Stephen King’s The Stand “Prequel,” 88-Page Poem, Coming in July

You know you’ve got it made when a poem you wrote in college gets published in multiple limited editions. In this case, The Dark Man is significant because it’s the first time Stephen King write about Randall Flagg, the antichrist figure from The Stand.

Augmented by creepy illustrations from Glen Chadbourne, it’s a simpler tale of a faceless man walking on down the road, and the dark secrets he hides. I put the term “prequel” in quotes because I’m tired of people misusing the term – if it was written before The Stand, it’s not a prequel, but a predecessor.

And somehow I never get tired of decaying amusement parks as horror settings, which is fortunate, because authors don’t either.

You can preorder your copy directly from Cemetery Dance Productions. A look at the many variant covers after the jump…