Some simply know him as the King of Horror, a household name in the genre of the dark and terrifying. Yet, Stephen King has become much more then that, he is now being compared to the likes of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and other legends of great literature and rightfully so. He is one of the greatest writers of this generation and only time will tell his full impact upon the field of classic literature.

Now, with the final book of the Dark Tower Series completed, we, the Constant Reader, can look back over the scope of his work, and begin to see the completion of a universe unlike anything else imaged in the scope of ancient or modern writers. His stories have held us spellbound and captivated for thousands of pages. Year in and year out, he has topped the best sellers list like no other writer has ever done before. It would be enough to simply say that he is a great writer, but there is something more here then simply the telling of a great story. We have now seen the storyteller become the legend.

The Dark Tower series is in and of itself a classic story; it is a blending of old western, sci-fi, epic fantasy, romance, action-adventure, and perhaps another half dozen genres mixed together and placed carefully on a broad canvas. It has something for everyone and if the story is to be believed, it is about everyone and everything. It is in the most simplest of terms, a tale about good and evil and those caught in that struggle. It is perhaps his greatest work, it is at the very least one of his finest works.

By setting his horror in the everyday and allowing the normal to become the supernormal, the reader is brought along with the characters of the story as the events, however bizarre, unfold. This allows the reader to greatly identify with the characters and to make that all important emotional attachment to the character as a person.

While this is not always possible in the setting of most epic fantasies, there are still common components which can allow for this emotional connection. The making of a meal, the longing for a loved one far away, the simple act of saving another person's life can cause the reader to identify with the motives and see the character as a hero or heroine more easily. The smallest tasks preformed by the characters can have greater meaning later on in the story, like a ripple in a still pond.

I would at first like to examine just one of the main characters found in many of Stephen King's novels, To see how a well developed character can take on a life of his own and at times, even haunt the author. Of course I am speaking of none other then, The Walking Dude, himself, Randall Flagg. Now if you were to jump online and do a search of the Walking Dude, you will find a great wealth of information. I know because I did just that and found a long entry about him on wikipedia.org, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Flagg) and several other sites talking about his role within the battle between good and evil. He is a powerful player on the chess board of the Dark Tower series and throughout the other novels tied to this series.

In all his various guises, his various names, his cold-hearted nature, he is a character we love to hate, we love to read about, and we would love to see destroyed. Well, at least after one more story, another book...

All things must come to some kind of end. But, Flagg as a character had staying power, a presence about him that could not be denied by anyone even his creator, Stephen King. Flagg became a symbol for many of King's fans, they began to see him in places where he was not, and this was a major part of the mystique that formed around Flagg as a character. Even though he was the incarnation of evil, he was fatally flawed and most Constant Readers of

Stephen King could at some level sense that flaw about this remarkable character. It is because we could see that flaw within him, we could identify with him, it is like the car wreck on the freeway, you don't want to look into the horror of the crash, but something within us wants us to look.

The struggle between the duality of our nature, the purpose and the random, i.e. the good and the evil, is within all of us. Flagg became that symbol of the darkness within all of us, the Constant Readers, it is why Flagg was our favorite villain, why we hated him but loved to read about him and began to see him everywhere.

The rise and long life of Flagg until his strange death at the hands of Mordred Deschain, Roland's own bastard son, shows the staying power of a well developed character in the hands of a writer who allows that character to tell his own tale within the confines of the larger story. There were many fans who felt that Flagg needed a better final ending. A showdown between Roland and Flagg would seem fitting.