Gunslinger #4 - The Fourth Issue of The Gunslinger Born

With the fourth issue of The Gunslinger Born, Roland and his Ka-Tet of apprentice gunslingers find themselves deeper in the intrigue roiling through the town of Hambry. Roland all the while falls in love with Susan Delgado and forms an alliance to destroy Farson's forces coming for the oil of Hambry which they need to power their legions of tanks and war machines.

Like The Gunslinger Born Issue #3, Gunslinger Born Issue #4 is dedicated in part to rehashing in grand visual style some scenes we already saw in Stephen King's fourth novel in the Dark Tower saga, Wizard and Glass. Yet Jae Lee's art captures the romance of Roland and Susan as jagged windblown shapes, stolen glances and moments amidst the whirlwind that is soon to come. The result is a far more eloquent tale than had been rendered all throughout the rather mediocre Wizard and Glass, told in the succeeding panels of furtive touches, glances and kisses, the handful of bright moments before the coming doom. It is also an area where Stephen King's original style dominates the atmosphere without choking the story. At its best the iconic imagery is captured in the full page panel below that shows Roland as Wil Dearborn and Susan together, overshadowed by the rusted metal chain, the bonds of life, duty, destiny and Ka Tet that both link them and yet ultimately tear them apart.

Roy Depape's ride to Ritzy to learn the identities of Roland, Alain and the others in his Ka Tet is handled in classic Western style, compare with a bar fight and an execution. The scene's length is somewhat unnecessary but nevertheless stylish and as dusty as the praire itself, aided by Peter David's dry dialogue culminating in a classic line, no less memorable for its classic repetition. Roland's ride through Eyebolt Canyon and past the Thinny is rendered as among the issue's best scenes as Roland thunders past while the Thinny tells him that no one and nothing in the world will desire him half as much as it. And means it too. Richard Isanove's coloring here renders Eyebolt Canyon in ominous twilight purples and the thinny as a monstrous greenish rotting cavity.

In new material, we see Marten meet with a lieutenant in Farson's forces who are processing oil using some rather brutal methods and worked by slow mutants. We see Marten transform into Walter, the Man in Black and describes himself as Walter of the Black, and in the added narrative after the pages we learn what the Black is. Maerlyn, the Satan of this and every realm, of this fictional universe, first emerged to bring darkness into the light lit worlds that dwelled white and green beneath the many multiple alternate suns around the Dark Tower. To this end Maerlyn built Maerlyn's Mirror, a great layered piece of silver and glass that reflected evil as good and good as evil, beauty as ugliness and ugliness as beauty, distorting the world for men and demons alike. With the mirror, Maerlyn launched an attack on the Dark Tower which failed and in doing so shattered, scattering itself around all the dimensions of the Dark Tower multiverse to infect all who dwell within them, its splinters embedded in their eyes to generate falsehoods and deviations, poisoning their minds against goodness or The White.

Marten \ Walter serves the Crimson King, that twisted spawn of The Crimson Queen-- produced from Maerlyn's invasion of the realm of Arthur Eid. Now Roy Depape of the Big Coffin Hunters, the murderers of Susan's father, Pat Delgado, frustrated at their failed showdown with Roland and his Ka Tet, learn through Roy Depape from a worn out weed eating and rejected apprentice gunslinger that Roland is the son of Steven Deschain, of the line of Eid, who has not forgotten his father. Roland, the original target of Marten, while still at home in the realm of Gilead. Roland, the sworn enemy of the Crimson King, though he knows it not yet. Roland, the Gunslinger Born, destined to slay the Crimson King and preserve the Dark Tower against the last and final assault by the evil that sprang from what Maerlyn had wrought to bring about the fall of Gilead.

Farson's armies are preparing to move, a small portion splitting away to ride to Hambry for the oil needed to power their tanks and war machines. The town of Hambry under the corrupt Mayor Thorin works to hide Hambry's true stock of horses and cattle untainted by mutations and send Roland and his Ka-Ket on his way and failing that-- to outright kill them.

Meanwhile Roland's friends are concerned about the Gilly, Susan, he has been keeping company with and mooning over. Susan, promised to Mayor Thorin, to satisfy his lusts and his desire for a male child. Susan whose own heart has been given to Roland himself, under his false name of Wil Dearborn.

While Walter of the Black inspects Farson's armies and Roland sets a trap for Farson's men and Hambry's Big Coffin Hunters at the Thinny in Eyebolt Canyon, Susan has already and unwittingly trapped his own heart. As the story unfolds, the showdown draws nearer and nearer and with it the fall of Gilead and the threat to the Dark Tower.

The Gunslinger Born #4, fourth issue, in addition to the tale of Maerlyn's Mirror contains part 2 of the open question and answer session with Stephen King that is mostly wasted space, as well as the far more interesting description of the workflow process that gets each comic book from the drawing board to the press, with everyone's contributions included and modified along the way.