Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born #1
April 2007
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Creative & Executive Director: Stephen King
Plotting and Consultation: Robin Furth
Script: Peter David
Art: Jae Lee & Richard Isanove
Lettering: Chris Eliopoulos

31 pages (plus extensive back matter)

Rating: 4 out of 5

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Premise: The important bits of the Gunslinger’s origin story is told in chronological order in this 7-part mini-series.

Synopsis:

This first issue shows Ronald going from boy to man as he finds Marten desecrating his mom and challenges Cort. The book ends with his father barging in on him in a brothel, intimating that he has dishonored him.

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Review:

This retelling of the Gunslinger’s origin is done in chronological order, as opposed to the flashback sequences that show up in most of the Dark Tower novel series. Apparently most of the material in this mini-series will be taken from the fourth novel in King’s series, Wizard and Glass. I can’t say how much of that shows up in the first issue (I have only gotten halfway through the second novel), but a lot of this story comes from flashbacks in the first book, The Gunslinger.

The issue is plotted by Robin Furth, King’s research assistant and author of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: A Concordance. She also writes the prose story at the back of the issue (illustrated by Jim Calafioire and June Chung).

The story is good. Readers of the Dark Tower series will recognize the incident that dominates this first issue. Peter David does a great job of weaving the story setup together with the established parts. His “prologue” brings any reader up to speed with what’s going on very quickly. It takes some of the mystery inherent in the King novels away, but on the other hand, it’s very useful in getting a handle on everything in less than a few hundred pages.

Lee and Isanove’s art is fantastic. Part of the drawing power of this book is their art. It’s great to see them bring this world and these situations to life and have them be just as I imagined them to be in the books (although, I’ll admit I imagined Cort to be a wiry old guy). It’s very similar to the feeling many of us got when we watched Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films and saw there exactly what we had imagined for years.

Overall, it’s a good read, and it makes you excited to learn more about this character. In fact, as I look at the novels, that’s the only thing keeping me reading those. I don’t ultimately care whether this guy finishes his quest or not - I just like reading more about him and what made him who he is.

The issue packs a lot of story in, especially with the extra story at the end. Contrary to typical Marvel fashion, there’s only 4 ads in the whole thing. They must really want to not piss off those hypothetical newcomers to comics that they expect to show up and buy the book because of the Stephen King name.