by Bev Vincent
THE MACHINES OF MID-WORLD
Though Mid-World has devolved into a preindustrial society, where the people no longer have the means to manufacture modern machinery, the wastelands are still littered with the terrible killing machines of previous civilizations. These tanks and lasers and flamethrowers have fallen into the hands of Gilead’s enemy: John Farson and his massive army. Furth explains how the Old People, who had a godlike knowledge of technology, created these weapons and how they used them to destroy one another.
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THE BLUE-FACED BARBARIANS
Part of General Grissom’s army consists of blue-faced barbarians called Picatu, a tribal people from the north who enter a frenzy whenever confronted by an enemy, making them almost impossible to kill despite the fact that they don’t wear armor or other protective garments. They seem demonic, butchering anyone they capture and decapitating the corpses so they can turn the skulls into chalices. The blue dye that is applied to the bodies of all adult Picatu (the name means “the painted ones”) is derived from the sacred woada plant. The dye lends some measure of protection to these soldiers, possessing antiseptic properties to ward off infection for anyone who is injured. The essay concludes with a description and meaning of the various patterns painted on the Picatu using woada dye.
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THE GREAT GOD AMOCO, LORD OF THUNDER, LORD OF DEATH
Amoco is a fearsome Mid-World god of fire and thunder. Among his other names are Sunoco, Mobil, Exxon and Citgo. The ceremonies performed in his name are notoriously cruel and include ritual human sacrifice akin to the ceremony of the charyou tree. The evidence to support the notion that Amoco was a principal deity of the Old People includes the thousands of shrines found along the roadsides across Mid-World. These roads might even be part of a complex and elaborate pilgrimage route across the land. Amoco’s blood is derived from the oil pumped from beneath the earth—it fires the sun-chariot so it can move across the sky. Rival factions claimed Amoco as their own, enraging him to the point where he poisoned the Earth when the priests engaged in violent battle.
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MY MOST MEMORABLE DARK TOWER MOMENTS
Robin Furth reminisces about events that transpired from the time she first learned she would be involved in adapting Roland’s youth in comic form to the end of the first thirty-episode series five years later.
VARIANT COVER ART GALLERY
In addition to the artists who drew the graphic novels, other artists provided illustrations for collectible “variant” editions of the comics. These include Joe Quesada, David Finch, Stuart Immonen, Leinil Yu, John Romita Jr., Billy Tan, Greg Land, J. Scott Campbell, Olivier Coipel, Mike Deodata, Marko Djurdjević, Ron Garney, Lee Bermejo, Gabriele Dell’Otto, Jimmy Cheung, Pasqual Ferry, Daniel Acuña, Dennis Calero, Adi Granov, Tommy Lee Edwards, Mitchell Breitweiser, David Lafuente, Rafa Sandoval, Tom Raney, Brandon Peterson, Leonardo Manco, Patrick Zircher, Steve Kurth and Cary Nord.
MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVELS: THE GUNSLINGER
INTRODUCTION
The first series was successful enough that Marvel extended the graphic adaptation to tell Roland’s story after the battle of Jericho Hill until his palaver with Walter at the golgotha. This includes his exploits in Eluria and the entire text of The Gunslinger.
A different pencil artist drew each of the five miniseries. Richard Isanove continued to color the artwork, providing a look and feel consistent with what went before.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
Original release dates: May 2010 through September 2010 (5 issues)
Credits:
• Creative Director and Executive Director: Stephen King
• Plotting and Consultation: Robin Furth
• Script: Peter David
• Art: Sean Phillips and Richard Isanove
• Lettering: Rus Wooton
The Journey Begins starts just before the opening line of The Gunslinger, with the man in black building a devil-grass fire that leaves a message for Roland in its ashes. The five issues are an interesting blend of elements from The Gunslinger, variations of those tales and all-new adventures.
The first person Roland encounters is the holy man who gives him a compass and bids him give it to Jesus, an incident mentioned in passing in The Gunslinger. The man predicts that the days of the White are coming again.
He then arrives at Brown’s cabin. Most of what happens during that visit is faithful to The Gunslinger, including Zoltan the crow eating the eyes of Roland’s dead mule. However, instead of telling the story of the battle of Tull, Roland backtracks to Jericho Hill. After Roland crawled from the stack of bodies of his friends, he discovers that Aileen Ritter is still alive. She knows she won’t live long, but she doesn’t want to be buried in some desolate place. She asks Roland to take her back to Gilead so she can be interred with her family.
The trip will take several days, with Roland dragging Aileen on a travois the same way Eddie Dean will haul Roland up the beach in days ahead. They encounter a merchant convoy destroyed by Farson’s “not-men.” The only living witness is a talkative billy-bumbler who answers Roland’s questions about what happened. He parts ways with the animal, but he and Aileen are attacked by the invisible not-men that night. A poison dart kills Aileen. The billy-bumbler bite makes the not-men visible and Roland’s guns do the rest.
Roland lays Aileen’s body to rest with her uncle Cort’s remains. In the bowels of Gilead, he discovers a battle between slow mutants and billy-bumblers. He intercedes on the animals’ behalf, but is bitten on the shoulder by one of the mutants. Again, a billy-bumbler leaps to his defense.
The story of Hax is revealed as a flashback after Roland encounters the former head cook’s ghost. This story is mostly faithful to the version in The Gunslinger. Only two details are different. First, Marten—Steven Deschain’s chief adviser—is present when Roland reports Hax’s treachery to his father. Second, when Cuthbert and Roland go to the gallows before everyone arrives, Cuthbert’s clowning around almost ends up with him being hanged by accident—or perhaps through a deliberate act by Marten.
Hax’s ghost now apparently regrets his actions, but that is of little comfort to Roland, who wishes him off to the pits of Na’ar. The imagined ghosts of Roland’s family and friends, including that of his would-be queen, Susan Delgado, drive him from the castle. Outside, he encounters Marten Broadcloak. Roland unleashes his weapons, but the sorcerer deflects the bullets and taunts Roland for attempting to kill the one person who could help him achieve his goal. Though Roland’s pride won’t allow him to admit that he needs Marten, he pursues the man in black because he claims that he knows the way to the Tower.
A few weeks later, Roland—with the billy-bumbler still on his heels—ends up in Kingstown, the city from which the captives of the Cult of Amoco originated. Inside its walls, he discovers a carnival under way. The town is celebrating the hanging of a not-man—a story Roland told Jake in The Gunslinger. However, in that version, his encounter with the not-man was two years before he left a girl in King’s Town.
The girl he leaves in Kingstown is Susan Black, who is Susan Delgado’s twin. She is the daughter of the woman who runs the Travellers’ Rest (a common name for inns in Mid-World, apparently). While she serves his supper, she mentions the nearby Dogan. Farson’s troops raided the building for weapons and the not-men started appearing after the troops left.
A not-man attacks Susan in her room that night. It carries her off, but she leaves a shred of clothing behind. Roland uses it to provide a scent for the billy-bumbler to follow. The trail leads to the Dogan. Inside, Roland discovers Susan and another woman, Jessica, who is tending to her.
Roland discovers that the not-men are real men wearing jackets from the Dogan that render them invisible. They are using instruments on Susan and other women, though their reasons for doing so are vague. He b
ursts into the chamber and shoots four men, but a fifth activates his jacket and vanishes. Invisibility isn’t protection from a gunslinger, though, and Roland kills the reinforcements while Jessica and Susan free the other prisoners.
One of the not-men takes Susan prisoner and attempts to escape. Roland is about to shoot him, but the billy-bumbler leaps at the not-man, blocking his shot. The man throws the billy-bumbler aside, impaling it on a tree (foreshadowing an event far down the gunslinger’s path). Roland kills the last villain, spends the night with Susan and returns to the trail at first light.
His tale done, Roland leaves Brown’s cabin and sets out on foot after the man in black.
Characters (in order of mention): The man in black, Roland Deschain, Brown, Sheemie, John Farson, Affiliation Brats, Aileen Ritter, Cuthbert Allgood, Jamie DeCurry, not-men, Cort, Hax (ghost), Maggie, Robeson, Steven Deschain, Marten Broadcloak, harriers, Charles son of Charles, Gabrielle Deschain, Susan Delgado, Susan Black, Old People, Widow Black, Jessica, Bean.
Places: Gilead, Jericho Hill, Mid-World, Taunton, Hendrickson, In-World, Garlan, Desoy, Forest o’Barony, Na’ar, Kingstown, Dogan.
Things: ka, Horn of Eld, Zoltan, billy-bumbler, seppe-sai.
EXTRA FEATURES:
ISSUE 1: _______________________________________________
THE JOURNEY CONTINUES
Robin Furth discusses the nature of the new thirty-issue story arc, which will describe how the young Roland became a bitter, lonely and dangerous drifter. Little is mentioned in the Dark Tower novels about the twelve years following the battle of Jericho Hill, so Furth had few signposts on which to base her plots. Furth changed the perspective of The Gunslinger’s familiar scene. Roland is pursuing, but the man in black is also leading Roland on. Her essay includes an excerpt from her original outline. She and her editors decided to flash back all the way to Jericho Hill, to give Roland a chance to grieve for his dead friends.
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THE JOURNEY CONTINUES
Furth articulates her fears and anxieties about adding things to the well-known tale of Roland’s exploits, details like the addition of not-men and a billy-bumbler. Some readers think she has fallen off the Beam by breaking with the known story line. She explains her decision to expand Aileen Ritter’s role from the brief mentions in the novel and shows how she used this character to make Roland more sympathetic and how his actions with her after Jericho Hill foreshadow some of his future behavior. For those readers who might wish Furth’s plot lay closer to the one they imagined, she offers familiar words of comfort: There are more worlds than these.
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THE JOURNEY CONTINUES: THE HANGING OF HAX
Furth argues that Roland’s loss of innocence began when, at the age of eleven, he turned in Hax for treason and witnessed his hanging. She relates the story as it appears in The Gunslinger and draws the analogy to Roland’s training with a hawk—he will need to kill the dove of innocence within himself to advance as a gunslinger. In the moment when he and Cuthbert decided to turn Hax in, they chose their allegiance and decided what truly mattered to them. Yet, standing beneath the gallows, they experience doubts. The unruly crowd that turns out to witness the execution and the shoddiness of the gallows disabuse them of the notion that the hanging is a purely honorable process. Hax clings to his allegiances at the end, and Roland realizes that many in the crowd are on his side, not that of Gilead.
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A TALKING BILLY-WHAT?
Furth discusses a creature that is common in Mid-World, the billy-bumbler (also known as the throcken), to readers who aren’t familiar with King’s novels. These intelligent animals can parrot human speech and some can count or do simple math. Some people swear that they have a near-human capacity for emotion. Their loyalty to humans is not automatic—as it is with most dogs—but once earned, it is a lifelong bond. After the fall of Gilead, billy-bumblers became feral, though they remembered their bonds with humans. In the days of the Old Ones, they were bred to hunt down the Grandfather-fleas, parasitic creatures that followed Type One vampires. In later years, they helped keep the rat population in Barony castles under control.
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THE WHEEL OF KA
The team creating the stories for the Marvel comics had a prime directive, issued by Stephen King: the forces of ka must dictate their story. The word “ka” is both nebulous and replete with a multitude of meanings: life force, consciousness, duty, destiny, goal, destination, karma, fate. A ka-tet is a group of people who share the same goal. Roland believes that Mid-World’s ka spins from the Dark Tower and that, by reaching and climbing the Tower, he can force the god that dwells in it to change Mid-World’s fate. Because ka is a wheel that circles back to the beginning, Furth and her colleagues inserted elements into Roland’s early journey (a tavern girl named Susan, a billy-bumbler from Oy’s ka-tet, Dogans). The Tower, however, is not simply the center of Mid-World—it is the axis of all universes. There are people who exist as slightly different versions of each other (called twinners in The Talisman and Black House) who share each other’s ka to a certain extent. Susan Black and a bumbler named Billy share some of the ka of the people they resemble: Susan Delgado and Oy respectively.
THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA
Original release dates: December 2010 through April 2011 (5 issues)
Credits:
• Creative Director and Executive Director: Stephen King
• Plotting and Consultation: Robin Furth
• Script: Peter David
• Art: Luke Ross and Richard Isanove
• Lettering: Rus Wooton
The Little Sisters of Eluria demonstrates the difference between adapting a novella and a novel. For the novels, plot had to be sacrificed to fit the stories into five or six issues. Here Furth is able to use the entire story almost exactly as it was printed. She even has room to expand one scene.
Furth establishes a time line for the story, setting it a year after the battle of Jericho Hill. After the slow mutants attack Roland in the Eluria town square, the Little Sisters appear, which is a small difference from the novella. It also explains the slow mutants’ uncharacteristic behavior. Normally they are creatures of the darkness. They venture out into the daylight at the bidding of the Little Sisters, who need to make sure the slow mutants don’t kill their victims.
One of the other patients in the tent hospital is given a name, Mr. Abraham, whereas in the novella he is simply the drover. John Norman’s story of how the slow mutants attacked their wagon train is expanded. Norman and the others wanted to take a road that led around the Desatoya Mountains instead of through them, where they would have to pass close to the radium mines. The slow mutants began their attack in the mountains. An avalanche buries one of the older guards. John and Mr. Abraham stay behind to bury the guard while Jimmy continues on with the caravan. Instead of completing the journey to Tejuas, Jimmy and the rest of the convoy wait in Eluria for John and Mr. Abraham to catch up. More slow mutants attack, guided by the minds of the Little Sisters. When John arrives, he finds himself in the midst of a battle, just three men against a hundred mutants. Jimmy is struck in the head and falls into a trough, where he drowns. Abraham runs out of bullets and is brutally attacked by the mutants. John gets off lucky with a thump to the head. Just before he passes out, he sees the Sisters arrive to take charge of the situation.
Characters (in order of mention): Roland Deschain, Man Jesus, slow mutants, Chas. Freeborn, James Norman, Little Sisters, Sister Jenna, Sister Mary (Big Sister), Cort, Sister Louise, Sister Michela, Sister Coquina, Sister Tamara, John Norman, Mr. Abraham, Lizzy, Ray, Ralph, Cuthbert, Smasher, Arthur Eld.
Places: Mid-World, Gilead, Desatoya Mountains, Jericho Hill, Eluria, Dark Tower, Thoughtful House, Tejuas.
Things: Full Earth, Topsy, ka, s
ai, Dark Bells, the language of the unformed, pube, little doctors.
EXTRA FEATURES:
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MY MOST MEMORABLE DARK TOWER MOMENTS
The tent where Roland finds himself in “The Little Sisters of Eluria” will be familiar to readers of The Talisman. It is similar to the one that is used as Queen Laura’s pavilion and sickroom. Nunlike nurses in white habits tended to her. The image of that tent was King’s inspiration for the novella that is being adapted in this chapter of the graphic novel miniseries. The tent he saw, though, had fallen into ruins, haunted by wraith-women who were nurses of death. The context of the novella in Roland’s journey was vague: it happened after he had lost his first ka-tet and before the opening of The Gunslinger. Robin Furth elaborates on the tale of Roland’s adventure in the abandoned town of Eluria. One thing she added to King’s story was Roland’s vision of being tied to the cross above the town’s gates. Eluria was, after all, a Christian place, so invoking Christian imagery seemed appropriate, she says. As Mid-World’s would-be savior, Roland must at times pay for his sins.
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THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE UNFORMED
Robin Furth discusses her struggles with the natures of the Sisters. Where did they come from? If they were purely evil, why did their little doctors cure the sick? Why did they wear the rose, a sigul of the Dark Tower? Stephen King assured her that the Little Sisters were human long ago. They were hospitalers who served the White but had been turned to the dark side. Jenna’s bells came from the Tower originally. “All things serve the Beam,” King reminded her. The little doctors, unlike their mistresses, had not been turned. These can-tam continued to heal. Furth found some of the answers to her questions in the pages of Desperation, a novel that also takes place in the Desatoya Mountains and uses the same language uttered by the Little Sisters. These words are neither High Speech nor Low Speech—they are the language of the unformed, also known as the language of the dead. The demon Tak who overtakes Desperation, Nevada, is an ancient god who comes from outside the world. Though the Desatoya Mountains exist in our world, Desperation does not, so the novel does not take place in the Keystone reality. The evil that drew Tak to his prison in the mines beneath the mountains may be the same force that corrupted the Little Sisters, Furth argues.