Summer of Stephen
Title: Creepshow
Publishing Date: 1982 Length: 50 pages Start Date: April 30, 2018 End Date: April 30, 2018 Did you know that Stephen King wrote a comic book? Neither did I! And after reading Creepshow, I can kind of understand why it might not be his most popular work. When I read a comic book or graphic novel, I expect a lot of great artwork, a moderate amount of dialogue in speech bubbles, and a minimal number of panels filled with narrative text. Well, that’s not exactly what I got with Creepshow. Bernie Wrightson and Michele Wrightson did an amazing job with the artwork. The colors pop on the page and they do a great job of bringing to life King’s creepy characters and situations. The dialogue, however, is just kind of okay. There are way too many instances of characters telling us exactly what’s happening on the page in front of us. Which we don’t need. Because we can see what’s happening in the pictures. This is the same problem King runs into with his narrative text. It’s a classic case of telling instead of showing; but it’s a double whammy, because he’s also showing us with the artwork. In the case of Creepshow, King needed to pull back a little and let the drawings speak for themselves. The stories themselves were all pretty good, which is unsurprising. I’m not going to go into more detail about them in this post, though, because I want to save that for my post about the movie version of Creepshow. So that’s where I’m going to leave this incredibly short post. I don’t necessarily recommend Creepshow, unless you just want to look at the artwork. But the writing in it is just unnecessarily overdone, which made it less enjoyable for me.
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Title: The Gunslinger
Publishing Date: 1982 Length: 231 pages Start Date: April 10, 2018 End Date: April 28, 2018 This post is probably going to be pretty short for one major reason: The Gunslinger doesn’t really do anything for me. This is my second time reading it, and I’m just not really a fan. Now, I understand that this might be an unpopular opinion, but that’s all it is. An opinion. If The Gunslinger is your favorite Stephen King novel, that’s awesome. It’s just not my type of book. The book follows Roland, the titular gunslinger, as he pursues The Man in Black (whose name is Walter?). He’s always just behind The Man in Black, so everyone he meets is likely already compromised by their encounter with this possibly immortal villain. Spoilers ahead, for those who are planning to read the book. After killing off an entire town, Roland meets a young boy named Jake, who joins him on his never-ending quest. They eventually catch up with The Man in Black, but Roland has to sacrifice Jake in order to get past the abyss separating him from his foe. Now that Roland and The Man in Black are face-to-face, Roland learns that the man he’s been chasing is merely working for Roland’s true enemy. Instead of getting the payoff of a fight between the two, The Man in Black puts Roland to sleep for 10 years and then maybe dies in the meantime. Oh, and Roland has some weird flashbacks in there that are important to the plot, but I honestly don’t remember that much about them. They were fairly interesting, but they kind of felt like they belonged in a different book. As I said, a lot of people are fans of The Gunslinger and are probably preparing to jump into the comments of this post to tell me how stupid I am. That’s fine. But first let me explain why I couldn’t really get into this book. Horror is one of my favorite genres. I know that it’s looked down upon by high literary society, but I don’t care. I love books that scare the crap out of me. And while The Gunslinger occasionally dips its toe into the waters of terror, it’s ultimately a journey story. And a western. And neither of those are genres that have ever interested me. In the introduction to the novel, King said he wanted to write a book that gave people the same feeling he got when he read Tolkien's The Hobbit. Well, for this reader at least, he succeeded. I was just as bored with both books. As much as I enjoy going for walks, I don’t particularly want to read about other people walking for extended periods of time. As for the western aspects, The Gunslinger has a very Clint Eastwood feel (which I think was intentional). And I’m not really into that in book or movie form. So, I guess what I’m saying is that I am personally not a fan of The Gunslinger, but I know a lot of people who love it. If you prefer the destination to the journey and can’t get into westerns, then you should probably skip this book. But if you liked The Hobbit or enjoy Clint Eastwood movies, then give this book a try. |
Jacinta M. CarterProfessional Book Nerd Archives
July 2019
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