Publisher's Weekly Review
This comics adaptation (including prequel) of King's Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born follows the early days of the Gunslinger, Roland Deschain. For the first hundred pages or so, you think you're in the old American West, until we come across a landscape littered with rusted oil rigs and vintage WW2 Panzer tanks. This sort of future-past otherworldliness typifies Roland's experience as he begins his quest as a teenage cross between Malory's Lancelot and Sergio Leone's Man with No Name. He and his young friends, high-born sons of the landowning political cadre called the Affiliation, are student-apprentices in a sect of knights bearing an arcane code of ethics, who must undergo strict training in order to bear the title Gunslinger. Early on, Roland earns the title Gunslinger by overcoming his teacher in a masterful fight sequence. Eventually, Roland and a group of fellow Gunslingers are sent to spy on the evil John Farson. Pretty soon, things get medieval. Maidens in distress appear, as do sadistic bad guys, witches and a weird monster called the Thinny. The Gunslinger's world is a weird hodge-podge of 1066 Hastings, 1865 Appomattoxand 1941 Warsaw-and in places the melange is quite exciting. Still, a lot of The Gunslinger Born's plot is unclear and the prose purplish. Characters walk on and walk off, communicating in monotonous speeches wedged between scenes of murder and torture. The requisite love affair between Roland and young Susan Delgado is a bit passionless, and there's very little mirth; emotional ranges stretch from grimacing endurance to abject misery. Writer/adapter Peter David turns some nice phrases in a sort of sub-Faulknerian style, but the wordiness slows the action. At times, artist Jae Lee and colorist Richard Isanove are left with little to do other than create static pinup pages to accompany the prose. Nevertheless, there is a palpable charisma embedded in The Gunslinger Born-you can tell everyone involved is having a blast. Lee's drawings are smoothly rendered and realistic, yet sensually illustrative, and his art has never seemed so warm. And there's a touch of legendary underground comics artists Richard Corbin and Frank Frazetta in Isanove's palettes. The Gunslinger Born is the perfect starting point for those who think comics contain nothing but men in spandex costumes and masks. If it hooks new readers, that's good enough for me. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
King's dark epic in the Great Quest tradition evokes a parallel world Old West channeled through Arthurian magicks and mysteries: falconry and witches mix with a knightly order known as "gunslingers" and rusted Panzer tanks from another era. The epic spans seven novels drawing on themes from fantasy, sf, horror, and New Age, and the graphic version will present the tale in chronological order for the first time. In this initial volume, adapted from flashbacks in the novels, student-apprentice Roland Deschain earns his guns and with his friends sets off on a mission on behalf of the Alliance against enemy John Farson, who is ironically called "the Good Man." Along the way, he gains the trust and help of the beautiful Susan Delgado. But their budding love ends in ashes, and her death helps forge the steel-hard Gunslinger he is to become. Setting aside the questionable rhetorical value of destroying the hero's love interest seemingly just to re-create and harden him, this adaptation delivers a gorgeous package of story. The dry delivery animates the voiceovers and dialog, and the warm, compelling artwork has the hyperreality of dreamed color photographs. With artful violence, horror, and sexual themes; for older teens and up.--M.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
