1. Don't.

                                                                                            -or-

2. Just read the main books in the proper order: Gunslinger, Drawing Of The Three, Wastelands, Wizard And Glass, Wolves Of Callah, Song Of Susannah, The Dark Tower. 

                                                                                            -or-

1. The Stand: It is sacrilege not to start with the first Dark Tower Book, The Gunslinger. But Stephen King books shouldn't be a religion. Like The Bible, The Quar'an, or Dianetics, Stephen King's bibliography is fictional, full of Very Bad Advice, and includes some concepts about Otherness that are Flat Out Wrong, and Fucked Up in 2017, but you could see how a talented drug addict trying to make ends meet in Maine in the 70s and 80s would have had those Fucked Up ideas.

In my Very Biased rating of Stephen King books, I had this as #9 on my list, so it may seem weird that I say that, technically, this is A Better Book than The Gunslinger, which I placed at #1. 

The main problem with The Stand is that The Complete & Uncut version, which is the one you should read, accept no limitations, is that it is Fucken Long. 1400 pages. The second, almost as main problem is how race is discussed in a way that is totally in line with how someone socially progressive in the 1970s wouldn't realize they were being Fucked Up.  It can be a chore to forgive, just know that King would almost definitely Not Be This Level Of Fucked Up in 2017. And not because he doesn't think that Fucked Uppedness would sell, but because he is, by all accounts, A Man Who Is Trying To Be Better At All Times. He's not your All Lives Matter Uncle on Facebook, he's a product of a time where racism was different, and most white people, particularly in fucken Maine, didn't have progressive discussions of race. 

What makes The Stand great is that almost every chapter  in the first 100 pages or so could be The Opening Chapter. He is constantly introducing new characters or situations that makes it seem like he's starting to tell you a story, so, even though this book is Long, it's paced such that the beginning flies by.

It is heavily tied-in, thematically, with The Dark Tower series. It also introduces one of the main villains. And, again, it's a great story. And it makes sense to start with it. Partly because it's well-told, but partially because it's almost too long to put anywhere else, as it doesn't contain any of the main non-villain character from the series.

2. The Eyes Of The Dragon: Deep inhale.

I haven't read this book all the way through. I haven't tried since I was in high school, and I have a visceral memory of Hating This Book.

This is, however, Firmly Set in the world we encounter in The Gunslinger, but it takes place earlier than The Gunslinger, and Oh Shit, it's the same villain we met in The Stand. Only instead of being in a late 20th century apocalyptic story, it's an epic fantasy about magic and political intrigue in ancient(?) society. So...is this The Future of The Stand?

(Shrugging emoji.)

3. The Gunslinger: The true, actual beginning of The Dark Tower series is my favorite and, arguably, The Best. It's a Western-themed post-apocalyptic story featuring the main protagonist for The Dark Tower series, as well as introducing some other characters who will turn up later.

The important thing is that you Should Absolutely read the original version of The Gunslinger, not the 2003 re-edit. The re-edit is a George Lucased version of The Gunslinger. King went back and added some effects, changed the motivation of some scenes, and added more Tower Talk (language that he used more and more frequently as the series went on). It's not bad, but it's not how you should read this. Go to the library, go online, find the unaltered version. Trust me. There are Reasons.

4. Everything's Eventual:  This is a short story collection, and you do not have to read every part of it. You're on a schedule. I get it. If there is a local or used bookstore near you, you should buy it there. If there is a Barnes & Noble, you should just read a couple of the stories there, and not feel bad about it.  Those robots can mainline a rust smoothie.

The first story you're going to read are "The Little Sisters Of Eleuria". It will be clear as you read it how it ties in. Technically, it takes place between Eyes Of The Dragon, and The Gunslinger, but treat it like a flashback. There will be lots of flashbacks in the series, so get accustomed now.

The second story to read is "Everything's Eventual". It will in no way be clear what this has to do with The Dark Tower. Go with it.

5. The Drawing Of The Three: Picking up as close as possible to the end of The Gunslinger, this book brings in the rest of The Major Players for the rest of the series. 

It's an 80s crime book, it's a Civil Rights story that deals with mental illness, and it's the story of a little boy who fears he's going crazy. They're all tied together by good old Roland The Gunslinger, who has his own battle at the beginning of the book.


​Everything in this book melds together really well. And the writing in the Roland portion of the story is the tone that the series will mainly feature for the rest of the series.

​6. 'salem's Lot: This is going to seem extraneous. It doesn't feature anyone you've met yet, and it's a damned vampire book. Vampires? Ugh. 

But it's a fun, fast read, and while you will spend the whole book wondering what the fuck this has to do with the Dark Tower series, trust that it will. And not in a minor way. And no, it's not that The Dark Tower ends up being about goddamned vampires.

​7. Waste Lands: Back to the main characters! Back to the tone set in Drawing Of The Three. This is a straight-up Dark Tower book. No part of it is not vital to The Dark Tower series. The ending of this book was extremely frustrating as the books were coming out, but they're all out now, so you can Ask yourself "Why Would A Writer Leave Us In The Middle Of The Scene? That Cruel---Oh, I'll just pick up the next volume then."

​8. Wizard And Glass: See how easy that was? That cliffhanger? Totally hung. Umm...that's phrased wrong. I just mean that you don't have to sweat the situation they're in because it's right at the beginning of this book. This also begins the practice of some of the previous books that didn't seem so Dark Towery suddenly becoming Very Dark Towery, as we end up in the aftermath of a previous story. There's also some decidedly non-Stephen King books drawn in, but don't worry, you don't need to hunt them down and read them unless you want to, you totally know this stuff.

​9. It: This book is technically not Essential to the Dark Tower books. In fact, if you read It already, or saw the movie, you might be thinking, Why The Fuck Is This Book On The List? Welll....there are some parts of It that seem like nonsense if you haven't read The Dark Tower, but it turns out they're all terminology from The Dark Tower universe, and Pennywise has some relatives who are very important to the series, so check it out.

​10. Hearts In Atlantis: While this doesn't say Part (Whatever) of The Dark Tower series, this is a series of connected novellas that all deal with the mythology of The Dark Tower. It has echoes of "Everything's Eventual", and, at this point, you should figure that these characters are getting drawn into the major story at some point.

This also the most Veitnammy Baby Boomery Porn you're going to experience. But it does serve a higher purpose. The Tower. All Things Serve The Beam. 

​11. Insomnia: Another case of Not Explicitly About The Tower if you haven't read the series, it is Very Clearly a Tower book when you're this far into the series. All Things Serve The Beam, damn it.

​12. Wind Through The Keyhole: This book is billed as The Dark Tower Book 4.5, as it takes place between Wizard And Glass and Wolves Of Callah. It was written well after the series was wrapped up, and it's mostly an excuse for Stephen King to tell some backstories, as this is essentially Roland telling more of his history to his assembled companions.

I haven't read this yet, but I am very much looking forward to it.

​13. Wolves Of Callah: Back to the whole main adventurey quest for the tower that's, you know, the whole point of this. And, hey look, it's characters from those seemingly non-Dark Tower books. Turns out, they Are Important to this story. Cool! Plus, another major non-Stephen King book is tied into The Dark Tower. You don't have to have read it to follow any of what happens in this book. But you've probably read it. Almost definitely. 

14. Song Of Susannah: Picking up directly where Wolves Of Callah left off, we tie into all sorts of past plot points that you might have thought were buried a long time ago (and no, I'm not spoiling a return from the dead, I mean buried plot points, not people or monsters). 

It also really starts to feel like we may actually get to that friggen tower they've been talking about since The Gunslinger.

​15. Black House: NOW? We're almost to The Tower and you're throwing another non-Tower book NOW? And, Wait A Damned Minute, Isn't This A Sequel To A Book That Isn't On This List? What The Fuck? Do I Have To Go Back And Read The Talisman Now?

No. Forget The Talisman. Forget that this is cowritten with Peter Straub, and just ingest the last non-Tower book that is Totally A Tower Book. ALL THINGS SERVE THE---you know.

16. The Dark Tower: Finally. Gods. How long have I been reading this series? We're at the end, though. Hoooo-buddy. So now I present you with a choice. It's an important choice. I don't want to say Matrixy pill choosing because the <strike>Alt-Right</strike> Racist Pieces Of Shit Currently Ruining Our Country use that analogy, so let's say this is a Kobiyashi Maru.

I have mentioned before that you SHOULD NOT READ THE EPILOGUE. You shouldn't You just shouldn't.

So, if you don't read the epilogue, then this is the end. The quest is over.  Hooray!

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...if you Do Read The Epilogue, then there's one more book for you to read.

​16. The Gunslinger Revised Edition.

But...but...but you said to...and now...NOW?...but...but.

Yeup. Trust me.

11. Misery:  If this list were based purely on merit, this book should be much higher. It contains actual metaphor. It's about his own life without being as cloying as the self-references are in the later Dark Tower books. And it's probably the most realistic book he's ever written. No magic powers. No inhuman monsters. No mythical wish fulfillment. This is just the story of an author and His Biggest Fan. Which makes it, in many ways, more terrifying than most of his books.

I just don't have any personal anecdotes about it. It's a good book. I read it. I recommend it.

​

12. Nightmares And Dreamscapes: During the conversation that prompted these posts, I admitted that I hadn't read a single book King had put out since The Dark Tower. I had purchased a few, but they sat on a small bookshelf, not so much as glanced at since I bought them.

So I picked up his novella collection, Full Dark No Stars, and after giving each story about twenty pages, decided that it was probably for the best that I wasn't reading his recent stuff. It felt...clumsy. It certainly didn't feel like a Master Storyteller had been anywhere near it. It was basic tropes told poorly about a bunch of two-dimensional characters.

Nightmares And Dreamscapes had made me want to write short stories. These weren't just unpopped kernels of ideas at the bottom of a 1990s air popper. These were delicious bite-sized stories. When I looked at the list of all of Stephen King's works, I didn't remember much about this book other than I Liked It. But all it took was a glance at the table of contents, and I remembered about a dozen of the stories very vividly, and am considering going back and rereading some of them.

13. Pet Semetary: I mention in the very title of this series that none of Stephen King's books gave me nightmares, and that is True. But I have several times dreamed that pets recently buried have come back from the grave to hang out. Luckily, none of them were bloodthirsty zombies.

It's been a while since I've read this, but I don't think it suffers from as many negative tropes as most Stephen King books. And I like the idea of a Magical Mainer much more than King's usual alternatives.

14. Wizard And Glass: I waited forever for this book. The third book stopped practically mid-sentence, and left me hanging for six Fucken Years. And I swore that if this book did the same, I was going to pretend the series stopped with Drawing Of The Three, and never read another Dark Tower book as long as I lived.

While it did begin mid-scene (as it had to), it did offer a complete story, AND it drew one of my favorite non-Dark Tower books, The Stand, into The Dark Tower mythology.

I wasn't reading comics at the time this came out, so I wasn't familiar with Dave McKean, and didn't buy the hardcover with his illustrations.

I was managing a liquor store when I got around to reading this. I have mainly bad memories of this job. But I had recently reconnected with an acquaintance who stopped into the store to hang out with me for a bit, and I was reading this behind the counter when he came in. He wasn't a Stephen King fan, but I mentioned the Wizard Of Oz overtones of this book, and we got into a long discussion about literature and books that we liked, and TV shows. He was still hanging out by closing time, so I bought some beer and Zima (it was the late 90s), and we went back to my house to keep the conversation going. His name was Ryan.

15. Firestarter: This is another book I haven't read in forever. So I'm mostly rating it by my memory of reading it, not by its actual quality.

I read this shortly after reading The Shining, and thought that they were moderately similar. I had the idea that Firestarter should be a sequel to The Shining. Where Danny has met someone else with The Shining/Push, and they have given birth to Charlene. 

It's opening is somewhat similar to the opening of The Stand, in the whole Running Away From A Government Agency That Has Fucked Up And Needs To Contain Or Kill You Before They're Discovered. But I remember The Stand's version vividly, and have only a vague recollection of it in Firestarter.

16. Dolores Claiborne: I bought this at the same bookstore where I was given the autographed copy of Needful Things. I had gone back and forth about whether to buy this book or Gerald's Game (which came out around the same time, and the owners convinced me to buy this one. 

The reason turned out to be that they had a pre-ordered a signed copy of Gerald's Game. I am pleased to report that it was not signed TO me, as that would have been a creepy gift for a fifteen year old.

I *think* I read Gerald's Game first.  You'll note it's not on the list yet. There is a cool moment in both books where a solar eclipse takes place, and the two characters see each other, but that's the only point of crossover that I remember.

Doloros Claiborne is a murder confession given by someone who is defending themselves against a false murder accusation. There's no magic. No monsters. King isn't always great when he writes female protagonists, or when he sets out to tell a monsterless story, but I remember really enjoying this one.

17. Night Shift: This is another collection that I admit, might be much higher on the list if I were to have read all these books as an adult.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't get around to reading this until my senior year of high school.  By that point, I'd seen all of the So Far produced movies and TV episodes based on the short stories in this. And some of my favorite actually short stories (as opposed to novellas) by Stephen King are in here. And, in absolutely every case, the stories are all vastly superior to the movies. Some King adaptations range from Decent to Excellent. But most of the movies that came out of this collection aren't even interesting t watch. But the book is definitely worth reading, particularly if you enjoy very short horror stories.

18.  The Dark Tower: This book is only this high on the list with the following caveat: DON'T READ THE EPILOGUE. It will be tempting. After all, this is the culmination of thousands of pages (probably tens of thousands if you include all the non-Dark Tower books that King also ties into the story) of a story that began so well. And even though there are some Massive Missteps in the series (the cliffhanging ending of Waste Lands, the use of 9/11 as a plot point in Song Of Susannah, the sometimes interesting but sometimes Too Much use of Stephen King as a character in much of the later books), Some of the threads of the series are tied up nicely, and leave a satisfying ending PROVIDED YOU DON'T READ THE EPILOGUE.


This came out during a time when I used Livejournal frequently, and I made a spoilerless rant on my LJ about the end of this book. An acquaintance whose work I admired noted: Stephen King Told You To Put The Book Down And Not Read The Epilogue. Why Didn't You Trust Him?

So, if you're going to invest the time to read this series, tear out the epilogue, burn it, and use the ashes to spice the food of your enemies. DON'T READ IT.

​19. Carrie: Yea, yea, yea. It's a classic. Yea, yea, yea. It's his first book, and it is actually good. It's not as Dated as you might imagine based on some of his other early books.

It's only this low on the list because there have been fifty-seven? movie and television adaptations, and a fucken Broadway fucken musical. 

I read it. It was good. But I don't remember when I read it, or it affecting my life other than my thinking, "Stephen King's first published novel was pretty good. That's cool."

20. Everything's Eventual:  I wasn't sure whether this or Hearts In Atlantis would be the last on my in-depth list. They're both collections of stories rather than novels, they both tie into The Dark Tower series, and I may have read them back to back, smudging my ability to rate them individually. 

In the end, I decided I liked this one better purely because of the way each of them is set up. 


Hearts In Atlantis has a lot of  Vietnam-era nostalgia that appeals more to Baby Boomers than anyone else. I understand its importance and influence over American culture in the late 20th century, but TV and movies and books were inundated with the material so much that writing a Great Book About Vietnam in the 21st century is akin to writing A New Take On Vampires, or A Non-Problematic Story About A Woman Being Raped As Written By A Man. It's possible, but statistically unlikely.

Hearts In Atlantis is also a mostly chronological tale of interweaving stories while Everything's Eventual, according to King, was arranged by shuffling a deck of cards, with each story being represented by a different card.

While only one of the stories in Everything's Eventual is directly tied to The Dark Tower, it's an important story, and would be worth reading on its own.

Other books by Stephen King which I read and either enjoyed, or, at least, didn't hate, are Hearts In Atlantis, Four Past Midnight, Tommyknockers, From A Buick 8, Bag Of Bones, Wastelands, Wolves Of Callah, Song Of Susannah, Insomnia, and Cujo.

Books I couldn't get into at all: Eyes Of The Dragon, The Talisman, Christine, Green Mile.

Books I read all the way through that were So Awful I Was Angry: Dreamcatcher, The Regulators, Desperation, Rose Madder, Cycle Of The Werewolf, Gerald's Game.

Underappreciated literary connoisseur, Scott Woods, has warned that he is putting together his rated guide to the complete works of Stephen King. This has been inspired by the release of the new adaptation of It, which I was invited to go see last night, and which I have also been invited to see tonight but which I'm not likely to get to any time soon.

I'm not a horror guy. Or a fast rides guy. Or a Haunted House guy. But I've read every twentieth century, and most of the early twenty-first century books. And since The Esteemed Mr. Woods has me pondering whether or not to read any of the more recent books, or whether I might want to revisit some of the classics, I present you with the first ten choices from  my own rating guide.It's highly subjective, and attached to my memories surrounding the book, as well as the books' literary merit. Caveat emptor.

1. The Gunslinger: My dad's second wife was a lifelong Stephen King fan. She read every book when it came out. Except the Dark Tower books. She refused to read the series until it was finished. I was about seventeen when we had our first conversation about King's work, and I asked how she knew The Gunslinger was going to be the sprawling epic it became, and she admitted that she didn't. But by the time she remembered that she wanted to read it, The Drawing Of The Three had come out, and that's when she made her pledge. 

​I was in junior high when  first read The Gunslinger. I wrote a series of poems about it, the first of which was plagiarized by one of my friends who went to a different school. When, the next year, we attended the same school, and I read my poem at an open mic, an hour after he'd read the same poem at an earlier session of the open mic, we were hauled into the principal's office where I wept like an ill-tended wound at the betrayal, and he called me a liar. The teacher who'd run the open mic told us neither of us should ever submit it to the school lit journal, and we should forget about the poem and work on our friendship. That was the only year I went to that school.

Unlike some other epics, the original version of this book (I haven't read any of the subsequent rereleases, and don't care to) was a self-contained story unlike any of King's other works, and I treasured it, and reread it every time a new volume of The Dark Tower came out, and sometimes reread it on its own. I've read the graphic novel adaptation, and will probably see the movie, though I have very low expectations for it. 

2. Different Seasons: Arguably, Stephen King's most literary collection. Three out of the four stories in this book have been made into films. Two of them: Stand By Me (based on "The Body"), and Shawshank Redemption (based on "Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption") are excellent. One of them: Apt Pupil, based on the story of the same name, is Not At All Watchable.

I don't remember whether I watched Stand By Me before I read "The Body", but I probably did. I definitely read this before Shawshank Redemption.

I don't have many specific memories of the first time I read this book. I bought it from a bookstore that I'll write about more in-depth later. And I remember the owners asking me about it the next week.

Whatever I said must have impressed them because every time I went into the store after that, one or both of them would ask me why I was picking certain books, and how I was liking them. It didn't feel invasive, or like they were market testing me. They seemed really interested in this strange kid who would wander around their store and always buy something while his parents were in the grocery store.

3. The Drawing Of The Three: Still high off the fumes of The Gunslinger, I went and picked up The Drawing Of  The Three, the second part of The Dark Tower. Like The Gunslinger, it's a complete story. But, despite some character overlap, it feels like an entirely different genre. It's a fantasy book when we're in Roland's world. It's a 1980s crime book when he encounters The Prisoner. It's story about schizophrenia and civil rights, two things Stephen King doesn't write very well but he's slightly successful with in this volume....slightly,  when he meets The Lady Of The Shadows. And it's a coming of age with mental illness story in The Pusher. 

While this is more traditionally Stephen-Kingy than The Gunslinger, it's still a fun read, and it made me want more of this series. It's the last book of the series that I consider Truly Great. 

The second time I read it was just before The Waste Lands came out, and I was So Full Of Hope for what it would be. You'll note that it's not next on the list.

4. The Shining: I can't be the only person who read the book before I saw the movie. I love them both independently of each other.  I saw the movie for the first time in high school, when the dorm I lived in had a Jack-Nicholson Is Crazy-thon watching Batman, A Few Good Men, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, cna capping it off with The Shining. Narratively, I would have had a Few Good Men leave the disgraced general to go to The Overlook Hotel and experience The Shining, where he's rescued at the end and redeemed into One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but that doesn't hold, and BOOM he's the Joker in Batman.


The most recent time I saw the movie was one of the last times I did hallucinogens, and I was slightly worried about how the film would affect me, but I ended up spending the entire time staring at the hotel's carpets, and missed the plot entirely.

The scene that terrified me in the book that never made it into the movie was the wasps' nest.  As a kid who played outside a lot, and was stung repeatedly, I had difficulty reading this part. I was completely convinced it would give me nightmares, but it didn't. It reminded me of a nature trail in my town that we would field trip to every year or so. In the museum/gift shop there was an empty wasp's nest that terrified me.  As an adult, I took a date to the nature trail, and he Stepped In A Digger Wasp's Nest right in front of me. I have an old poem about this which is absolutely true. The wasps landed in his hair, and buzzed around him but left me alone (as a contrast, when I was twelve, I stepped in a yellowjacket nest on the ground, and, despite running faster than my compatriots, was the only person who was stung...and I was stung Quite A Bit).

So this book should have utterly terrified me, but I actually enjoyed it as a character study rather than a horror book. I thought about it when, the February Vacation after I read it, my family spent a week in a quiet (but not empty) hotel in Maine.  

This book has a lot of flaws, but it captivated me when I was younger, and it's flaws (mainly the Magical Negro trope) were done out of ignorance, not malice, and I'm willing to excuse them in his earlier works in a way that I can't when the time came that he Should Have Known Better.

5. It: This was the first book I ever read by Stephen King. My family was on our way to vacation in Florida, and my parents were willing to buy anything to keep me entertained. The problem was that I'd read all the children and young adult books in the airport store, so I picked up It.

This must have amused them. I'd been terrified of Gremlins, and Nightmare On Elm Street, and the horror movies that my friends liked. I was ten and had no room in my life for horror. During this vacation, I would cement my fear of roller coasters on Disney's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. But I read that book from cover to cover.


I hadn't finished it during vacation, so I brought it in to read during Reading Time. The girls in my class noticed it first, and said there was Sex Stuff in it (I knew!) and I shouldn't read it, so the told my teacher, Miss Markarian. She asked what my parents would think of me reading such a book. And I told her they bought it for me. Thus, she let me read it in class, but wouldn't let me allow anyone else to borrow it.

The sex parts didn't really interest me. Nor was I mature enough to understand that The Losers Club was a bunch of traumatized kids from a community not unlike mine. The appeal of a group of outsiders facing some cosmic monster that was sometimes a spider and sometimes a clown fascinated me. It wasn't until I read it as an adult when I went "Uhh...why are these kids having a gangbang to celebrate killing a monster? This is...kind of messed up." As a kid, it flew right over my head.

6. The Dark Half was the second Stephen King book I ever finished. I wrote a ton of short stories and journaled fairly religiously when I was a kid. So the idea that you could excise a part of you that created a type of art you were uncomfortable with fascinated me.


I think my parents assumed that my choosing It had been a fluke of availability, so they were probably a little taken aback when I bought this the year it came out.

​
I had tried The Eyes Of The Dragon and  The Talisman between It and Dark Half, and I believe my parents thought the books had been too frightening for me. Actually, they both bored me. This was the book that made me pick up Dead Zone and The Gunslinger, and  follow down the dark, winding road of Stephen King books.

7. Needful Things: I haven't gone back and reread this since I was a teenager. 

There was a book store that opened up in the plaza where my parents did their grocery shopping when I was fourteen. It's where I bought Misery, Tommyknockers, Different Seasons, The Stand, and Four Past Midnight. 

I wasn't their first ever customer, but I think I was the first Avid Reader Kid they encountered. It was a British couple who owned the store, and they loved talking to me. And they loved how much money I spent there, as I didn't JUST buy Stephen King books there.


One week, I was feeling pretty down. I had gone into the pet store to check out hamsters, and at some point, I'd picked up a shaker full of fish food for my aquarium and stuffed it in my pocket, not realizing I hadn't paid for it until I was out in the parking lot. I was shook, and trying to figure out what to do. I loved that pet shop and not only didn't want to get caught shoplifting from them, I didn't want them to lose money from my mistake. So I went into the bookstore to figure out my next step.

The woman saw me come in and said "Oh good, you're here! I have a present for you." and went into the back.

I was expecting the cops to come out and drag  me out in cuffs.

Instead, she handed me an autographed copy of Stephen King's new book Needful Things. It wasn't just autographed. It was personalized. To me. She and her husband had been at a book convention, had the opportunity to meet him, and had him sign a book to me. I cried So Hard.

I did get a little skeezed out reading the book when it turned out to be a shop owner who trades people their desires in exchange for "mysterious deeds". I wondered what they wanted from me.

The next week I went in, bought some more books, and also sneakily returned the unopened fish food to the pet store and then purchased it.

There is a creepy dream sequence involving a twelve year old boy's sexual relationship with one of his teachers that inspired me to write several Also Creepy erotic short stories that, thankfully, have been lost forever and ever.

8. 'salem's Lot: My confession for this book is that I didn't finish it the first time I read it. I had been reading The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice (which was a trilogy at that point) and I decided I didn't care about vampire stories. 

So, shortly after vampires were revealed to be a part of this book, I stopped reading it.

I didn't pick it back up until I was reading Wolves Of Callah over a decade later, and they referenced one of the characters from 'salem's Lot, so I put that book down and went back and actually read 'salem's Lot and loved it in a way I might not have as a teenager, even if I'd bothered finishing it.



I'm not big on religion in the same way that I'm not super into vampire stories. But I love a good Loss Of Faith tale, particularly when it's not resolved. 

I spent about an hour talking about this book with a roommate who didn't read very often, but had read 'salem's Lot as a teenager, and had a lot of thoughts about it. I convinced him he should read The Dark Tower series, ad he initially liked it, but got bored during the fourth book, and so never made it to see how 'salem's Lot came into play.

9. The Stand: I read this the same summer I read Les Miserables. Those were, The Only Books I Read That Summer. In a parallel universe, I am still reading this book. M-O-O-N that spells Fucken Long Ass Book.

There are a ton of tropes in this book that I didn't pick up when I was a teenager. That's probably for the best.

What I loved was the world building, and I remember being surprised that when I finished reading this, I still wanted More.


So when The Dark Tower series crossed over into the world that The Stand had set up, I was overjoyed. It was when I first realized that King was building a Universe. Sure, a bunch of his earlier books had taken place in the same towns (usually in Maine), but this was Different. Something amazing was happening in The Dark Tower, and it was going to be tied into this book that I had wanted to be Somehow Longer.

I was also considering becoming a Deaf Education Major, and working with Deaf Children when this book came out, so I was excited that there was a Deaf character in this book. I remember explaining that to a Deaf friend and having him reply by making the Universal Whoopty-Doo sign with his index finger.

10. The Dead Zone:  If I've learned anything from comic books and Stephen King novels, it's that Having Powers sucks. There's always some cosmic or karmic price tag. "Oh, hey, you can see terrible things in the future, but that power is slowly killing you, and you only realized you had it after a prolonged coma." Yeesh.

I think much of why I liked this was that I was just beginning to distrust politicians as I was reading this, and the idea that a despicable man would have risen to power and destroyed the world, only to be stopped when he's exposed as a coward (he uses a child as a human shield during an assassination attempt), just sat really well with me.

If you're fairly certain your congressperson wouldn't gladly use a poor, minority child as a human shield to prolong their ghoulish existence, congratulations, you're probably delusional.

To be....continued. (But hopefully you won't have to wait as long as I had to wait between Wastelands and Wizard & Glass.)

​The truest loss from our unrecorded podcast was when I went full Diana Ross at the mere mention of Alan Moore's run on Supreme.

the first hour and a half run where we did the entire show except that someone who shall remain nameless but wasn't me, forgot to press record.

I mention this only because of the slight laughter every time I say "I don't know if I told you about (x).", which was my sarcastic way of reminding my cohost that I had just told him this story a couple of hours earlier.

​On the plus side, we ended up with a much tighter how as we had already covered everything and we both desperately wanted to go home.

Anthony: What would be the drinking game for this podcast?

Me: It would be drinking every time there's an "ummmm" but I cut those in post.

AG: There has to be something we do consistently.

Pause

AG: Probably I pause too often between thoughts.

​Me: We both do. I edit those in post, too. Otherwise it's like listening to William Shatner and Christopher Walken narrate an amateur golf tournament.

Special guest, Ali Colluccio from Panels.net and The Invisible Jetcast comes on to talk about Wonder Woman.

00:00 - Dark Crystal gets darker
01:20 - Ali Colluccio, beer and comics
02:10 - talking about The Invisible Jetcast
03:03 - Straczynski, Wonder Woman pants, mental health
03:30 - we all love Azarello & Chang's run on WW
07:45 - why none of us are reading the current Finch run on WW
11:37 - WW in Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier
12:52 - Cliff Chang and Matt Wilson's art makes WW far superior to other N52 comics
15:36 - Gail Simone and consistent WW
17:44 - Dennis O'Neil and Mod WW
20:36 - the Greg Rucka WW run and Hiketeia
22:43 - WW in the upcoming Batman Superman movie
24:42 - character design and growth in the Azarello Chang run
29:44 - aside on how awesome DC Bombshells is
33:06 - the role of men in the Azarello Chang run
37:00 - ideal future creative teams for WW
39:52 - Ali talks about Panels.net
41:23 - Plutonia issue one
44:35 - Toil & Trouble issue one
46:10 - somehow Aliens Vampirella doesn't suck
47:33 - Rocket Queen & The Wrench issue one
48:34 - trade paperbacks and graphic novels

This week, Adam and Anthony tackle a more serious topic: graphic novels about World War II era Japan. To balance out the very serious nature of thee graphic novels, they also review a comic about magic girls and butt farts.

0:00 - Marvel Loves New York City
1:50 - Spreading our wings
2:20 - Showa Vol 01
8:06 - Nanjing The Burning City
12:25 - Battlefields: Dear Billy
17:00 - Barefoot Gen
27:55 - Zodiac Starforce #1
32:04 - Drive #1
33:32 - Over The Garden Wall #1
35:36 - Lady Mechanika #0
37:19 - Hank Johnson Agent Of Hydra
37:33 - New graphic novels including "Out On The Wire" and "The Tithe Volume 1"

After last week's exhausting hour and a half walk down Bendis-Crossover Lane, Adam and Anthony try to tackle the uber-smart Matt Kindt's work. Due to some, uhhh, errors, they don't even read the same books! Or was that all part of Matt Kindt's evil plan? We also discuss five number one issues, some ongoing series and some new graphic novels/trade paperback collections. There may also be a couple of unfortunate sing-alongs.

0:00 - Unfortunate Sing Along #1
1:07 - Matt Kindt!
1:45 - Anthony talks about Divinity
4:10 - Adam talks about Red Handed
6:07 - Anthony talks about Revolver
8:17 - both of us talk about 3 Story
10:00 - both of us talk about Mind MGMT
16:21 - Adam does a quick read of Pastaways #2 & #3
20:26 - #1s! 
21:13 - Welcome Back #1 by Christopher Sebela & Jonathan Brandon Sawyer
23:00 - Secret Wars Secret Love #1 (from Marvel)
25:07 - Howard The Human #1 by Skottie Young & Jim Mahfood
26:50 - House Of M #1 by Dennis Hopeless & Marco Failla
28:19 - Hip-Hop Family Tree #1 by Ed Piskor
32:11 - other stuff we are still reading including Archie #2! and Rat Queens #11
45:57 - new graphic novels including Unbeatable Squirrel Girl & Jason's "If You Steal"

Tune in next week as we talk about four books about war comics taking place in the WW2 era Japan.

Due to computer issues, I didn't get a chance to edit the Brian Michael Bendis crossover episode we did, but it is available in two parts on iTunes, as well as at Our Soundcloud Page.