By Neil Kleid
Robin Furth has seen the world end.
Desperately riding from a murderous posse, numb from a senseless death and headed towards treacherous waters, Robin bears an advantage her fellowship lacks: she knows how it all turns out. She has to—her first job before taking a single step inside the Dark Tower comic book universe was to co-plot Roland Deschain's early adventures from proud beginning to sorrowful finale at Jericho Hill.
Under the watchful eye of novelist and "Dark Tower" creator Stephen King, Furth has unquestionably become the best source of Dark Tower legend and lore. Now, alongside Peter David, Jae Lee and Richard Isanove, she uses that knowledge to explore and expand Roland's unwritten back-story, bringing to life stories and folklore only hinted at throughout King's best-selling novels.
To celebrate the release of THE DARK TOWER: TREACHERY this week, Robin kindly granted Marvel.com this in-depth interview, answering questions about her time in Mid-World and the long road still to come.
Marvel.com: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." That opening line—the beginning of Roland's journey—unlocks the door to "The Dark Tower" and a limitless wealth of story. How did Robin Furth's journey to the Dark Tower begin?
Robin Furth: The man in black fled across the desert…what a great line! Anyway, my own journey with Roland across Mid-World's deserts began about eight years ago—back in December of 2000. At the time I was a graduate student in the English Department at the University of Maine. Burt Hatlen, who was one of my advisors, had also been Stephen King's professor while Steve was an undergrad, and the two of them had remained friends. Hence when Steve contacted Burt and told him that he needed a temporary research assistant and wanted to give a helping hand to a graduate student, Burt thought of me. Burt knew that I loved horror and supernatural fiction—in fact, that's what my thesis was about!—and that I was a fan of Steve's. He also knew that I was a published writer, and so—lucky me!—he put my name down for the job.
My first task was to help sort through the thousands of stories that came into the [Bangor, Maine] office in response to Steve's "On Writing" contest. That was really interesting, since it meant I had the chance to read lots of great fan writing. But after a couple of months, that job came to a close, and I went to the office to pick up my final paycheck and to chat with Marsha DiFilippo, Steve's personal assistant. For the rest of my life I'll remember that day. It was the winter solstice, Maine had just suffered one of the worst ice storms in its history, and I hadn't had power for a week. I'd had the occasional bath at a friend's house, but really was reduced to washing my face and hands with cold water pulled up in a bucket from my grandparent's hand dug well. Needless to say, I felt both grimy and smelly. But who should be there in the office when I arrived but Steve himself, whom I'd never met in the flesh before! Boy was I embarrassed. But when he asked if I'd like to take on more work—he wanted to finish up the Dark Tower series and needed someone to make lists of characters and places found in the first four books, along with any page references they appeared on so that he could check for continuity—I took the job in a heartbeat.
I started right away and by the end of January I had a fat black-bound book to hand in to Steve. At the front I'd drawn a magical door with a
sigul for "The Writer" on it, so Steve could re-enter Mid-World. Then I taped a key to the front so that he could open the door. I think the book was a lot bigger and a lot more detailed than Steve expected, and I guess he liked it a lot. Anyway, he asked me if I wanted to stay on. He would hand me the manuscripts of the next three books in installments and I would continue keeping track of all characters, places, languages, etc. Quite amazing, when you think about it!
Marvel.com: Ka, or destiny, guides Roland along his life's path—do you feel ka guided you to yours? Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Robin Furth: Yes on both accounts! Weird as it may sound, I
do believe that
ka--or fate/karma/destiny as it is known in our world—has an effect upon all of our lives. I think that we still have free will and can decide how to react to the events that take place in our lives, but some of those events seem to be just waiting for us, like signposts in the middle of the road.
For several months before Steve asked me to work on the Dark Tower project, I kept having these really weird dreams about Towers and red, demon-faced moons. Though I was a fan of Steve's other work I hadn't read the Dark Tower novels yet so I began to wonder whether I was going crackers! I had this one dream which was especially vivid. I was climbing up the stairwell of this haunted, soot-colored Tower which was full of doors that would open and close by themselves, though I could never see inside any of them. But then all of a sudden I was crouched on the top of the tower, and its insides had disappeared. All I could see was this swirling, hungry vortex. The winds whipped around me and storm clouds flew over my head, and I was
certain I was going to fall into that vortex and be swallowed by it! It was both a terrifying and an awe-inspiring sight, like the vortex of eternity! No wonder it was so scary…
The other uncanny event was that I started to have, well, a ghostly visitor. My husband and I were living in a trailer at the time. You know the kind—a kitchen, a living room, and two bedrooms, one at either end of the house, though Mark and I had transformed the second bedroom into a writing room.
Anyway, I started to sense someone pacing at the writing room door. Whenever I sat in the living room reading, with the door to my right, out of the corner of my eye I saw this tall, thin, shadow-man pacing back and forth, as if he really wanted to break through into our world but for some reason couldn't. I could even feel his impatience. I sensed he was a character, not a ghost, but I also knew he was not my character! Then one day the door—or should I say the portal that shared space with my writing room door—opened. I felt the character give a great sigh of relief and step through into our world. Not long after that, I started working for Steve. To this day, I swear that visitor was Roland.
And in answer to the second part of the question—yes, I've always wanted to be a writer! By the time I met Steve I'd already published quite a bit of poetry in U.S. journals. However, ["The Dark Tower: A Complete Concordance"] was my first published prose.
Marvel.com: Which bring us to your first Dark Tower work, the Concordance, which compiles all things Dark Tower into a reference guide and no doubt, an adapter's dream. What were the triumphs and challenges you faced while assembling it?
Robin Furth: I suppose the greatest triumph was actually having the opportunity to write the book, and to have Steve's support for the project. Besides being a writer, my other ambition has always been to become a folklorist. Hence, having the chance to become Mid-World's folklorist was like a dream come true.
The challenges were many! As you know, the Dark Tower novels—taken together—are vast. In order to write the Concordance I had to go through the novels page by page, often many times, documenting each time a character was mentioned, a place was mentioned, or when a new Mid-World term appeared. I created a giant index for Steve, and then had to redo the index when the book was accepted by Scribner. Most of my page references actually referred to Steve's manuscripts, which wouldn't have done readers any good! Then, when the book was accepted by Hodder in the [United Kingdom], I re-indexed the whole thing again! As you can imagine, I started to have nightmares about page references and would wake up in the night crying out things like, "Page 347!"
My biggest fear was accuracy. Dark Tower fans really know their stuff, so I didn't want to disappoint anybody,
especially Steve! Because of this, I checked and rechecked all of my entries and facts. By the end of it all, the Dark Tower novels really lived inside of my brain, which isn't surprising! When I'm looking for a quote, I can usually still find the page without checking the Concordance. Strange, huh?
Marvel.com: Strange indeed! Now, as a writer who has adapted literature, I know what it's like to handle an author's precious work with kid gloves. Are there rules for working on "The Dark Tower," or any other King novel and have they changed over the years?
Robin Furth: I guess the most important thing is to show respect for the author and his work, and to try to remain true to the original story and vision. While writing THE GUNSLINGER BORN, which was an adaptation of "Wizard and Glass," this was my top priority. It was also the top priority of everybody working on the project.
Transforming a story from words to images is never easy. Hence, there were times when I had to take scenes from other Dark Tower novels and place them in the "Wizard and Glass" storyline in order to maintain the continuity of the tale. But whenever I did this I made sure that the addition would help new readers really grasp the Dark Tower universe. In this way I tried to fill in a lot of the background info that readers of the novels get while reading the larger text.
When it was time to move from "Wizard and Glass" into the less charted regions of LONG ROAD HOME, I was really determined to remain true to Steve's world and characters. However, I also had to fall back upon my own imagination in order to flesh out the tales. Steve provided all the story-seeds in his novel, but I had to really let my mind dwell on these seeds in order to let them sprout. That's been both a challenge and a pleasure!
Marvel.com: Do you find yourself falling into the unique language and vocabulary of the series throughout the day? You must have had to adopt an entirely new dictionary.
Robin Furth: I do when I'm talking to Dark Tower fans or when I'm working on the Dark Tower project. Peter and I do a lot of writing back and forth in Mid-World speak, which isn't surprising! I also fall into it if I send an e-mail to Steve about the project. It's kind of catchy!
Marvel.com: "The Dark Tower" and Marvel Comics. Honestly—before the big meeting, before Joe Quesada and the amazing sample pages—what was your first reaction? Were you a Marvel fan before this?
Robin Furth: I read a lot of comics when I was younger—like most girls I had a big crush on Spider-Man—but by the time I was in high school and college I felt a tremendous pressure to leave all that behind me. But the love of illustration and illustrated stories never died. In fact, to this day I consider the Russian illustrator Ivan Bilibin to be one of my most important creative influences.
Though I tried to keep my Spider-Man crush a secret—me and spiders…go figure!—when I reached college my roommate really liked the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. My husband—who I met the year after I graduated—also loved Fat Freddy's Cat as well as Robert Crumb and Steve Bell's work, so I spent a lot of time enjoying those. My brother-in-law collected the early Viz, which I also loved. Yes, I have to admit it. I think the old Topless Skateboard Nun is a hoot. I've also always loved fantasy and sci-fi art of all kinds, and there's a big crossover between that kind of illustration and comic book art. In my 20s I discovered anime and became a big fan of Vampire Hunter D, and started to collect some vampire-related comics. Can't help it, I have a thing about blood-suckers…
So anyway, when I found out that Dark Tower was going to move into comics, I thought it was pretty spectacular, but I was also really scared about doing a good-enough job. I'll tell you it's been quite a learning curve—at times like climbing up a skyscraper—but I've loved it. I've been incredibly lucky that the editors at Marvel have been so helpful and supportive. It has been great! The hard work has been worth it, and I keep realizing how much there is still to learn! But I guess that's the way of it, isn't it?
Go pick up the first issue of THE DARK TOWER: TREACHERY right now and check back for more of our eye-opening chat with Robin Furth coming soon here on Marvel.com!
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