Gunslinger #7 - Issue 7 of Stephen King'sThe Gunslinger Born

For six issues the final showdown of the first arc of the Gunslinger Born has been building and in the seventh issue events crash down to their epic conclusion. The epic scale of the story can be seen in the number of double page panels that the seventh issue boasts. The story of Roland's love for Susan Delgado was always a doomed tale, whether as it was told originally in a flashback by Roland in Book Four of the Dark Tower saga, Wizard and Glass or in the first arc of The Gunslinger Born comic book series.

What Gunslinger Born did was give Susan more of an identity and more backbone and courage, making her almost an equal partner with the rest of Roland's Ka-Tet in some ways. Despite featuring her death, Issue 7 of Gunslinger does not spend much time lingering over it. One panel shows her burning at the Charyou Tree and three pages show her capture by the Big Coffin Hunters and her defiance of them. Gunslinger #7 handles it all far better than Wizard and Glass does displaying the naturalistic way the townspeople choose to carry out her murder. The panel featuring Susan's death though is overwrought to the point of hysteria mixing bad art, a garishly colored Susan, bad lettering, a garish word bubble and bad writing. Susan's burning is a difficult scene to manage a similar scene of a young girl being burned at the stake was handled with much more discretion by Tales of the Slayers where understating what was happening increased its impact.

Either way though the end is inevitable. Susan marked an intermission point for Roland on the passage between childhood and adulthood, temporarily allowing him to be an almost carefree teenager in love. With that bitter lesson learned , Susan's death marks the death of a part of Roland's soul that he will not begin to recover until he encounters Jake, Susannah and Eddie and rebuilds his Ka-Tet again.

Gunslinger Issue 7 also does a better job of handling Roland's reaction and the revelation of Susan's death, which in Wizard and Glass made him seem heartless or incompetent. However Shimmie's presence in a full panel in Gunslinger Issue Seven now makes no sense as he has no further relevance to the plot or importance unless Issue 1 of the next Gunslinger arc over on the near side of 2008 will feature him passing some scrap or tidbit about Susan to Roland, as unlikely as that seems since the end of Issue 7 gives the strong impression of one chapter closed and one location exchanged for another, as the next Gunslinger arc moves beyond Wizard and Glass and toward the destruction of Gilead at Farson's hands.

Jae Lee and Richard Isanove brilliantly handle Roland and his Ka-Tet's battle against the Big Coffin Hunters and the ambush of the Good Man's ranks come for the oil. From gorgeously painted two page panels (of which the best example can be seen below and a second example on the top left of this Hub) and quick panels that combined brilliantly render the battle as Roland rides down the Big Coffin Hunters.

Gunslinger #7 is heavy on action, even the Susan scenes consisting of a violent attack (I don't think we needed the added implication that Susan was possibly raped along the way. I don't recall that being in Wizard and Glass and I think Peter David would have done better not to add it.) As a result Gunslinger Issue Seven is light on the dialogue with the scripting mainly taking the form of occasional bursts of narrative in that distinctive Stephen Kingish (Kingian? Kingesque?) narrator delivering his laconic observations complete with the invented slang of Mid-World.

There are of course things that go missing or are not up to par. The machine gun scene comes off nearly as silly as the Harry Potter hand grenades in Wolves of the Calla. The Rhea scene that has her feeding off the blood of Susan's maiden aunt in a very graphic way is not only nauseatingly gruesome but unnecessary especially when you consider what other areas could have been filled in here, especially a possible look back at what Marten is up to (appropriate for a closing chapter of an arc whose sequels will of course see the return of Marten or the Man in Black or Walter or his many other names), a snapshot of the town before Susan's execution or Roland's own state of mind.

The additional material in Gunslinger #7 is relatively limited compared to the other issues. There are some portions of Jae Lee's sketchbook and of course another chapter on the backstory of the Dark Tower mythology but nothing else. That said the story of the Charyou Tree in its second part is an intriguing one relating the murder of an early Deschain who should have produced a son for Arthur Eid, who might have fulfilled the destiny that Roland was instead burdened with, but was instead murdered through a plot by one of the emissaries of the Prim who conspired with the Queen to kill her and spawn a Crimson Prince type spider demon from her instead. This led to the end of the Charyou Tree in Mid-World for some time until it was apparently revived at the inspiration of Rhea of Coos.

And thus concludes the first arc of The Gunslinger Born with its seventh issue. How appropriately mystical. The next arc begins in February 2008. Safe travels to you and may you find peaceful shelter.