How Marvel Quietly Helped Launch Stephen King Adaptations

Before Stephen King became a big-screen mainstay, one of his strangest stories took a detour through Marvel Comics. In 1981, the publisher quietly released a black-and-white adaptation of King’s short story The Lawnmower Man in Bizarre Adventures #29, making it one of the earliest—and most faithful—King adaptations on record.

Marvel’s Weird, Faithful Take on The Lawnmower Man

King first published “The Lawnmower Man” in 1975, later collecting it in Night Shift, the same volume that gave readers “Children of the Corn” and other frequently adapted tales. But Marvel’s version went further than a casual homage. In Bizarre Adventures #29, artist Walt Simonson built the comic almost directly out of King’s prose, preserving the bizarre beats of a story about a suburban homeowner, a self-propelled mower, and a satyr making bloody sacrifices to Pan.

The adaptation leans into small-town Americana, masculinity, and unease about the perfect lawn. Printed in black and white, it also slipped some of King’s gorier moments past the era’s strict Comics Code. Chronologically, this odd little comic was only the fourth adaptation of King’s work, arriving before Creepshow, Cujo, The Dead Zone, and Christine.

Marvel even tossed in a bit of comics-world confusion: the gardener’s references to the goddess Circe have repeatedly prompted fans to clarify that she is not Sersi from The Eternals. For collectors, the adaptation resurfaced when IDW reissued the original Marvel artwork in 2014, keeping this deep-cut King artifact in circulation.

From Faithful Comic to Lawsuit-Fueling Movie

King’s strange little lawn saga didn’t stop with Marvel. A 12-minute short film was produced in 1987 under his famous “Dollar Baby” program, which let aspiring filmmakers adapt select minor works for a symbolic one-dollar rights fee. That short has mostly lived on at horror and King festivals, with only low-quality bootlegs leaking online.

The title became infamous in 1992, when New Line released Brett Leonard’s cyber-thriller The Lawnmower Man, a virtual reality horror movie that had almost nothing to do with King’s plot. King successfully sued to have his name removed from the film’s marketing, a landmark win that pushed back against the then-common studio habit of slapping recognizable author names on barely related scripts.

The movie still spawned a 1996 sequel, The Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, drifting even further from the original narrative. Meanwhile, King’s text remained most intact in that early Marvel experiment and its later IDW reissue.

For readers and comics fans, the history of The Lawnmower Man is a reminder of how fluid adaptations can be—and how fiercely some authors fight to protect their work. Tucked between cult films and legal battles, Marvel’s 1981 comic stands out as a rare moment when a major publisher let Stephen King’s words, and all their suburban horror, speak almost entirely for themselves.

Part of our full guide: Stephen King Adaptations in 2026: What Is Filming, What Was Cancelled and What Is Next