Many fans of Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series were left grumbling and unsatisfied by his conclusion to the "Dark Tower" saga with the final book, "The Dark Tower." Stephen King himself cautions the reader not to read beyond a certain point for fear of being disappointed and disappointed is a nearly inevitable reaction.

While Stephen King began writing in small markets and the original Gunslinger novel, serialized in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, he is best known for his more general horror writing. The Dark Tower series attempts to do what many successful Fantasy and Science Fiction writers have done, which is to tie in all their writing into a single metaverse. Robert Heinlein began it with his Future History and for Stephen King, The Dark Tower serves not only as the linchpin of the tale, but as the core element uniting all the worlds he has written about. So much so, that in a rather controversial move, Stephen King wrote himself into the narrative of the final novels as Stephen King, the creator of the novels. The result seemed to foreshadow the surrealistically circular nature of the final conclusion.

Except it was not the final conclusion. Back when Stephen King had been severely injured after being struck by a van on the shoulder of the road and was recovering in severe pain, he announced that he would be giving up his writing career once he finished the Dark Tower novels. Stephen King has shown no sign of actually giving up his writing career even after finishing the novels, but what he has done is signaled his desire to rewrite them altogether. In a sense the limited run of the Gunslinger comic book series begins the process, returning to before the world of "Wizard and Glass", to Roland growing up from a boy into a man.

Like the first Gungslinger novel, Gunslinger #1 shows us Roland pursuing a man in black across the desert, even as his thoughts return to the realm of Gilead, where Roland's father stands high, while Roland himself is a young boy being trained by the weapons master Cort. Already though his instructor senses that Roland's destiny is somehow intertwined with the Dark Tower and the school itself stands on one of the beams that runs along and links up to the very Dark Tower itself.

At the same time the sorcerer Marten's plans are well underway. Marten arranges for Roland to view his affair with his mother, driving Roland to challenge Cort in order to obtain his guns. Roland defeats Cort in a bloody, ruthless and unique way foreshadowing the dangerous and virtually unstoppable force he will come to represent as a man. Whether as a boy or a man, Roland is prepared to do whatever it takes, pay whatever price is necessary and spare no one in order to reach his aim.

Gungslinger #1 gives us an overview both of Gilead in its time, of Roland as a boy and the green and noble world he inhabited, contrasted with Roland the man pursuing the former sorcerer through the bleak degraded and debased wasteland. The world has moved on, as the Dark Tower series often repeats, and we are forced to move on with it. Gunslinger #1 effectively and efficiently compacts a serious narrative within a single issue.

Stephen King's prose is always heavy, verbose and talky but the story moves along at an even pace and King is able to work off more of his talkiness in a multipage concluding prose section, that narrates more of Roland's studies. At the heart of it Gunslinger, like the rest of the Dark Tower series is the story of a great loss. Suzanne associates John F. Kennedy and the fall of Camelot, with the loss of the gunslinger, the hero passing out of the west. Whether it is Camelot or Gilead, Roland, JFK or Clint Eastwood, they represent the archetypes of the lonely hero going into the sunset of a world that is no longer as it once was. The Camelot that centers the myth of John F. Kennedy, in reality never was a real place. The Gilead of Roland's memories has been so thoroughly annihilated and erased from memory and time that it is likely to be a place as degraded, irradiated and poisoned as the metropolis of Lud or any of the other regions which Roland and his companions encounter in their journey. The foundations of the world, physical and social, are coming apart, revealing the abyss of Todash space beneath where all sorts of horrific monsters lurk.

Roland's task and quest for the Dark Tower is to save not just the world, but all the worlds, and each step in his journey prepares him for it. The first time around or rather the previous time around he did not get it right. This time around we are meant to believe he will, perhaps because this time around he will not squander his friends and not make the final journey alone.