Guidebook?

  Joe Quesada: Again, I’m not one hundred percent sure. I think we take it one step at a time and see how it goes.

  Lilja: Also, at the last Comic-Con you mentioned that you might try The Stand as a comic.

  Joe Quesada: That was actually Mr. King. He said, “You know, I’m having fun with these guys. Let’s do The Stand.” He said it in the middle of the panel and the crowd got crazy.

  Lilja: Is there any truth to it or is it just something he said?

  Joe Quesada: As far as he’s concerned it’s the truth, and when he said it to me I’m like, “Let’s go! If you wanna do it, let’s go.” You know I love working with Stephen King and I love the guy, he is a great guy. It’s a joy hanging out with him.

  Lilja: Do you think you can convince him to do something original for you, something that hasn’t been published before?

  Joe Quesada: You know, that is putting the cart way before the horse. We have one issue of The Dark Tower now, he’s talking about possibly doing The Stand. I’m happy with what we’re getting but believe me, if he ever wanted to write or release a story, an original story as a comic book first, I don’t think we would have a problem with that. [laugh]

  Lilja: So you’re not gonna say “No”? [laugh]

  Joe Quesada: No! [laugh]

  Lilja: OK, it was very nice talking to you. Can you leave me with any scoop?

  Joe Quesada: I will say this. One of the things I found most fascinating was at our first meeting with Mr. King. Again, I have sat across the table from many of the best writers in the business, but there was something about Mr. King, when he started talking stories and he was creating some material for The Dark Tower, he sort of just sat there, he sort of looked up at the ceiling and it was almost as if the ideas were floating in front of him and he was plucking them out of mid-air. And he just sat there and recited a story for us that he just made up on the spot. And it had the structure of a middle, beginning and end, a satisfying end. He sat there and was like, “Is that good?” and we’re like, “Yeah!” I have never seen anyone do anything like that, I mean he was really…it was magical. It’s the only way I can describe it. Absolutely magical.

  Lilja: Yeah, he is very talented.

  Joe Quesada: I would think that is an understatement. [laugh]

  Lilja: Yeah. [laugh] OK, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

  Joe Quesada: Thanks man, take care.

  ****

  Ralph Macchio

  Posted: April 17, 2007

  Lilja: Thanks for calling; I’m glad you wanted to do this interview.

  Ralph Macchio: Sure, I read your review and I was very, very happy with it. We really wanted to make each issue better than the last one and we didn’t want to show everything with the first issue and go, “OK, that’s it. Now, from here on it’s routine stuff.” We wanted to make each issue a real surprise.

  Lilja: Yeah, you definitely did that.

  Ralph Macchio: Thank you.

  Lilja: I really liked the illustrations of the Big Coffin Hunters.

  Ralph Macchio: Yeah, Jae did a superb job on that.

  Lilja: Yeah, they where really nice. And the Crimson King.

  Ralph Macchio: Yes.

  Lilja: Actually everyone looks terrific.

  Ralph Macchio: Yeah, it took him a long time…those are second- and third-generation versions of the pages. The first time around he made them look one way and then he just went back and said, “No, wasn’t good enough,” and he redid them to make them what they are.

  Lilja: I’m not that big of a comic reader, actually, but I have never seen anything like this. I was just blown away by it.

  Ralph Macchio: Thank you. Well, we keep trying to improve and we also keep trying to impress you with every single issue.

  Lilja: The Dark Tower fans are hard to impress.

  Ralph Macchio: I’m sure they are, but we knew that at the very beginning, and the comic book fans are really the same because they have seen a lot of stuff, and you do have to be bold enough to keep looking for new ways to impress them and please them. And that’s all you can do. You can’t be intimidated by it.

  Lilja: What kind of reactions have you gotten? The second issue is released tomorrow, right?

  Ralph Macchio: Yes. We got advance copies and the book looks terrific. The reaction we’ve gotten so far is very, very positive. We haven’t really heard anything negative about it. Everyone seems to be very pleased. I understand the first issue may have already sold out, so that’s good too.

  Lilja: That’s very good.

  Ralph Macchio: Very, very good news. There haven’t been many negatives about it. We also know that in addition to pleasing The Dark Tower fans we have to please Stephen King, we have to please Robin, who is also involved in the process. And Chuck Verrill. And so far we seem to be doing that. That is extremely important to us.

  Lilja: Have you gotten any reaction from readers who haven’t read the books before they read the comics?

  Ralph Macchio: I’m sure there has been but I am not familiar with that. What we have heard, in general, from the canvassing that was done of comic stores after this first issue was released at the midnight showing was that many people who were not familiar with the books picked up the comic and have decided to give it a try, so it does seem that we’re gonna get some crossover audience from the comics to the books as well as from the books to the comics, and that’s nice.

  Lilja: It seems that you picked the right story to begin with. It doesn’t really demand that much prior knowledge.

  Ralph Macchio: That’s true.

  Lilja: I guess that’s why you picked that one to start with?

  Ralph Macchio: You know, that is really tough to say. I’m not sure if that went into the decision or not. I know initially when we had the big round-table discussion with Stephen King and Robin Furth that we had talked about going back to Roland’s early days. I’m not sure if it was for issues of clarity or just because at some point it just seemed that it was a good place to start the story, and I think that had a lot to do with it. You know, to be able to follow him from when he is just getting his guns and then take him on through up to the battle of Jericho Hill. It just seems to me, and to the rest of us, I think, a nice cycle of stories to go through because it allows us the opportunity to pick up the important material from Wizard and Glass, and elsewhere, but then also to do the original stuff and bring in incidents that are not in the book and that we’ll be able to conceive of here and put that in as well, so it’s really a nice combination of things.

  We had a problem at the beginning with how to phrase it. You know, that’s something…these are not really adaptations. We are taking the material from Wizard and Glass and using it as kind of our foundation, but we are going off on our own to explore Roland and his worlds, and those are not adapted. I mean, they will certainly have Stephen King’s creative involvement from the very beginning and he will be the guy setting
the tone for it. And we’ll also be going off in our own directions with him guiding us, saying, you know, “Let’s do this and let’s do that and see where this leads us.” So, these are not really strict adaptations. They take new material and intermix it with what’s already in some of the books.

  Lilja: But the first story arc is pretty much gonna be from Wizard and Glass?

  Ralph Macchio: Largely within Wizard and Glass, yes.

  Lilja: Are you nervous about the second one, where you’re going off on your own?

  Ralph Macchio: No, no, no, because as long as Stephen is involved at a very early stage of it and, of course, as long as Robin is there as the touchstone…no, I’m perfectly confident. As I say, we got the guidance from the master and because we have started this thing well in advance, both the second and third story arcs have already been plotted out.

  So, while I don’t want to say anything about it—I think that would be unfair to the readers and it would also spoil the surprise—I think we’ll need to keep that close to our vest. What I can say is that the second and third arcs have both been written up, discussed with Stephen and gone through Robin. We’re ahead of the game and that’s something we’ve been able to do because we got this project started well in advance.

  Lilja: The first issue got somewhat delayed, right?

  Ralph Macchio: Yes. I can’t really speak to that exactly except that I believe there was some kind of publishing situation. We didn’t want our publishing schedule for the comic to interfere in any way with anything else being published that Stephen had written. We didn’t want there to be any conflict of interest or anything like that, so that may have involved delaying it a bit, which was certainly not a problem. It gave us more time to work on it, to hound it, to refine it and perfect it.

  Lilja: I remember reading somewhere that Jae said he could have the time to go back and change small details.

  Ralph Macchio: Yes, he did, and as I said, this is particularly true with issue two, where we introduced Walter O’Dim, or Marten Broadcloak as he is already known, and also the Crimson King and the Big Coffin Hunters. It was important that the first impressions of these characters really, really stick in your mind, and Jae wanted to make sure that they were definitive looks for them visually, so he went back after he’d done the first versions and felt they could be stronger, went back and did a second and third version, and what you see in print is what we got.

  Lilja: Is there any chance you’re gonna let the fans see the early stages of the characters?

  Ralph Macchio: I believe, because we have told Jae to hold on to everything, that when we do the omnibus versions, when we do the hardcover, in all the different formats that this is going to be repackaged in…every scrap of material, you can be sure, will see print.

  Lilja: That is very nice to hear. I know that you’re also releasing the issues with different covers?

  Ralph Macchio: Yes, we do have alternative covers, a number of them, and will probably continue that all the way through. It gives people a little collector’s item sort of thing. We like it and also we have been able to go get some really top talents to work on some of the other covers. So, you get a chance to see what Joe Quesada’s version of it looks like as well as others. We just got another one in today. It’s by Leinil Yu.

  Lilja: Is that for issue 3?

  Ralph Macchio: Yes, it’s for issue 3. It has Roland as a big foreground figure pulling his guns out of the holster. It’s beautiful, very impressive. So we have a variety of people doing covers. They are nice collector’s items—gives everybody a sense really that they’re getting their own version of the comic, so that works out well for everybody.

  Lilja: How does that work? Do you invite other people to choose an illustration from Jae’s or do they do their own?

  Ralph Macchio: They do their own. And sometimes they will approach us about it. In other instances we approach them. It can go either way. If we hear from a big name guy, “Hey, I understand you do alternative covers of The Dark Tower and I’d like to do one,” we would be crazy to turn whoever it is down so…but then we also have our own list of people that we wanna go to and say, “Why don’t you give this a shot for us?”

  Lilja: Is it usual in the comic business to do a lot of different covers?

  Ralph Macchio: It has been over the last ten or fifteen years. It’s become kind of a staple of doing comics. When you get a big project you like to do alternative covers because, again, as I say, it’s something that gives the reader the sense that he’s getting kind of his own copy, he gets a chance to not only get the main copy with that cover on it, but he also gets a chance to get variant editions. I know this has just been done recently on the Eternals book and where John Romita, Jr. has done all of the mainstream covers, but then Nick Lowe the editor has gotten a variety of variant covers on that as well.

  Lilja: Were you ever worried that the fans might think it was a way for you to get more money out of this? I mean, a lot of fans feel they have to have everything, even if they really can’t afford it. They are such collectors that they are just gonna buy everything that is published.

  Ralph Macchio: Sure, we are aware. This is a publishing company, and we are aware there is a collector’s mentality and that there are people who wanna collect every version of it, but at the same time nobody forces them to. We can only put it out there. If the demand is there the readers will pick it up. It’s not like we say, “You know you got to have this.” It’s really their decision. But at the same time this is a publishing company and like any business you’d like to maximize your profit if you have the right vehicle for that.

  Lilja: This is going to be a lot of issues. If I’m correct there are going to be five story arcs and about thirty issues in total.

  Ralph Macchio: That’s about right.

  Lilja: Are you gonna release them back-to-back or is there going to be a time lag?

  Ralph Macchio: There is gonna be some time lag.

  Lilja: Between the different arcs?

  Ralph Macchio: Between the different arcs, yes. It gives us a little chance to recharge because this is such a work-intensive project, as you can imagine. From the writing, the coloring, the penciling, all that. Really, our creative staff needs a little time to just sit back, collect their thoughts, recharge their batteries and jump back into it. And it also has other publishing reasons too, because you need to see how well things are doing, you want to keep them out there for a while, you want to take that first arc, begin repackaging it in a different format and at the same time hold up on the second and third arc for a little bit and again, that also works to our advantage, gives the creative team a time to just sit back and collect their thoughts again.

  Lilja: So, it’ll be something like one story arc a year?

  Ralph Macchio: No, no, I don’t think so. I don’t think there will be any kind of break like that. I imagine there will be a few months in between. But that is just my speculation. I don’t know, and I don’t know if anyone knows exactly. I know we have simply talked about there being a time lag between them, but I don’t believe there will only be one story arc a year.

  Lilja: That’s nice to hear.

  Ralph Macchio: Oh, yeah. Look, we want to get the stuff out there too.

  Lilja: I read on the Net that some of the fans were a bit disappointed that they wouldn’t get to see characters like Eddie and Susannah or Oy in the comic. Did you ever plan to do one story arc that took place a little bit further into the story so you could include those characters?

  Ralph Macchio: We’re kind of growing this thing organically and if it seems to work we certainly will. We do envision this as a long-term thing, so at this point we have tried to pinpoint the areas that we really want to tell right now. These are the stories we think are important and if it doesn’t work with having Eddie or Susannah in there then it just doesn’t. When you think of it, The Dark Tower encompasses dozens and dozens of characters and everyone has their favorite. We have to pick and choose;
it’s a huge publishing undertaking. Those seven books are about three feet in height if you put them on top of each other [laugh] and there are many, many characters in there. I have some that I would like to see too and hopefully over time we will get to them, but if they don’t fit in the first two or three arcs, that’s the way it goes. We’re not gonna shoehorn them in just to show them.

  Lilja: No, and you don’t want too big of a leap between arcs, right?

  Ralph Macchio: Of course not.

  Lilja: So, what is your role in this? Are you working with Robin on the scripts?

  Ralph Macchio: Yes, as the editor I really oversee the entire project. The art, the coloring, the whole thing: what an editor does on any other book. This is a bit different though because you’re dealing with an outside force in that you do have Stephen King at the top of the pyramid, which is just where he should be. We want his approval and approbation and his guidance every step of the way, and he gives that.

  What happens, and again, you may find my statement in variance from Robin’s because we may all have a little sense of the creative process, but the way I recall our working is that Stephen really sets the tone with directions of the story line at the very top, and then he and Robin will discuss the framework and the outline. Robin then talks to me and the people I work with here at my end. The other editors, John Barber and Nicole Boose, and I then discuss with Robin the arc, the whole story arc. Then Robin goes off and she writes up the arc, each individual issue, all collected as a seven-issue arc, six-issue arc, or whatever. She then sends that arc in and John, Nicole and myself go through it and we get back to her with critiques and comments and then she and I will discuss those critiques and comments and she will go back and rework whatever it is that we have agreed upon that needs to be reworked, sequenced, added to, a climax put at the end of an issue that wasn’t there before or things moved around, and that’s really the creative process.