I'll tell you why I'm not excited
About this whole Stephen King thing. And frankly, why I'm not excited about any big-name author coming in and writing books for the major publishers. Hell, about the only franchise character/author I'd be up in arms about would be Harry Potter (and that's not going to happen, as JK Rowling has gone on the record about her disdain for comics in general.) See, Harry Potter is even more of a brand name than Rowling herself, and that brand name would motivate kids to go seek out the comics (particularly if it were new material and not just adaptations of the books that they can already read). Kids are more likely to get comics by dint of the fact that they're kids and haven't been exposed to years and years of programming that comics aren't a medium for Mature Folks Who Can Read Real Books (as we get so often.)
Stephen King fails to elicit the same excitement for a couple of reasons. One, and this is likely opaque to most folks, is that he's not writing the darn thing. He's plotting it, but from what I can gather, it's not clear if he's actually writing dialogue for it or not. So, there's his name up on the front of the book, but what's his actual contribution? "Written by Stephen King" seems a lot more exciting than "Original Content Contributed by Stephen King". Too bad the latter has been the descriptive phrase used more often than the former.
Next, it's kind of a second rate property as King goes. Now that's likely my perception getting in the way of things. If it were a brand new, entirely original set of stories/characters, then I'd be a tad more worked up about it. That said, the DARK TOWER material probably lends itself better to comics than much of his other work (though movies based on his novels seem to do okay, if they're adapted well, which is an iffy proposition.)
Lastly, it's a comic book. A monthly comic to be followed by a high-priced hardcover and then an affordable softcover sometime down the line. The original run won't be available outside the Direct Market (unless I'm reading things wrong, and if I am, then feel free to smack me around.) Yes, some people will probably be motivated to head into a DM comic store to get the originals as they come out. At least the first one or so. We'll see if they form the habit of coming back on a monthly basis to get the whole story.
I'd wager that they'd sell a lot more if they did it as a well-priced hardcover or even a slightly marked-up softcover original into all bookstores and not just the DM. Maybe, just maybe, bookstores could be convinced to carry the floppies and put them on the shelf next to King's other prose books. That might break the barriers a bit, but I don't see that happening. Having to give up face-out space on something that's only going to give you a buck or so a copy back, not to mention is even more fragile than a paperback and is of an odd size to begin with makes the odds of this happening slimmer than Bachman's protagonist in THINNER. It's gonna be easier to sell books in a bookstore. I know. My mastery of the obvious parallels that of even the mighty Steven Grant.
Okay, so you get King on the cover of a Marvel monthly and people respond to it. What are you going to do to capitalize on this? Where's the crossover appeal? Right now, it's likely to Vertigo (if they could somehow build up some synergy as the premiere publisher of horror comics, which is tough when you have competition like Dark Horse and IDW these days.) What do you bring out to keep people coming back? And how does this fit in with your franchise-at-all-costs marketing/editorial plan in general?
Like a lot of other things Marvel's done lately (and DC for that matter), this is a stunt. A one-time event to grab some headlines and to my eyes, offers little or nothing of substance to really shake things up. I've said it before and I'll say it again: most people don't want 22 pages at a time of story. Unless that 22 pages is in of itself an entire story. And even so, most people are primed for a larger "satisfying chunk" (to take the phrase that's been floating around the Engine lately) than that. If the big companies want to be treated like original book publishers (and not just like that in their reprint divisions), then they need to deliver a product that satisfies like a book and not like a short story. Audience expectation is quite nearly everything, format-wise. You choose to adapt your offerings like that, or you get stuck with the audience you already have.
Oh yeah. Another thing. This will be a comic book. Recent PW coverage and embraces by the literary establishment aside, most adults aren't going to want to touch it with a ten foot pole, Stephen King or not. Remember that King did the comic adapatation of Creepshow with Berni Wrightson providing the art, and I'm betting that it didn't sell all that well compared to King's other works of the time. Sure looks pretty, though.
Finally, I'd love to be proven wrong in this. Really I would.