Did anybody really believe Stephen King’s announcement a few years back that he’d be retiring after the conclusion of the Dark Tower saga? His current bestseller, the paperback original The Colorado Kid, might conceivably have been viewed as a fun little experiment, but with novels Cell and Lisey’s Story on the way in 2006, he seems to be back in full swing. Perhaps even ready to try new things; rumors have been swirling since early this summer that Marvel Entertainment was talking with King about doing some comic book work for them, and a British website yesterday added some details, specifying that King will create a Dark Tower graphic novel with hot artist Jae Lee. Wasn’t the Dark Tower series supposed to end on a fairly definitive note? For what it’s worth, Marvel is promising to reveal all next week..or even sooner; PW Daily says the word will come on Friday. I’m just guessing, but that means it’ll probably be during editor-in-chief Joe Quesada’s weekly chat with comics site Newsarama.
UPDATE: Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter seems to have resolved the “but isn’t Dark Tower over?” problem: his sources say King’s working on a prequel. Yawn—wouldn’t it be more fun to see him rescue an obscure superhero from oblivion, like Jonathan Lethem’s going to do?