Back when Sarah and I took over the ‘Cat, one of my earliest stories was the announcement of Stephen King‘s Dark Tower project for Marvel. Well, Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born is just about ready to ship next February, and the promotional engine has kicked into high gear. Marvel’s already provided comics shops with a free 16-page “sketchbook” of early design work for the series from fan favorite Jae Lee, and now they’ve put a semi-animated trailer online featuring some of the finished artwork from the first issue.
Now King himself is working the crowd to sell the book, sitting down for an interview with USA Today, conceding, “Since there will probably never be a Dark Tower/Gunslinger movie, this is the next closest thing.” And the comics world has been abuzz ever since it was announced that King’s a guest of honor for the 2007 New York Comic Con, a distinction he shares with, among others, Stan Lee, Kevin Smith, and George Pérez (I love the understatedness of the NYT description of Pérez as “a celebrated superhero artist,” which is rather like calling Peter Frampton a celebrated guitar player).
But King’s not the only bestselling writer making a splash in the comics world in ’07. Jodi Picoult is set to take over scripting duties on DC‘s Wonder Woman for a five-issue story arc, and she recently spoke to Newsarama about her plans for the character. “I think one of the beauties of the Wonder Woman character is that she is, to be perfectly obvious, female,” Picoult observers, “and that allows you to explore some themes that other superheroes don’t usually address—such as whether a woman who’s smart is a threat; how body image figures into a woman’s worth; whether a woman is supposed to take charge or sacrifice herself for the greater good.”