Were Unsolicited Texts About Stephen King Novel ‘Cell’ Against The Law?

Stephen King’s apocalyptic horror novel Cell is about a signal sent out to cell phones that turned all who heard it into homicidal monsters. Now a different sort of cell phone message has gotten King’s book publisher, Simon & Schuster, embroiled in a horror story that’s far more frightening that fiction—one involving the legal system.

An appellate court ruled Friday that Simon & Schuster might have violated federal law by allegedly sending unsolicited text messages promoting Cell, Online Media Daily reported.

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Book Review: Duma Key by Stephen King

BlogCritics.com has posted a review by Amanda Banker of Stephen King’s Duma Key…

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings; words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.” – Stephen King, via Gordon LeChance, The Body

I recently finished Stephen Kings epic Duma Key, electing to wait until it came out in paperback so as to better consume the story. Or, should I say, let the story consume me. Stephen King is an author I believe readers either obsessively love or passionately abhor. His imagination is something to be feared, but it’s his prose, his way of making the unbelievable real, pulling meaning out of chaos with a simple order of words that really captures a reader.

King’s characters are oftentimes every man or woman. There isn’t one that is overly dramatic or romanticized. They simply are. The tragedy and terror is less obvious in the traditional monsters that live inside of his stories — vampires, ghosts, demons, devils, even aliens — and more palpable in the simple situation of a child walking down the side of a road, a group of boys on a hike, or the secret smile shared by comfortable lovers. By the time he has introduced the Bad Guy of the story, you as a reader are already invested in the happenings of his characters, and that what once felt impossible to swallow is now a real and terrible threat.

I thoroughly enjoyed Duma Key. There were moments when my skin literally crawled, moments when I teared up, moments when I gasped, and moments when I had to close the book and take a breath before continuing on.

King writes best, I think, when he does so in first person narrative. The reader almost instantly identifies with the storyteller, as if they are being let in on a secret and must sneak away to climb inside the story and listen with eager fascination while the story unfolds.

In Duma Key, King creates a whole person in his character, Edgar Freemantle, a good deal of the author himself was revealed through Edgar’s voice. Perhaps on some level this story was King’s way of healing (both mentally and physically) from the car accident that broke his hip.

A victim of a tragic construction site accident, Edgar is forced to rebuild a life out of the debris left behind when both his body and mind are broken. Through a series of seemingly meaningless coincidences, he ends up renting a house on Duma Key that he affectionately dubs “Big Pink” (revealing King’s penchant for imbuing his love of rock music into his characters and storylines) and begins his healing process. As we walk through Edgar’s tortured nights and painful days, we see that life on Duma Key is not what one might expect it to be. Not inside Big Pink, at any rate.

Head on over to BlogCritics.com to read the rest of the review

Stephen King’s ‘Talisman’ Being Adapted As Graphic Novel

Del Rey, an imprint of Ballantine Books at the Random House Publishing Group, announced today the acquisition of the comic book and graphic novel rights to The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. The creative team on the project will be announced soon, and the first issue of the monthly comic is planned for late summer/early fall 2009.

Originally published in 1984, The Talisman is the story of a young teen named Jack Sawyer, who can save his dying mother only by retrieving a magical talisman. To find it he must cross back and forth between our world and the frightening and dangerous landscape of its “twinner” counterpart. The hardcover edition, published by Viking, spent 12 weeks in the #1 slot on the New York Times list. Both The Talisman and its sequel, Black House, are in print with Ballantine Books. Television rights to The Talisman are under development by Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy.

“Illustrating The Talisman in the depth that it deserves will involve at least 24 issues of comics, probably more,” said Del Rey Editor in Chief, Betsy Mitchell, who acquired the project from agent Ralph Vicinanza. “It’s a tremendously visual story, filled with images that burn in memory long after the book has been closed.”

King’s Dark Tower comics consistently inhabit the top of the comic book sales charts, and his recent series, Dark Tower: Long Road Home was the top-selling comic book in North America in March 2008.

Source: ComicNews.info

The Stand: Captain Trips #1 – Initial Thoughts

I admit it: I’ve read Stephen King’s The Stand three times in the last 20 or so years. The second and third time it was like I was coming home for a visit to the old stomping ground. All the familiar characters came to life once again and took me for that gut-wrenching ride through King’s plague-ridden land.

As soon as I opened up Marvel’s The Stand: Captain Trips #1, I got that same feeling all over again. Stu Redman, Larry Underwood, Charlie Campion and more, all caught up in the flood of the story, because once it starts, it takes you along on it’s whirlwind ride and doesn’t let you off until the end. Read more

Marvel Launches ‘The Stand’ Comic Book Trailer

Marvel has released its trailer to “The Stand: Captain Trips” and you can watch it right here.

Something has gone wrong…terribly wrong. Imagine if what you thought was just a common cold ends up as an epidemic that has the potential to wipe out the entire Earth’s population! The apocalyptic battle between good and evil based on the classic best-seller by Stephen King, beginning in THE STAND: CAPTAIN TRIPS #1 (of 5) by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Mike Perkins, is almost here and now you can see an exclusive look at this breath-taking series in a new online trailer you can watch below! Read more

Marvel Comics Adapts The Stand by Stephen King

I remember reading this novel about 20 years ago and it took me through an entire range of emotions.  I’m curious to see how Marvel is going to handle this huge epic.

Who would be delighted with the end of the world?

Normally, that would be a short list starting with genocidal aliens and ending with straight up mad men. These days, however, Stephen King and Marvel fans can be included in that count. Why? Because THE STAND comes to Marvel Comics.

With one hugely successful DARK TOWER series in the books and another in progress, a second titanic team-up between the House of Ideas and the modern master of horror, Stephen King—through a licensing agreement with The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,—seemed inevitable. But it took one nasty virus nicknamed Captain Trip to make it a reality.

As fans of the insta-classic know, “The Stand” has gone through a few incarnations in the years since King first released it in 1978. While the story remained the same—two groups of survivors face off against one another in a mythical battle of good versus evil following a devastating pandemic—the 1990 “Complete and Uncut Edition” fleshed out the action significantly.

This version, according to THE STAND editor Bill Rosemann, will come to life in the Marvel Comics adaptation. “From the very first cough to the sinister showdown with the Walkin’ Dude himself, this is the official and authentic translation of Stephen King’s sprawling saga—taken from the “Complete & Uncut Edition”—only as Mighty Marvel can!”

Rosemann brings with him an impressive pool of talent to produce this top notch adaptation. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (SECRET INVASION: FANTASTIC FOUR, SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN) handles scripting duties while Mike Perkins (CAPTAIN AMERICA) draws, inks and provides variant covers. Colorist Laura Martin, letterer Chris Eliopolus and cover artist Lee Berjemo (DAREDEVIL) round out this creative juggernaut.

Of course, as with the Gunslinger’s series’, the project would not be complete with out a stamp of approval from the author himself. Rosemann reassures fans, “each and every issue of THE STAND will be scrutinized, digested and blessed by the incredibly helpful and wise King Krew…and by King himself!”

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New Comics Just Added For May 12, 2008

I’ve just added a few titles to the STORE, with more coming in later this week. Here’s a list of the new comics just added.

Avengers / Invaders #1 Of 12

Detective Comics #844 – Batman

Secret Invasion #2 of 8 – Marvel

The Dark Tower / The Long Road Home #3 of 5

The Invincible Iron Man #1 – 2008 – Larroca Cover

The Invincible Iron Man #1 – 2008 – Quesada Cover

The Man With No Name #1 – Dynamite! Entertainment

The Mummy – Rise & Fall Of Xango’s Ax #1 – CVR A

The Mummy – Rise & Fall Of Xango’s Ax #1 – CVR B