This year, Stephen King fans around the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of Carrie , which is notably the first novel that the author had published – but Constant Readers will note that it wasn’t his first piece of published fiction. Instead, that superlative belongs to “I Was A Teenage Grave Robber,” which King wrote in high school and was included in a 1965 issue of the fanzine Comics Review. Because of the short story, that publication is a pretty important part of literary history.
.. and it also has a fun place in the history of the new adaptation of Salem’s Lot .
With the upcoming horror film set to arrive for Max subscribers on October 3, I had the chance to interview Salem’s Lot writer/director Gary Dauberman earlier this month, and it was at the very end of our conversation that I learned a wonderful bit of trivia about the movie. While discussing Stephen King’s remarkable literary legacy, the filmmaker told me that there is a deleted scene from the new adaptation that features the aforementioned issue of Comics Review. Said Dauberman, It didn't get into the movie, but I had the original publication, the zine of his first published short story.
Someone brought it in. It's like, if you buy it, it's like $10, 15 grand or whatever. I had a scene where Mark Petrie is leaving class and he drops all his books and stuff, and Ben [Mears] helps him pick it up and he picks it up and he looks at it, and that's where Mark gets all his knowledge of horror movies.