by Bev Vincent
THE LONG ROAD HOME
Original release dates: February 2008 through June 2008 (5 issues)
Credits:
• Creative Director and Executive Director: Stephen King
• Plotting and Consultation: Robin Furth
• Script: Peter David
• Art: Jae Lee and Richard Isanove
• Lettering: Chris Eliopoulos
The Long Road Home begins exactly where The Gunslinger Born left off, after Susan Delgado’s death. Though the story of the boys’ return to Gilead and Roland’s obsession with the pink orb from the Wizard’s Rainbow was told briefly in Wizard and Glass, this series greatly expands on the tale and introduces elements absent from King’s novels.
Roland insists on burying Susan. He blames the grapefruit for her death and shoots it. The glass does not shatter—it turns into something alive that rebuilds itself. It then wraps itself around Roland’s face and sucks his essence inside.
The gunshot attracts the attention of the Hambry posse, led by Clay Reynolds, the only surviving Big Coffin Hunter. Cuthbert and Alain slow him down by shooting his horse. They drag Roland’s limp body with them until they reach a dilapidated bridge with missing slats. In The Dark Tower, Roland told his ka-tet about cutting a bridge that would have inconvenienced Sheemie Ruiz, who was following them, though they didn’t know it. In this story, Alain and Cuthbert cut the bridge to prevent the posse from catching up with them—after one of their horses breaks a leg during the crossing and must be put down.
Sheemie Ruiz is distraught over his failure to save Susan. When he gets lost, he ends up at one of North Central Positronics’ Dogans, where his presence activates a long-dormant robot. The robot experiments on Sheemie, giving him new powers that will come into play shortly and again much later in Roland’s adventures.
Roland’s trapped mind travels to Thunderclap, where he encounters Marten. He sees a vision of Oy and one of himself alone as an older man. Marten tells him he killed his friends one by one. When Alain attempts to use his touch to rescue Roland, the orb sends him todash and Cuthbert is left behind to handle the mutant wolves that kill their remaining horses. Marten has no use for Alain, so he sends him back. More mutant wolves attack. Roland emerges from his trance long enough to kill one of the wolves with his bare hands.
Alain is injured and perhaps poisoned by another of the beasts. Cuthbert fires into the woods, thinking more wolves are coming, but shoots Sheemie instead. Sheemie accepts the wounds as punishment for failing Susan. However, the wounds aren’t fatal and Sheemie’s new powers give him the ability to heal himself and Alain.
Marten carries Roland to the Castle of the Crimson King. He presents himself in a nearly human form, but he has the avatar of the third eye of his minions in his forehead. Roland is totally irreverent in the face of this evil figure. The Crimson King calls Roland his cousin, explaining that Arthur Eld had affairs after Queen Rowena went barren. One of Arthur’s jillies was one of the Great Old Ones of the Prim. While Steven and Roland are direct descendants of the line of Eld, Arthur Eld is the Crimson King’s father. He is the rightful sovereign because he was born first.
The Crimson King explains his motives: he wants the kingdom restored to the chaos that existed before the Dark Tower came to be. Steven Deschain’s guns, the ones Roland will inherit, are the keys to the Tower since they originated from within it. The Crimson King wants Roland to help him claim the throne at the top of the Tower and destroy all the universes so the Prim will once again run rampant. Marten knows that Roland will never go along and advises the Crimson King to kill and eat Roland and steal Steven’s guns when Gilead falls to Farson.
Sheemie enters the grapefruit and arrives in time to snatch Roland from the Crimson King’s clutches just as he is about to be killed. Sheemie uses his power of teleportation to spirit them away and escape from the grapefruit. Roland awakens, but has little recollection of what transpired inside the glass. Yet he remains fascinated by it.
The boys walk the rest of the way home only to discover that everyone thinks they’re dead. Farson spread rumors of their demise to demoralize the people of Gilead. Roland is reunited with his father and learns that his mother is at a woman’s retreat in Debaria. He does not turn over the pink orb to his father. Alain and Cuthbert keep his secret.
Characters (in order of mention): Roland Deschain, Susan Delgado, Alain Johns, Cuthbert Allgood, John Farson, Rhea Dubativo, Big Coffin Hunters (Clay Reynolds, Eldred Jonas, Roy Depape), Taylor (posse member), Sheemie Ruiz, Great Old Ones, Steven Deschain, Marten Broadcloak, Oy, Roland Deschain (adult), the Crimson King, the Manni, Queen Rowena, Arthur Eld.
Places: Hambry, In-World, Thunderclap, End-World, Gilead, Le Casse Roi Russe, All-World, Debaria.
Things: Maerlyn’s grapefruit, Dogan, billy-bumbler, todash, taheen, kennit, Prim.
EXTRA FEATURES:
ISSUE 1: _______________________________________________
WELCOME TO THE DOGAN, PART I: THE GHOSTLY QUEEN
After reporting on the development of a new territory that arose from the Prim in the Borderlands region called Thunderclap, a land of nightmares, where the Great Ones were rumored to have built a fortress from which they hoped to launch an attack on Gan—the Dark Tower, in other words—this essay picks up the story of Arthur Eld after the deaths of Emmanuelle Deschain (mother of his heir), Queen Rowena, and the monstrous spawn. Arthur descends into a paranoid period of mourning, distraught over the loss of the woman he loved (Emmanuelle, not Rowena) and fearing an attack from his enemies in the Prim. He blames himself for Rowena’s restless spirit when he hears reports of her ghost wandering the halls and grounds of the castle, cradling the bloody pieces of her spider child in her arms. Arthur encounters her for the first time in the center of a forest clearing while hunting deer. He dismounts from his horse, Llamrei, and follows the specter into the forest to a Druit circle where he finds an ironwood door labeled THE KING, reminiscent of the ones Roland found on the beach. Following Rowena, he opens the door and finds himself in an alternate world where the Great Poisoning had obliterated everything. She leads him to a Dogan, where he is ambushed by a legion of robots.
ISSUE 2: _______________________________________________
WELCOME TO THE DOGAN, PART II: THE EVIL UFFI
Arthur’s knights follow his tracks through the forest to try to discover why he didn’t return from his hunting trip. They are unable to find any trace of him or his horse, and the ghost of Queen Rowena stops haunting the halls of the castle at the same time. The people of Gilead wonder if the ghost dragged him off to the punishment pits of Na’ar and pray for his safe return. Reports of sightings of his animated corpse start coming in, and a young woman accuses the reanimated king of accosting her, spearing her in the stomach and making off with her young child. The corpse of the baby was found on her hearth two days later. Arthur is joined in terrorizing the countryside by the reanimated spirits of any of his knights who had fallen in battle. Gunslingers sent out to stop the terror were killed and drained of their blood. Some people believed that these creatures were evil uffis—shape-shifters in the guise of the king and his men—and that the intent was to destroy the peace and unity of All-World.
Two of Arthur’s knights, Bertrand Allgood (ancestor to Cuthbert) and Alfred Johns (ancestor to Alain) believe the Great Ones from the Prim are behind this scheme. They return to the place where their king had last been seen and find the freestanding door, though it is locked. They wait until the posse of vampire riders in the guise of their fallen friends returns. The two gunslingers follow them through the door just before it closes again. They follow the horses to the Dogan, where they discover the golems in stasis chambers under the supervision of a tall robot. The droid wheels in a gurney bearing Arthur Eld, who was sedated but alive. The helmet it places on Arthur’s head creates a link to the golems in their chambers, drawing upon his memories to create two more uffis—that resemble Allgood and Johns.
Q&A: PETER DAVI
D WITH MARC STROM
The man responsible for the scripts of the Dark Tower graphic novels answers questions about The Long Road Home.
Q&A: ROBIN FURTH WITH FRANK DEANGELO IV
Stephen King’s research assistant discusses The Long Road Home and how the story this series tells arises out of the existing material in the Dark Tower novels.
THE LONG ROAD HOME MIDNIGHT LAUNCH
A one-page report on the midnight launch of The Long Road Home at Midtown Comics in Manhattan, attended by Jae Lee and Peter David.
ISSUE 3: _______________________________________________
WELCOME TO THE DOGAN, PART III: CITY OF THE DEAD
Arthur Eld, who has been missing from Gilead for three months, awakens in the Dogan to find two entities hovering over him—a droid and Arthur Eld’s ghoulish double. He doesn’t know that his kingdom has fallen into anarchy. His citizens have fled to safer havens and harriers once again prey on travelers. His only hope for salvation comes in the form of Sir Alfred Johns and Sir Bertrand Allgood, who have tracked their dinh to the Dogan in time to see a droid produce their uffis (evil twins), designed to join the terror campaign being waged against New Canaan. The vampiric versions of Eld, Allgood and Johns arrive at Gilead, impervious against all efforts to stop them from entering the castle, where the false king takes his place at the banquet table. The real Arthur Eld, however, is in possession of a Manni plumb bob, one of the arcane devices they use to travel between worlds. They have no control over where the plumb bob will take them but ka exerts its hand, sending them to Can’-Ka No Rey, the rose-filled fields around the Dark Tower. The Tower’s twelve Guardians arrive in answer to Gan’s summons to bear Arthur and his two knights back to Gilead, where they exile the uffi to their proper level of the Tower.
THE MAKING OF A COVER
A two-page illustrated essay showing each stage of Jae Lee and Richard Isanove’s work in creating a cover for this issue of The Long Road Home.
DARK TOWER ON THE ROAD BY FRANK DEANGELO IV
Peter David discusses (and sometimes refuses to discuss) the story that remains to be told in The Long Road Home.
ISSUE 4: _______________________________________________
MID-WORLD MUTANTS
A pictorial essay detailing the major kinds of animal and human mutations that developed as a result of the Great Poisoning. Animals covered include deer, dogs, horses, insects, rats and wolves. Human mutations include the slow mutants, the Children of Roderick and the Wasteland Mutants.
ISSUE 5: _______________________________________________
INVOKING THE GUARDIANS
A scholarly discourse on the Guardians of the Beam, whose exact nature and origins are unknown. Some see them as magical or spiritual forces. Other speculate that they are no more than cyborgs created by the Old People to atone for the great evil their culture perpetrated against the Earth and use as evidence blueprints discovered in North Central Positronics Dogans in the Borderlands. The true believers explain this apparent discrepancy by arguing that the cyborgs are mechanical avatars that focus the sacred powers of the true Guardians, akin to the can-tah stones that represent the Beams. The Guardians oversee the White aspect of the portals, and their opposites, the hermaphroditic demon elementals, represent the Outer Dark at these gateways to other worlds. Instead of being baptized, each child born in Mid-World undergoes a ceremony known as the Invocation of the Guardians. At the conclusion of this ritual, one of the parents may dream of a particular Guardian that will give the child a second, secret, powerful name.
MAP OF END-WORLD
This map starts at the Mid-Forest bog in the northwest corner and shows the wedge of Mid-World along Shardik’s Beam between the Elephant Beam and the Horse Beam, ending in the fields of Can’-Ka No Rey and the Dark Tower. The regions represented are the Borderlands; the Grand Crescent containing the Callas, which are distributed along the River Whye; Thunderclap, home to Devar-Toi, Fedic and Castle Discordia; the Discordia Badlands, home to Le Casse Roi Russe and the White Lands of Empathica.
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS
North Central Positronics (NCP) was a corporation at the center of the advanced knowledge amassed by the Great Old Ones, who mastered every scientific field and used this knowledge to manipulate the fabric of the multiverse and reality itself. One of the corporation’s goals was to replace magical elements of their reality (the Dark Tower and its supporting Beams, for example) with scientific analogs. Their experiments fusing magic and technology were conducted in research stations known as Dogans. Among the creations of NCP that continued to function long after the Great Old Ones and their Imperium vanished are the robots designed to maintain and manage the Dogans.
DOGANS
The Great Old Ones constructed the Dogans following Maerlyn’s specifications. While most are research labs, many are surveillance outposts located in strategic places throughout Mid-World. The weapons of the Great Old Ones that led to the Great Poisoning were built here and survived whereas their creators did not.
LE CASSE ROI RUSSE
This is the Castle of the Crimson King, a fortress located in End-World on the edge of the White Lands of Empathica. Its red glow (known as the Forge) can be seen from a great distance.
A NOTE FROM ROBIN FURTH
Plot writer Robin Furth discusses how she was able to turn her dreams of Cuthbert and Alain into a coherent tale.
COMMENTS FROM PETER DAVID
Scriptwriter Peter David talks about the daunting process of adapting the Dark Tower, especially in parts of the graphic novel that do not appear in the original novels—a process he likens to pedaling the Dark Tower bicycle without the aid of training wheels. An audience of one, he reassures readers, stands between him and them: Stephen King, who continually approves of their work.
TREACHERY
Original release dates: September 2008 through February 2009 (6 issues)
Credits:
• Creative Director and Executive Director: Stephen King
• Plotting and Consultation: Robin Furth
• Script: Peter David
• Art: Jae Lee and Richard Isanove
• Lettering: Chris Eliopoulos
Though the focal event of this miniseries—the death of Gabrielle Deschain—was related in Wizard and Glass, events leading up to it are revealed for the first time. Treachery is aptly titled, for it deals with several forms of deceit that are occurring simultaneously in Gilead and are symptomatic of the empire’s impending collapse.
By failing to give the pink orb from Maerlyn’s Rainbow to his father, the dinh of Gilead, Roland’s treachery is nearly treason. Alain and Cuthbert are frustrated by his obsession with the grapefruit. He isn’t eating or sleeping or bathing. If it traps Roland again, they don’t have Sheemie around to free him. Roland rationalizes his deceit by telling himself he is protecting his father. Alain and Cuthbert worry they will need to take the orb from him.
The ball reveals the Tower to Roland. The roses around its base are dying. The Voice of the Tower bids him to look up—he sees the Crimson King. Then the orb shows him a spidery Rhea of the Cöos soaring across the desert, on the way to Gilead as an agent of Farson. He sees her decapitating his father with a garrote. In a trance, he shoots, thinking he is attacking Rhea but instead narrowly misses Cuthbert. Alain and Cuthbert finally make Roland see reason and he delivers the pink orb to his father. A spy—a supposed scout—named Justus sends word to Farson’s men that Steven has the Wizard’s Glass.
A grand party is planned to celebrate the coming of age of Alain, Cuthbert and Roland. Alain and Cuthbert are becoming gunslingers based on their performances in Hambry, which doesn’t sit well with some of the other apprentices. They think the two boys are getting special treatment. Roland is okay—he faced Cort, unlike his friends. There are ugly confrontations and hateful graffiti of the type Eldred Jonas left for the boys in Mejis.
Traitors and spies are infiltrating Gilead at every level. The gunslingers unwittingly
rely on Justus, who promises to lead them to one of Farson’s camps, but it’s a trap. Steven Deschain is nearly killed. Justus’s treachery goes unsuspected, and he convinces the gunslingers to consider attacking Farson’s camp in the Shavéd Mountains, where Farson is planning an ambush.
Not even the gunslingers of Gilead are immune to turning into traitors. John Farson captures Charles Champignon, who threw himself in front of a hand grenade to save Steven Deschain’s life. His wife is raped and their unborn child is ripped from her womb before his eyes. He is forced to recommend Kingson, John Farson’s nephew, for a position as court minstrel. (This story is told in greater detail in the one-shot issue The Sorcerer.)
Kingson also delivers the poisoned knife that Gabrielle Deschain is supposed to use to kill her husband after the coming-of-age feast. Cort catches Kingson cheating at the riddling contest and kills him. In his pocket he finds a signet ring marking him as one of Farson’s men. Roland told this story to his ka-tet in The Waste Lands, although he didn’t say when this took place.
A new character enters the story, Aileen Ritter. Her mother’s brother, Cort, is her only living relative and guardian. She is only mentioned in The Gunslinger as the girl his parents wanted him to marry. She plays a much larger part in The Gunslinger Born series. Cort is the one who wants Aileen to marry Roland, the future dinh of Gilead. She would rather be a gunslinger at Roland’s side than his wife. She “borrows” weapons from her uncle’s armory and practices alone, sharpening her skills, even though by tradition she can never be a gunslinger. Cort promises to speak to Steven on her behalf, though.