Gunslinger #5 - The Fifth Issue of The Gunslinger Born

Whether among the darkness and the dark things that hover around the world where darkness is mixed with light or in the world itself with its crazed mixture of laughter and life, sorrow and death, Ka is the wheel on which the fates of men are spun like so much silken thread and on which they are in turn broken. The thread of Roland winds its way across the loom ever closer to the Dark Tower, slipping out and falling away and yet always shooting forward.

For a time the threads of other lives, sometimes that of his Ka-Tet, those chosen to stand together with him as one group and fight together, whether they be Eddie and Susanah of New York, Jake and Oy the bumbler or the companions of his past like Alain or the love of his past, Susan. Susan Delgado, chosen concubine of Mayor Thorin, servant of Farson, the Good Man, whose armies in service to the Great Dark draw closer to the realm of Gilead, realm of Arthur Eid, the first Gunslinger who brought unity to the Baronies against the bandit raiders who terrorized the world after the Old People destroyed themselves.

And sometimes a tipping point comes. That moment on the edge of the world before the events that will change lives and perhaps worlds will be finally unleashed with all their cataclysmic consquences upon all who see them. From issue to issue in The Gunslinger Born, Roland has advanced closer to his destiny. The test of a boy is drawing close to its end as Roland becomes a man in every sense of the word.

And in the fifth issue, Issue #5 of the tale of The Gunslinger Born, the one who slay the Crimson King, Roland the boy is deeply in love with Susan and preparing to go up against the Big Coffin Hunters, the assassins who murdered Susan's father and the armies of Farson the Good Man himself, thirsty for oil to feed their tanks with which they intend to overrun Gilead and plow it into the earth. As Roland is distanced from the companions of his Ka Tet who feel jealousy for Roland's diversion from the task at hand with the"gilly", Susan.

While The Gunslinger Born in many ways essentially encapsulates the events of the fourth Dark Tower novel, Wizard and Glass, it arguably also redeems what was arguably the weakest novel in the series.Wizard and Glass had been essentially uneven, locked into a flashback format that inevitably makes a story weak and watered down and saddled with what seemed like a distraction from the real story. Wizard and Glass never quite connected with readers and seemed like nearly as great a mistake as Stephen King inserting himself as a character in the saga for the last books.

The Gunslinger Born comics by contrast redeems a lot of the material. While in theory the opening of Issue #1 suggests a flashback, the issues themselves are dedicated wholly to the setting of Roland's youth, thus avoiding the inevitable sense of ennui that sets in during flashback stories that wind up feeling like they are only diverting us from the real action.The dramatic artwork from Jae Lee and Richard Isanove sketch out the story in epic tones that was all too often muddled in Wizard and Glass and the larger third person perspective of The Gunslinger Born demonstrates that it is no character's flashback but rather an omnipotent third person view narrative that is a good deal more interesting.

While Roland makes his plans and steals his moments away with Susan, Marten Broadcloak has set events into motion. Farson's armies are on the way and with Rhea the witch spying on Roland and Susan, the Big Coffin Hunters who had learned that the boys were Gunslingers have been directed to vandalize and ruin the possessions of Roland and his friends and destroy the pigeons which they had been using to maintain contact with Gilead. Cut off now from any means of communication and with no way to send a warning, it is up to Roland and his friends to win the fight on their own and prevent the oil from falling into the hands of Farson's armies.

Marten Broadcloak has now clearly emerged as the right hand of Farson and in prose stories written afterward by Robin Furth, we learn the background and fall of Rhea and Jonas, of the Big Coffin Hunters. In Parts II and III of the Laughing Mirror created by Maerlyn to mock the world's creation and transform good to evil and evil to good, which was shattered to pieces and scattered around the world, we learn that both Rhea and Jonas were infected by slices of the mirror. Rhea's slice flew into her eye and gave a spiteful and wicked girl magical powers with which she tormented those in her village and which she then employed to spread her poisoned trade as a Wise Woman from village to village, doing more evil than good, regardless of what they paid her.

Jonas had meanwhile stepped on a shard of the mirror and suffered a crippling infection that poisoned his body and eventually poisoned his heart, transforming the boy who had been a devoted apprentice Gunslinger into a carelessly evil spawn of Maerlyn's magicks. Cast out, Jonas chose to instead become a Gunslinger assassin and now there are Gunslingers in his path to kill and he does not intend to miss.

Susan, molested by Mayor Thorin, has fled into the arms of Roland, who reveals to her his true name and standing, not as Wil Deaborn but as Roland, Gunslinger. They express their love and among the trees and oozing waters of the swamp at which point Susan's hypnotic compulsion is triggered which causes Roland to realize that she had been hypnotized by the witch, Rhea of Coos.

As the issue closes, Jonas has discovered 'Lookout' the good luck charm on the tree and realizes that the Gunslingers have found the oil wells, bringing the showdown to hand.