Perhaps one of the most audacious adaptations of the works of Stephen King is Haven, a new Showcase Original series about a somewhat haunted female FBI agent and some very strange shenanigans in small-town Maine. The audacity stems from the fact that Haven is loosely based on King’s 2005 crime novella The Colorado Kid—a novella notable for being about an unsolvable mystery that indeed remains unexplained at story’s end. Herewith, a series of blogs examining the hows, wherefores and whys concerning various adaptations of Stephen King’s works. Adaptation is a slippery skill, and those who play with it often change not just the rules but the game itself, as the residents of a small town called Haven, and a dead guy nicknamed ‘Colorado,’ know all too well…

Haven Blog, Part 5:
EC DOES IT—STEPHEN KING AND HORROR COMIC BOOKS
by Gary Butler

Consider the following three bullet points: A quirky “monster” with a limited, very specific power or raison d’être. A death that is either poetically just or revenge-driven (well, a minimum of one death, but more would be permissible, and often encouraged). A twist ending.

The above list could handily describe every installment to date of Haven—Episode 9, “As You Were,” aired last night and is now live in our video centre—and will likely stand for those that remain in the 13-episode miniseries about a strange FBI agent in an even stranger town. But the three bullet points could just as easily describe the basic formula of EC Comics, a popular publisher of kid-targeted horror graphic anthologies, such as Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror, more than half a century ago. Which was when Stephen Edwin King was a kid.

King has always been the first to identify the EC influence on not just his writing, but his personality—he believes that EC was a core component in his development as the world’s favourite living horror author. Perhaps there is no better proof in acknowledging his roots than the fact that King wrote a movie in direct homage to the source material. Creepshow (1982) was directed by George Romero, of Night of the Living Dead fame. The movie comprised a group of five very short horror tales around which was wrapped a frame story about a small boy whose father keeps taking away his comic books (and went vaguely meta in the process, both by having the comic in question be a copy of Creepshow—which did not, in fact, exist—and by having King’s own son, Joe—who exists so much that he is now a getting-to-be-well-known horror author himself—play the part of the boy). Two of the stories were adapted for the screen from previously published King shorts, the rest were original—all of it was 100% Stephen King, but equally so EC.

To a large extent, televised horror has often followed the EC pattern. There are far too many shows to mention, but to pick some of the better-known names on a one-per-decade basis, consider: The Twilight Zone (the ’60s), Kolchak (the ’70s), Tales from the Darkside (the ’80s), The X-Files (the ’90s), and Masters of Horror (the ’00s). And, now, Haven.

This is not to suggest that any of the above shows are definable in strictly EC terms—all of them transcend the bullet points or a regular basis. But it’s still there in the genetic code. Consider “As You Were,” which is essentially Haven’s take on Agatha Christie’s classic trapped-on-an-island Ten Little Indians scenario. Except that this time, the person who trapped them is much more than a killer: It’s an EC-type monster exacting EC-type revenge (of sorts)—and the ending is as EC-twisty as they come. [Ed’s note: Nothing you just read will spoil the episode.]

It bears mentioning that King’s love of comics has been rekindled of late. The author stopped following the four-colour pages for decades, but his attention was wooed back in the last few years, which have seen the release of adaptations of his “Gunslinger,” a.k.a. Dark Tower, series (1982-current) as well as his books The Stand (1978) and The Talisman (1984, co-written with Peter Straub). Many of these adaptations are expansions: For just one example, The Talisman includes a brand-new ‘Chapter 0’ that predates the timeline in the book. King is even co-writing an all-new, all-original comic, American Vampire.

(It also bears mentioning that King’s Cycle of the Werewolf (1983), widely believed to be a scrapped comic book turned into, instead, a novella with twelve illustrated chapter-heading pages by famed comic artist Berni Wrightson, was actually originally a calendar that became a novella.)

Fans of Haven might argue that show’s most comic-book episode to date was Episode 7, “Sketchy,” in which charcoal illustrations become weapons of mass destruction. Fans of comic books, though, would be quick to counter that a plot device simply involving pictures does not a picture book make. As aforementioned, any individual installment of the show will be EC in the biggest sense, which is to say, that of the powers and plans of the monster of the week—known collectively as “The Troubles.” Still, the three best examples have been the stuffed animals in “Fur” (Episode 6), the shadow in “Ain’t No Sunshine” (Episode 8), and Episode 9’s “host,” who traps eight citizens of Haven in his island mansion for purposes that go well-beyond murder.

The big question is whether or not the story of “The Colorado Kid”—an unsolved local murder, not to mention the title of the Stephen King novella by the same name upon which Haven is loosely based—will have an easy ending, or an EC one, or both, or neither. King audaciously went out of his way to leave the murder unsolved in his story; with four episodes to go, and with more clues starting to show up in these later episodes, it looks like Haven is heading towards resolution. Here’s hoping it’s poetic justice, not revenge.

TWO WEEKS FROM NOW, Haven Blog #6: TROUBLES, TROUBLES—BOILING BUBBLES?