Comic Info
Comic Name: The Stand: Soul Survivors
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Artist: Mike Perkins/Laura Martin
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2010
The Stand: Soul Survivors #4 (Variant)
Reprints The Stand: Soul Survivors #1-5 (December 2009-May 2010). Nick continues to head to Nebraska and makes a new friend in Tom Cullen but an enemy in Julie Lawry. Larry Underwood discovers he’s being followed by a woman named Nadine Cross and a boy she named Joe, but Nadine is hiding her own secrets. Harold’s growing feelings for Fran could become disastrous as Fran and Stu grow closer. While the survivors make their way to Nebraska, Mother Abagail recalls her past and wonders if she is strong enough for the job God has given her…and the future of humanity could be determined!
Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, The Stand Volume 3: Soul Survivors continues Marvel Comics adaptation of Stephen King’s massive 1978 novel The Stand. Following The Stand Volume 2: American Nightmare, the collection was well received and features art by Mike Perkins and Laura Martin.
This is the segment of The Stand where the tone of the novel really starts to change. The plague is essentially over and it becomes the “what’s next?” segment of the story. While many post-apocalyptic novels seem to falter either after the plague or the events leading up to the new landscape of the world, Stephen King managed to keep it interesting and evolving.
The Stand: Soul Survivors #5 (Variant)
Stephen King has a way with characterization and Aguirre-Sacasa does a nice job bringing it to the page. The issues in this collection pretty much each focus on one of the major groups and really serve to introduce Mother Abagail’s role in the story as the force of good to Randall Flagg’s evil.
The Stand has more of a natural “what if?” horror to it. What would you do in the situation of the survivors if you had to remove someone’s appendix to save them? Could you cut them open and even try? It is stuff like this which makes The Stand almost more science-fiction than horror in points, but the psychic stuff firmly attaches it to Stephen King and sometimes feels like a bit of a crutch…not so much in The Stand in which is serves a purpose, but in other novels by King.
The Stand continues to develop as a great adaptation to Stephen King’s novels and I kind of wish that The Dark Tower series would follow suit and have a more progressive path to completing the series. It would also be nice to see some of Stephen King’s other more classic stories like ’Salem’s Lot come to comic book page or less known (and tied to both The Stand and The Dark Tower by Randall Flagg) Eyes of the Dragon adapted. The Stand is continued in The Stand 4: Hardcases.
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