Summary
If you’re going to have heroes like theX-Menface their greatest fears, who better to call than the King of Horror himself,Stephen King? While King’s prolific writing career has seen him dip his toes into the world of comics, most of that has been focused on horror and adaptations of his own work. But in a rare contribution to a superhero comic, King subjects a beloved X-Man to a terrifying scenario that reads like a condensed version of his classic novel,Thinner.
Stephen King’s sole work on an X-Men comic appears in the 1985 one-shotHeroes for Hope: Starring the X-Men. This special comic was published to raise money to raise money and awareness about hunger in Africa. Numerous writers and artists contributed short segments to the story,including notable creators like King, George R.R. Martin, Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Harlan Ellison and Frank Miller.
King wrote three pages of the story that were penciled by Bernie Wrightson, inked by Jeff Jones, lettered by Tom Orzechowski and colored by Christie Steele. The segment sees Kitty Pryde enduring a horrifying bout with extreme hunger.
Even Marvel Heroes Are Scared By Stephen King
The Thing and the Human Torch regularly go up against evil supervillains, but even they are terrified by the works of horror legend Stephen King.
X-Men’s Kitty Pryde Faces the Curse fromThinner
The comic opens with the X-Mansion seemingly transported to the middle of the desert. After this is revealed to be an illusion, the story follows each member of the X-Men as they experience their worst fears. When Kitty Pryde enters the kitchen for a snack, she is confronted by a cloaked figure who identifies himself as Hungry.Hungry places his hands on Kitty and she starts rapidly getting thinner. He offers her a plate of food, only for it to immediately rot once she touches it. The extreme starvation causes her to wither away, and she’s practically a skeleton when Hungry departs, leaving her babbling on the floor in terror.
Reading the story, it’s hard not to be reminded of another King tale of someone wasting away.The novelThinnerfollows Billy Halleck, an overweight lawyer who accidentally kills a Romani woman with his car. He is then cursed by the woman’s father with a single word - “Thinner” - and begins to lose weight at an alarming rate, becoming emaciated no matter how much he eats. Obviously, the circumstances in the two stories are very different, as Kitty’s torture turns out to be a vision while Halleck’s is very real.But the haunting pencil work by Swamp Thing co-creator Bernie Wrightson captures the horrific essence ofThinnerin just a few pages.
Stephen King’s Scariest Concepts Can Be Used More Than Once
Thinnerwas published just a year prior to the release ofHeroes for Hope.It’s likely that, at the time, few readers considered the similarities between the two works.King wroteThinnerunder his pseudonym, Richard Bachman. It would turn out to be the last Bachman book that King would publish prior to his identity being publicly revealed in April 1985, just a few months beforeHeroes for Hopehit stands. But although there are similarities between the two, that’s not to say that King was copying or repeating himself.
Throughout his career, King has often revisited scenarios and characters that he’s found interesting, expanding them or looking at them from different angles.The short story “Night Surf” serves as a sort of prototype forThe Stand. In 1996, he wrote two novels,Desperation(published under his own name) andThe Regulators(published as a “lost” Bachman book) that serve as mirrors to each other. And hisDark Towerseries is filled with characters from previous works. He’s also produced several works based on the idea of evil cars, including the novelsChristineandFrom a Buick 8, the short stories “Trucks” and “Uncle Otto’s Truck,” and his sole directorial effort,the movieMaximum Overdrive.
Some readers who picked upHeroes for Hopelikely found the scenario King creates to be even more frightening. That’s because it happens to a fan-favorite hero, rather than to a protagonist like Halleck who, to be honest, deserves his fate. If he were to ever write anotherX-Menstory again, there’s no telling what kind of fresh horrorsStephen Kingcould come up with to plague Marvel’s Merry Mutants.
X-Men
The X-Men franchise, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, centers on mutants with extraordinary abilities. Led by the powerful telepath Professor Charles Xavier, they battle discrimination and villainous mutants threatening humanity. The series explores themes of diversity and acceptance through a blend of action, drama, and complex characters, spanning comics, animated series, and blockbuster films.
