Novelists writing comics

In The Times, Tim Martin looks at the growing number of novelists writing (or overseeing) comic books.

The size of the influx is startling. Stephen King, one of the world's bestselling authors, has recently overseen the first in a series of comic adaptations from his Dark Tower novels. Ian Rankin, having retired the bibulous Inspector Rebus from print, has turned his attention to John Constantine, the hard-bitten Chandlerian sorcerer of Vertigo's Hellblazer comics. Michael Chabon has published several issues of The Escapist, a superhero created by the fictional protagonists of his novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, while his contemporary Jonathan Lethem is halfway through a run on Omega the Unknown, a timely resurrection for one of the most philosophically baffling superheroes.