The Dark Man

SUPERANNO Stephen King first wrote about the Dark Man in college after he envisioned a faceless man in cowboy boots and jeans and a denim jacket forever walking the roads. Later this dark man would come to be known around the world as one of King's greatest villains, Randall Flagg, but at the time King only had simple questions on his mind: Where was this man going? What had he seen and done? What terrible things?

From Publishers Weekly

King first conceived of his most famous villain, Randall Flagg, as a college student in the poem featured here. Faceless and ominous, this man is brought to life by illustrator Glenn Chadbourne in this edition of the poem. While Chadbourne's illustrations take center stage—eerie pencil drawings evoke a decrepit world of spiders, gravestones, and abandoned buildings—what is most remarkable about this book is King's poem itself. While famous for his prose, King demonstrates his talent as a writer here in his incredible use of language. Especially considering the young age at which the poem was written, the originality of description, rhythm, and word choice are impressive. The poem, even without the illustrations, is sure to send shivers up your spine, and serves as a wonderfully creepy edition to King's oeuvre. (Aug.)

From Booklist

Purportedly scrawled by a college-age King on the back of a restaurant place mat, this glowering poem introduced a wandering character of ultimate evil, who would later mature into Randall Flagg of The Stand, The Eyes of the Dragon, and the Dark Tower series. Therefore, even though this is a curiosity, it’s a significant one in the King mythos, and Chadbourne’s black-and-white interpretation gives the spare text just the rotten juice it craves. The poem itself is the sort of metaphysical, apocalyptic piece you might expect from the late 1960s, but is nonetheless evocative. It begins, “i have stridden the fuming way / of sun-hammered tracks and / smashed cinders,” as we follow the slow nighttide progress of a smudgy man traversing a moonlit America of busted merry-go-rounds, dilapidated trains, and agonized cemeteries. Wordless pages fill out the five-stanza poem, with Chadbourne’s flat, snarled pencilwork hiding snakes, spiders, rats, and faces in every twisted tableau. It’s all suitably ominous, and bewitched fans will be able to draw a direct line between this and The Gunslinger (1982). --Daniel Kraus

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