The Dark Tower - The Gunslinger Born

The first graphic novel based and inspired by Stephen King's magnum opus, The Dark Tower. The story is gathered from the fourth novel in the series, Wizard and Glass. In this book, the ka-tet camps for one almost endless night and Roland finally gives them the tale of his origin. It is quite a departure from the first three novels in that the meat of the novel is entirely flashback. At first I was slow in getting immersed into the new twist in King's writing, but found myself almost depressed to return to the present at the end of the book. It was a brilliantly executed change of writing style, and it would carry into the next book heavily. I have to say that of the six that I've read, Wizard was my favorite, with Drawing of the Three a close second. Now that I've read the graphic version of my this origin tale, let us palaver on it.



Excellent writing by Peter David: CHECK
Beautiful artwork from Jae Lee: CHECK
True to source material: CHECK?
Enjoyed reading: CHECK



*HEREIN BE SPOILERS, YE BUGGER*


The reason I have a small issue with the 'sticking to source' category is not because they strayed. Quite the contrary. In fact, David made certain to translate essentially verbatim. I was not fully satisfied simply because there wasn't enough pages to truly capture the gunslinger's origin story. It's not a fault of Marvel's team assigned to this mammoth task. They did a fine job getting as much as necessary into the mere 240 pages they were unfortunately restricted. I'm sad because this trade should be at least ten books long, instead of seven. There are so many small, yet deep, subtleties in the novel this story was taken from that were simply not included.

One thing in particular that bothered me is that Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain never have the run-in with Rhea of the Coos. This is an important plot point because this is where Roland is forced to kill Rhea's snake familiar, Ermot. Without this part of the story, we will not know why Roland shoots a visage of Rhea back in Gilead that turns out to be his own mother, hence giving Rhea her revenge.
Also, the Cordelia/Susan story was not touched in any way, really. Cordelia only makes a significant appearance near the end when Rhea comes a'knockin.

We never really see what happens to Sheemie, and Olive Thorin never aids Susan to escape.
Now, I'm having a memory lapse here, but I seem to remember Roy Depape, not Clay Reynolds, being assigned to escort Susan back to town. I think Olive or Sheemie rescues Susan and then they are stopped by Reynolds on the way out of Hambry. I apologize if I got the events wrong, but this isn't exactly how it happens in the graphic version.

I don't want to split hairs over most of these details, but I thought I'd mention them. It's a wonderful trade and it truly does capture the main aspects of Roland's early career as an apprentice gunslinger. I'm excited to read the rest of the books. They aren't taken directly from King's novels, so I won't have any complaints about sticking to source. I think they will be more enjoyable because they will be completely new stories about events that we've only heard Roland mention, like the fall of Gilead and the battle at Jericho Hill.


I would recommend reading the comics, and if you're up for a phenomenal series of books, check out the Dark Tower series in novel format, if you haven't already.


Till the wheel of ka turns you back this way again, fare thee well.