Comic Art

Get ready, here comes Stephen King and the next chapter of his magnum opus, The Dark Tower (actually more like the previous chapter since this is a prequel of the seven world-famous books)! Published by Marvel this 7 issue series is supposed to be the first arc of a limited number of stories, unknown parts of Roland’s life will be exposed and all those things you wanted to know but were never told will be revealed through this creation plotted by Robin Furth (King’s research assistant), dialogued by Peter David (Spectacular Spider-Man, X-Factor, Teen Titans, Spider-Man 2099 etc), illustrated by Jae Lee (Batman - Jekyll and Hyde, Hellshock, Witchblade – Demon etc) and colored by Richard Isanove (Daredevil – Father, Ultimate X-Men, Arcanum etc).

So, is it worth it? Well, I’m really not sure; I guess it depends on how you look at it. Yeah, it’s beautifully drawn, the story follows the original and if you’ve never read the books you’ll probably be introduced to them smoothly and yeah, the second issue is pretty cool with Roland fleeing to Hambry, facing the Big Coffin Hunters and meeting Susan Delgado but if you’re looking for something new, for now you’ll be disappointed. The writer seems to be afraid to present what was promised, which is missing parts of Roland’s life, and simply repeats already known facts from the books, such as the fight between Roland and his trainer, Cort, or the battle of Hambry, I guess they’ll have to show some creativity in the next arcs but anyway, this one doesn’t offer that much, at least yet. Still, it does have some emotional value for all of us that read every Dark Tower book with the same enthusiasm and love, watching that dark, western atmosphere drawn in front of your eyes, a decadent civilization in its last days, a world that moved forward and a man looking forever for the Dark Tower and sacrificing everything for it.

I have to admit, I was deeply disappointed by the way some of the characters were presented but that was by no means the creators’ fault, it’s just that I imagined Cort differently, Susan Delgado looked in my mind like a girl I once knew, Roland was so much taller and the Crimson King never occurred to me as a huge spider, and that’s the weakest part of The Dark Tower as a comic, it’s a book series that lasted for all those years because we all imagined it in our own ways and had it painted in our heads like a thousand stories, another one for each. So will you endanger the feeling you got from the seven books of Stephen King‘s The Dark Tower to discover a comic book which might make the experience even better or destroy it? Well mate, that’s totally up to you…

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