Brown, Simon (2023) Stephen King and vampires. In: Bacon, Simon, (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire. London, U.K. : Palgrave McMillan Cham. (Epub Ahead of Print)

Abstract

In 1975, author Stephen King invited the vampire into modern-day America in his second novel Salem’s Lot. Thirty-five years later, he was instrumental in the creation of the mythology behind the first American Vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the Vertigo comic series by Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque. In his Foreword to the first issue of American Vampire, King outlined his conception of bloodsuckers, stating that they should be “stone killers who never get enough of that tasty Type-A” (2011). Across his almost 50 year career as America’s bestselling horror author, King has returned to the idea of the vampire multiple times, presenting it in a variety of very different, but always evil, guises. This chapter explores the various incarnations of the vampire from Kurt Barlow in Salem’s Lot to Chet Ondowsky in If It Bleeds (2020) and examines King’s conception of the vampire, the purpose the vampire plays in his stories, and how King bends and shapes vampiric tradition and lore for his own purposes.

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