I recently visited Charlie Huston's site because I hadn't been there in ages. I was basically looking for Moon Knight and/or ComicCon news but didn't find any. However, one of his more recent posts was sort of about a life-changing experience that he had when he was fifteen. That experience was first reading Stephen King. Oddly enough, that first book he read was Firestarter - a book I've always assumed to be one of the lesser offerings from King and haven't even personally gotten around to reading myself. Huston's site is pulpnoir.com and I strongly suggest you go there not just to read that post but also to take a look at a guy I'd really like to emulate.
Some of that emulation starts right here.
I don't remember how old I was when I first read a Stephen King novel but I'd been aware of him for years, basically as "the horror guy" - a label I'm sure used to drive him crazy back in the eighties - I doubt he much cares anymore. If people really want to go on thinking the guy can only successfully write one genre then that's their problem.
So the first book...I'm not sure. I read at just as frenetic a pace ten years ago as I do now so it's pretty hard to keep track of what Ive read, at least as far as the order in which Ive read it. I also have a history or reading and the rereading the same books for years despite the fact that I'm always trying to fit new things in.
Anyway, I think I'd read about two King books before I got to the one that changed it all for me - The Stand. Maybe that's cliché - if it is, that's ok because even the best writers work in cliché. There wasn't one single thing about the book that affected me - it was everything. The sheer size and scope blew me away in ways other long books hadn't because I couldn't find any boring parts. Absolutely zero parts where the book dragged. Everything thrilled me and interested me. Some parts feeling like the equivalent of having glass thrown in my face immediately after taking the roundhouse kick that sent me to the floor. Years later I would read the revised edition with the extra content, bring the book's fantastic lenghth up even further and I lapped all that up too. You see, it wasn't the first really long book I'd read. It was simply the first really long book I'd read where I understood WHY it was so long. Everything needed to be in there and none of it could be rushed.
I love backstory - I love knowing a character's history even if they are only a minor player. King excels at this. I love him for giving me little sketches and vignettes of characters who would only appear in one chapter. It just adds all this depth and realism that just brings me so much further into the story. Now, for some people, it has the exact opposite effect, but for me, it makes everything more real. Because King didn't (and doesn't) give you the wrong parts. He knows what to give and what to hold back. I realize I can't just throw a ton of info about a minor character at the reader and expect them to love me for it. It's a delicate balance and one Ive been trying to perfect through practice. V World will put this to the ultimate test as I struggle with a large cast and gigantic supporting cast. I'll have to figure out what should be included and what should be left out.
Maybe I haven't done such a hot job of explaining this. So here's another example. In 1996, Onslaught took the Marvel universe (that's universe 616 for those of you who don't know) by storm. He affected EVERY SINGLE TITLE. But anyway, in a comic that I believe is an Unacnny X-Men (I actually now own this comic but I'm too lazy to go digging for it right now), just one of the many angles of the massive Sentinel attack on New York City is presented. It's obviously one of the most important angles, as it features members of the X-Men, Avengers and Fantastic Four all working together to stop the giant robot invaders. But it's not this angle that struck me. It's the opening.
I was reading this comic sometime in late 1996 in my friend, Ryan's bedroom (it was his comic, obviously) and I didn't say anything to him about the little epiphany I had because I didn't really know if it meant anything at the time. I wondered if maybe I was just too easily impressed. I realize Ive done an awful lot of talking without actually getting to what this opening comprised of - it will most likely disappoint you now after all the hype.
The comic opens with a scene at an apartment in New York. There is no X man there. No Avenger. No other Marvel Super hero, major or minor. Nor is the character presented related in any way to any hero. He's just a guy. The narration tells us this man's thoughts as he's dragging himself out of his bed in the morning. He thinks the landlord is an absolute crook - he still can't believe how much rent he's paying for such a small, shitty apartment. It's cramped and it's dull and it's way up on a very high floor. As he reaches to open his curtains to shed some light on his darkened bedroom he reflects the damn place only has one thing going for it: the view. As the words, "the view" are revealed in the next panel, the curtains are drawn aside and this guy finds himself face to face with the, uh, face of a giant sentinel robot. The next panel is an entire page - it's the title page and it's a wide shot of New York with hundreds of Sentinels swarming all over the place from the streets between the massive skyscrapers, the bridge, the harbour and even Ellis Island and the Statue of liberty. THEN we get to the heroes and what they're up to.
I realize now that this kind of opening is pretty standard stuff. But at the time, my twelve year old self was absolutely blown away. I think it was again a question of scope and magnitude. Of perspective. One thing that always made me prefer Marvel to DC was the interconnectedness ( a real word?) of it all. So now you know one truth about me: when I'm being told a story, I want to see it from all possible angles. I absolutely eat up that "meanwhile, back at the ranch" type approach and it's reflected in my favourite books, comics, movies and TV show episodes.
Getting back to King and the Stand. Besides the fact that it was a massive, sprawling narrative with dozens of characters and points of view that all combined into one story, another thing that hit me about it all was the amazing simplicity. I know you're probably thinking that completely contradicts everything I was just talking about but what I mean is, nothing in the book that happens is especially clever or intricate. And King can do clever. This book was more about black and white, good and evil and King didn't pull any punches in this one about that stuff.
Flagg is a wonderful character for a lot of reasons but I think what Ive always liked best about him is the fact that he is essentially very simple. King just made him as a representation of evil. He is not complex. We don't have to guess at his intentions - the dude's fucking evil and that's all there is to it. How he goes about his evil is also very simple. Basically, King told us, wherever there was evil, Flagg was there. From sketchy behind the scenes stuff to the most blatantly obvious, Flagg was there, being evil.
I think I loved that because when I was younger, I used to believe that if I was going to be a writer, everything I wrote would have to be clever. Pretentious to the point where people would read it, recognize it as obviously pretentious, and then actually decide it WASN'T because I must have been trying to be ironic. Hence, I am clever and a good writer. But you don't need that bullshit and I think it really took King and The Stand to teach me that. At the end of the day, it's about telling a good story and that's exactly what I plan to do.
