Gunslinger #6 The First Gunslinger Born Arc Approaches Its Close

As the first arc of the Gunslinger Born Marvel Comics adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower approaches it close with the sixth issue, the origins story of Roland Deschain, Son of Steven, Gunslinger and Man of Destiny, destined to slay Crimson King and Prince and confront the evil forces of the Prim seeking to bring down the Dark Tower and plunge all the worlds into chaos, disorder and poisoned ruin... Issue Six of The Gunslinger Born instead tells a story that is primarily Susan's story and in this it departs from Stephen King's own fourth novel in the Dark Tower series, Wizard and Glass, from which much of the plot and origin material of the first arc of the Gunslinger Born adaptation has been born.

Yet it is fitting that Issue 6 should be very much Susan's story and that the extract of mythology from the back of Issue #6 should be the tale of the origin of the Reaptide festival and the Charyou Tree for Susan Delgado's end, daughter of Pat Delgado, staunch defender of the Affiliation all the days of his life until his untimely murder, is fast approaching. As life begins within her, the stirring life of Roland's child who is not meant to be for The Man in Black knows well that a child born from Roland is destined to be his slayer, her life quickly approaches its end.

Susan Delgado in Wizard and Glass was in many ways more object than subject, a female character who as too many female characters in fantasy novels are, was disposable. Her death was written before the story began and her role was in many ways an obstruction in Roland's life, a plot point to be ticked off and swept out of the way. Stephen King had written memorable and strong female characters before but Susan Delgado was not one of them. In many ways the first arc of Gunslinger Born helps repair that by doing a far better job of giving Susan her own voice and her own mind.

Issue VI of Gunslinger is easily the best at telling Susan's story and from the opening that has Cuthbert riding along and thinking of his argument with Roland over Susan and intercepting a note about Susan via Sheemie and to its closing moments as Rhea and Roy discuss their sight of Susan in Maerlyn's Grapefruit, even when Susan is not in the scene, she is usually the topic. While the inevitability of her tragic fate cannot be changed, as signaled by the closing material of Gunslinger Issue 6, she can and is being given a proper sendoff as a heroine in her own right rather than just a bland girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, as she often appeared in Wizard and Glass.

So much so is the focus on Susan that even the destruction of the tankers happens off stage, so to speak, a dubious decision since that would have made for some great comic art from Jae Lee but it might also have been a calculated decision to save the real fireworks for Issue 7 where the battle is truly joined while leaving Issue #6 as a quieter and more subdued story. Still I can think of some good contrasting scenes that could have been done and Roland and his Kat-Tet sneaking up on the tankers and Farson's men guarding them before sending them up in blazes sky high is a scene it almost hurts to miss. Though perhaps the plan is to feature it in Issue #7 instead.

Overall Issue 6 does a good job of covering the unfolding storm from the murder of Thorin whose sheets furl around him ghostlike while he whispers foretellings of the death coming upon him, Aunt Coral's affair with Roy Depape, as the withered woman sits cradled in bright red covers hoping that Roy cares for her and knowing that he does not and Rhea herself, hovering eternally over Maerlyn's Rainbow even as it sucks her dry, leaving her withered evil branch waiting to crack and yet all the more capable of doing wicked malice before she goes. Jae Lee's outstanding art brings these and other scenes to life with arresting images capturing grim moments, determined expressions and the flow of fabric over stony limbs and rough wooden slates crossed behind harsh faces. The result is very much the cross between a Western and a Fantasy tale that Stephen King brought down on the pages and could not have been visually captured on the pages without the contribution of Jae Lee's incredible art work and the coloring skills of Richard Isanove.

Issue 6 of Gunslinger is mercifully free of any more transcripts of the awkward Q&A's at the Marvel session featuring Stephen King, Peter David, Jae Lee, Richard Isanove and Joe Quesada. Instead Robin Furth tells the tale of the origin of the Reaptime Festival and the Charyou Tree, a barbaric rite of human sacrifice born out of a poisoned land and yet another one of the dark doings of Maerlyn, emerging periodically from the awful chaos of the Prim to seduce and poison humanity into darkness.

Created when Maerlyn came to a poisoned part of the realm neglected by Arthur and the Affiliation at Gilead where children were hardly born any more and crops failed and informed them that their gods were dead after the Old People's War but that if they worshiped the forces of the Prim with acts of human sacrifice by the dead Charyou Tree, their crops would grow and children would be born and the land would thrive. The tale of its origin is itself worthy of a Stephen King novel or at least a novella and from that grim birth, the infestation of this horrid rite spread and the victims burned in the flames of the Charyou Tree, which awaits its next victim.

Finally Issue Six of The Gunslinger Born is rounded out by a display of some of Jae Lee's panels, sans coloring and an illustrated guide to the guns a Gunslinger uses from the trainee stage down to the ancient steel guns used by Gunslingers and handed down from father to son down the generations and finally the Guns of Deschain themselves, carved with the sigil of the White, a flower like design and passed down all the way to Roland, made from the steel of an alien world with wooden grips that still shine after thousands of years from the wood of an alien world. Last of all is the credo of the Gunslinger. I shoot not with my hand.