Comic Info
Comic Name: The Stand: The Night Has Come
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Artist: Mike Perkins
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2012
Reprints The Stand: The Night Has Come #1-6 (October 2011-March 2012). The final battle has arrived. The forces of good and the forces of evil have gathered and now Glen Bateman, Stu Redman, Larry Underwood, and Ralph Brentner have been sent West to Las Vegas to meet Randall Flagg. Their battle will challenge the world and when they take a stand, not all of them will return.
Adapted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, The Stand Volume 6: The Night Has Come follows The Stand Volume 5: No Man’s Land and is the final volume in the Marvel adaptation of the 1978 Stephen King classic novel. Featuring art by Mike Perkins, the series was relatively well received as a whole and this final volume ends the series.
I love The Stand and have read it numerous times. This adaptation does get the best aspects of the story and manages to do it without omitting much. I have to admire a series that through thirty-one issues can tell the story of a 1000+ page book.
With the completion of the series, I kind of hope Marvel might take another Stephen King story to be adapted like ’Salem’s Lot, It, or The Tommyknockers or even one of the smaller novels like Carrie or Firestarter. I wouldn’t even be opposed to an anthology piece if they adapted his short stories completely (even the bad ones) from books like Night Shift and Skeleton Crew.
That being said, despite my love for The Stand, I sometime have issues with the end of the novel. The beginning of the book (as told in The Stand 1: Captain Trips, The Stand 2: American Nightmare, and The Stand 3: Soul Survivors) is so compelling with the story of survival and a well thought out “post-society” world. As the armies gathered (as told in The Stand 4: Hardcases and The Stand: No Man’s Land), the novel remains interesting, but the whole Hand of God aspect seems a bit of cop-out, and I want more than an Act of God after everything that has occurred.
The Stand: The Night Has Come #6
The story is so monumental however that God’s intervention might not have been avoidable…I just wish other than the visions and occurrences that the book had a bit more of a religious theme leading up to this conclusion. It would have been better if a physical manifestation of God was fated…The Devil (aka Randall Flagg) is very present…God is unseen, but I wouldn’t have minded a more present God who seemed to surface more in The Stand 5: No Man’s Land.
The story does end in an aspect which does back the God aspect. The people were drawn together for a reason and once the evil is eliminated, they don’t feel the need to remain together. It is a bit of a downer (I remember the same sense of sadness at the end of It). Even though the comic book shortened the original story it does feel rather epic to reach the end (it is no Bone or Sandman however).
The Stand 6: The Night Has Come was a strong ending to a rather strong adaptation. Don’t miss the opportunity to read The Stand, but the comic is a nice way to revisit the story if you don’t have time for the thousand plus page book.
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