Stephen King's "N."

Stephen King is constantly pushing the boundaries of creative storytelling. His recent team-up with Marvel on the brilliant and beautiful adaptation of his materwork The Dark Tower has proven to be both a financial and critical success, causing non comic book readers to delve deeper into the under appreciated art form. Well, now they're at it again, this time creating a video comic book available exclusively on the web. Designed specifically to be viewed on the go on small screens like computers, cell phones and iPods, "N." is basically slightly animated comic book panels with a full cast voice over, music and sound effects and the result is quite a bit more effective than it sounds. The story actually gave me a small case of the wiggins.

"N." refers to a mysterious pschiatric patient who suffers from multiple forms of OCD including compulsions to count things. Black shoes on the way to lunch, brown on the way back. If there's an even number of plates above ten in the dishwasher all is well, if not the appropriate number of clean ones must be added. The book shelf needs to have one hundred books on it not 97. Odd numbers are dangerous. Even Numbers like eight set things straight. This behavior stems from a trip he made to the ominous Ackermans Field where he may have disrupted the order of the world and needs to count and set various items in circles or diagonals to protect us all from hideous creatures that lie beyond this world attempting to break in. Is N. crazy or will his head shrinker find that his condition is dark and contagious?

The show is rather brilliant both in it's unique method of digital delivery and stunningly creepy narrative. It's based on a short story that will be appearing in King's upcoming anthology collection Just After Sunset which hits shelves 11/11/08. A graphic novel of the story will also be released in early 2009 by Marvel Comics. For now you can buy "N." on iTunes or watch it at http://www.nishere.com/. Or you can watch it right here on this blog. Be careful though. It's catching...