Lilja's Library

by Hans-Ake Lilja

  But as I said, a lot of it is organic. For example: between issue six and seven something had popped into Jae Lee’s head. He was looking at issue six and he was looking at the actual outline and he called me up and said, “You know, there seems to be something about issue six that just seems to kind of tell the events of issue seven, and if you’re familiar with the books you know this is exactly how it’s gonna happen,” and I said, “You know, Jae, that is a point we hadn’t considered. Why don’t you talk to Robin and Peter David about this and if you guys come up with some workable solution to it, let’s go with it.” So then, absent me, Robin, Peter David and Jae all discussed the ending of six and all of issue seven. Basically they reformulated it and it worked in a much better way because Jae had hit upon something that just hadn’t occurred to any of us. We were all very close to it and I guess as Jae was reading it through he just found something in there that was like, “Oh, this could work even better if we did it this way,” and I was more than happy to let them go their own way because we weren’t deviating from the story line, we were simply improving it, we were kind of reformulating it to make it stronger. To make that last issue in the arc and the end of the sixth issue an even stronger piece.

  Lilja: Do you often agree on things or are there issues that some of you feel very strongly about while others don’t? Or do you have the same ideas of what should happen?

  Ralph Macchio: We all seem to have agreed upon…One of the things at the very beginning was that Robin was not used to working in the graphic format. She is a writer, and a fine writer, but she was not used to writing comic book plots. They require a different set of skills than a short story or even a novel because you have to, in many ways, think visually, because it is not your words that are going to appear in print, it’s the pictures you tell the artist. That’s what’s going to appear in print, and then you put your words in there. So, in this instance, one place that I think Robin would agree that she needed to sort of work into was to really think visually, to think that what she was writing down in these plots needed to be as strong visually as possible. And she got the hang of it pretty quickly. That was an area that we as editors and we as people who deal day-to-day in the graphic format were able to really, I think, give her the necessary input for those first couple of issues. So that when she had turned them in, we discussed them and she said, “Yeah, you know, there are places where I could have thought more visually or this sequence I should have realized should have been something visual, so let me go back and rework it.” But then again, she is a fast learner and she got the hang of it pretty quickly, and now she’s fully up to speed on the whole thing of how to handle it visually.

  Lilja: She’s doing a very good job so far.

  Ralph Macchio: She’s doing an excellent job. She is, as I have said many times, the lynchpin of the whole thing. She is the go-between between us and Stephen and The Dark Tower itself. She has the knowledge of the story, she knows more about it than anybody and she is the one that really is putting the building blocks together for each individual story arc.

  Lilja: How much did you know about The Dark Tower before this? Were you a fan already or did you have to…

  Ralph Macchio: Oh, yes, going all the way back to the beginning. I had picked up the books as they came out. We all know there is a great time lag in between various books, but I had certainly picked them up from the first book right on down to the last one. It’s funny. I was just getting into the last book as this project came up at Marvel. So, it was a terrific thing. I was able to read that last fantastic book just as we were about to jump in and begin the series here.

  Lilja: It must have been wonderful when they asked you if you wanted to edit it.

  Ralph Macchio: Yes, there are not many projects that I would jump up and down about, but this one, when I heard we were going to get it, was one of the few times that I actually spoke to Dan Buckley, our publisher, and Joe Quesada, the editor-in-chief, and asked if I could have this project. I wanted it very much.

  Lilja: Yeah, I can understand that. I wouldn’t mind trading with you. Are you going to continue to turn other King books into comics?

  Ralph Macchio: That really depends on Stephen and upper management. I think in this office we would do anything that he wanted. Anything that he has written we would do in an illustrated format if he was interested. But then again, those are for discussion between him and upper management. I remember going back several decades when I worked on one of our black-and-white magazines, Bizarre Adventures, and back then the editor on that, I was the assistant editor, Denny O’Neil I think had been friends with Stephen King’s agent at the time, Kirby McCauly, and somehow they had gotten together and spoken to Stephen about us adapting “The Lawnmower Man,” which was a short story from Night Shift. And that worked out beautiful because we were able to get Walt Simonson, top guy then and now, to do the art on it and then we sent the art boards, Xerox of the art boards, to Stephen and he had never scripted a comic before, but he turned it back in after a few days and the scripting was as if he had written comics for years. A beautiful piece of work.

  Lilja: Yeah, I read that one. It’s not as good as The Dark Tower, but it’s good.

  Ralph Macchio: Well, you’re dealing with…you know, one’s a short story and one’s a novel, but I thought it was handled brilliantly visually, and as I said, Stephen’s scripting was superb on it. I can still remember the individual panels and the whole thing. I was very happy with it even though I wasn’t the editor on it. I was the assistant on it and it came out beautifully, so I think we can do any of Stephen’s dozens and dozens of short stories or any of the novels. Anything that would lend itself to a visual flair we would take it on.

  Lilja: I’m hoping you’ll do a Stephen King original—that he will do something for you that hasn’t been published before.

  Ralph Macchio: That would be something that would be a huge feather in everybody’s cap if he wanted to write an original story and we would get it illustrated by Jae or some other top-notch penciler. That would be fantastic. Everybody in the world would go crazy about that one.

  Lilja: He seems very open to try different publishing styles.

  Ralph Macchio: Yes, I felt that if we were going to develop a long-lasting relationship with him and Chuck Verrill, I know that we needed to really hit the ground running. We needed to make sure that the books we were putting out were the best we could give them because if they were going to be inclined to wanna pursue a relationship with Marvel where we would do other books, other projects, we had to show what we had with this first one and, again, I’m pleased that I think we have put the very best into it that we could and I’m happy that both Chuck and Steve are happy and that they want to pursue a relationship with Marvel.

  Lilja: As far as I have heard everybody is happy with it. I haven’t heard anyone say something bad about it.

  Ralph Macchio: Right, and you know, at some point, as people get more and more issues under their belt, there will be criticism and there will be room for criticism too; we accept that. This is not going to be a perfect project from beginning to end, but I’m confident that with the time that we had and the creative personnel and the level of energy and commitment that went into this that we are giving it the very best that we can, so even if there are critics later on I’m still confident and satisfied that we’ve given it the very best we could.

  Lilja: It shows that you gave it your best.

  Ralph Macchio: Thanks. We, as you, have an enormous respect for the source material on this, and you can’t give it other than your best because you have so much respect for where it’s coming from.

  Lilja: So, time is running out. Is there any scoop you can leave me with?

  Ralph Macchio: I don’t have a revelation for you. I can just tell you that I believe that the level of quality increases for each issue because all the participants get more and more used to working with the material and with each other. The synergy gets better and better with eve
ry single issue and anyone who enjoyed the first issue will enjoy the second and keep coming back for the third, fourth, etc. I don’t think we are going to disappoint you.

  Lilja: OK, thanks for talking to me.

  Ralph Macchio: My pleasure.

  ****

  Robin Furth

  Posted: April 18, 2007

  Lilja: For those out there who don’t know about you and your Dark Tower Concordances, can you tell me a little about yourself and how you ended up working with Stephen King?

  Robin Furth: I started working for Steve King back in 2000—the year after his terrible accident. By that time Steve had already published On Writing and needed somebody to sort through the thousands of responses he’d gotten to the On Writing story competition. He wanted to help out a starving grad student, so he contacted Burt Hatlen—one of my professors at the University of Maine who also happened to be one of Steve’s old advisors. Burt knew that I was a writer, that I loved fantasy and sci-fi, and that I was a fan of Steve’s work. Hence, he recommended me for the job. (Lucky me!) At the end of that particular assignment I went into Steve’s office and met the man himself. At that point he 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 continuity—no small job in such a big body of work.) Anyway, when Steve asked whether I was interested in the job I said yes! Amazing how much that one yes has transformed my inner landscape.

  Lilja: Were you in on the comic from the start? I guess your involvement was essential to the entire project, right?

  Robin Furth: Yes, I was there at the original meeting between Steve, Chuck Verrill and Marvel. (Well, I wasn’t there in body. I was there 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 was excited about the whole thing. I also wanted to see Roland and his friends take on that extra dimension—to have faces and bodies that moved through space.

  Lilja: A lot of fans feel that the comic is more your story than King’s. Just to get that notion out of people’s minds, can you shed some light over what your and King’s different roles are in creating the comic?

  Robin Furth: The story covered by the first seven comics is Steve’s story—the one he told in Wizard and Glass. My job has been to adapt that novel to a new format, which meant cutting some scenes and adapting others. (Occasionally I ended up adding and adapting bits from other Dark Tower books, such as the scene in issue 1 when Roland and his friends attend a falconry class.) Adapting a novel to the comic-book form is a bit like altering a novel and making it into a film. Everything has to be visual, and you have to tell your reader everything you can via action. Hence, my real goal has been to stay true to Steve’s vision—a vision recounted over the course of the seven-book series. I’ve tried hard to remember the face of my father, say thankya. All stories and story cycles go through Steve, so not only was he the original author but he’s also the final editor!

  Lilja: So you get a basic story line story from King that you work into a script for the comic. Then Peter David makes it fit in the comic itself, is that correct?

  Robin Furth: I guess the technical term for what I do is plotting. Basically, it’s my job to condense Steve’s novel down into seven comics of (roughly!) twenty-two pages each and somehow, despite the cuts, have the story and characters remain true to the original vision. Peter’s task is then to create dialogue—to make the characters sound like they do in the books, and to generally catch the rhythms of Mid-World.

  Lilja: Does it happen that King himself can’t keep track of things and writes in errors that you then have to catch? I mean, that was partly why you did the concordances, to avoid errors like that, right?

  Robin Furth: The amazing thing about creating such a large imaginative universe is that it’s almost impossible to keep track of every detail. (It’s kind of like trying to keep track of the life stories of every single person you’ve ever met, as well as the landscape of every state and country you’ve ever visited!) While Steve was writing the last three novels of the Dark Tower series, one of my jobs was to keep everybody (and every place) in order. To do that I had to create a mental database, where every person and location had an entry, where their histories/families/exciting events were recorded. The Concordance is the physical manifestation of that mental database. When I was a kid I really wanted to become a folklorist, so in a sense that’s exactly what I’ve done. Only the folklore (and history) I’ve specialized in belongs to Mid-World rather than our world.

  Lilja: How fresh was your memory about The Dark Tower from when you did the concordances? Did you have to get back and reread a lot, or has it been stuck in your head for good now?

  Robin Furth: It’s pretty much stuck in my head for good now! That really came home to me about a week ago when John Barber at Marvel asked me to describe the guns of Deschain as well as the guns used by apprentice gunslingers. I realized that I knew which scenes in which books contained vivid descriptions of both kinds of guns. I even knew where to find the kind of bullets Roland needed to load up! (And, by the way, if you want to know what kind of bullets he uses, go to the Concordance entry entitled CLEMENTS GUNS AND SPORTING GOODS in the OUR WORLD PLACES section. You’ll find the page refs you need!)

  Lilja: The first series is pretty much an adaptation of King’s book, and I guess you could take a lot from the book when you did the script for those issues, right?

  Robin Furth: I really tried to stick to the book and so did Peter. We both thought that was the best (and only) way to go.

  Lilja: Do you worry now that you won’t be able to do that with the following series, the one that deals important events that aren’t addressed in the books?

  Robin Furth: I definitely think about that a lot, especially because staying true to the novels is so important to me. Luckily, the Dark Tower novels are littered with tales about Roland’s youth and stories about his friends Alain and Cuthbert, so I had a lot to go on. I’ve also made friends with Roland’s ka-tet over the years, so when I need to know where to go next I ask them. (Hey, I know that sounds weird, but it’s true.)

  Lilja: Do you feel you and King have worked so much together now that you know what he wants and expects?

  Robin Furth: I figure it’s always dangerous to assume. As Eddie Dean would say, “ASSUME makes an ASS out of U and ME!” All you can do is your best!

  Lilja: I understand that King has the last word on everything. Has he asked you to change anything so far, and if so, can you tell me what?

  Robin Furth: Steve has been great. He hasn’t asked me to change anything. In fact, he told me I was on the Beam, which is a great comfort!

  Lilja: You’re also writing a series of articles/folktales about Mid-World’s history. Can you tell me more about those?

  Robin Furth: Those have been great fun to write. As I said earlier, I’ve been collecting Mid-World folktales for years. Sometimes it’s a full tale, sometimes it’s just a seed, but they’ve been growing in my mind and they’ve gotten so big that it’s really nice to be able to transplant them, if you know what I mean.

  Lilja: Are those your invention or is King involved in those as well, other than that they are based on what he has written in the books?

  Robin Furth: A bit of both. I always base my tales on ones recounted in the Dark Tower books, or on hints we get in the books. Sometimes I combine two tales. (For example, the story about the origin of the guns of Deschain combines the story of Arthur Eld’s battle with the snake Saita—which we see on a screen located in Castle Discordia—with the creation of the Kingdom of All-World and the origins of the gunslingers.) I always try to run the ideas past Steve to make sure he feels OK about them. Sometimes he wants to be surprised, so we (weirdly enough) switch p
laces. I get to tell him a story!

  Lilja: Same with the maps of Mid-World you’re involved in. Are all those based on what King has written in the books as well?

  Robin Furth: Those maps—both the ones in the Concordance and the ones in the comics—take ages to plan out. In order to do a map I have to go back to all the relevant scenes and literally plot directions. For example, to figure out how to map Hambry, I had to imagine standing on top of Cöos Hill, and from there figure out what I could see, how far away things were, etc. I had to follow all the characters as they walked from place to place as well. It’s a huge job, but if you go through the books carefully enough you can find all the information you need.

  Lilja: How far in the series are you now? Have you finished all seven issues and moved on to the next set?

  Robin Furth: Yep. I finished the second story arc and I’ve actually handed in a draft of the third story arc (issues thirteen through eighteen). It really helps everybody if I stay way ahead.

  Lilja: I take it that you are in for all the issues, first to last, right?

  Robin Furth: I hope to be there right to the battle of Jericho Hill!

  ****

  Richard Isanove

  Posted: April 20, 2007

  Lilja: So, can you tell me a little more about who you are and what you have done?

  Richard Isanove: I was born and raised in France and moved to Los Angeles about thirteen years ago to attend CalArts. I started coloring comics right after graduating and I’ve been working principally for Marvel for about nine years. I’ve mostly colored the pencils of the Kubert brothers and Joe Quesada. I guess my most noticeable work was on Daredevil, Ultimate X-men, Origin: The True Story of Wolverine and Neil Gaiman’s 1602.