The Gunslinger

"The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed"

I'm not fanatical about many things, but I have a few. Stephen King stories happen to be one of them. I've been to opening nights of movies adapted from his stories, and eventually I get to reading most everything he (or his dark half Richard Bachman) writes. Last Friday I saw an article about a series of graphic novels (read: comic books) based on his Dark Tower series. Appropriately enough, several comic book stores are having special midnight release events. Cool. I'm not sure of the quantity to be printed, but I was not going to miss out!!! Probably they will print millions. The Dark Tower series are some of my favorites, and of those "Wizard and Glass" is my number one. The comic that came out as issue one (of seven, same as the books, strangely enough) is entitled "The Gunslinger Born", and focuses on his early years as chronicled in the first book. Wizard and Glass also covers his youth, so I think I will enjoy the whole series. The comics seem to promise more than was in the books, so I'm looking forward to that.

I set out for the local store in Pasadena at around 11:40, not knowing what exactly to expect. I arrived around 5 minutes until midnight. There were probably around fifty people there already, and probably 10 or more showed up while I was waiting. One of the guy from the store was handing out a sketch book showing some of the artwork in black and white, as well as the coloring process. Cool. A few minutes after midnight they opened up and started letting customers in. As we filed in, a worker was handing out raffle style tickets. Apparently one of the two artists, Richard Isanove, was in attendance signing the comics. Cool. The staff informed us that they had a few copies of variant cover editions that they were going to raffle off. I had no idea what that meant, probably means something to comic book aficionados. My number ended in 521. Near to being a lucky number. It was after 12:30 before they got to doing the raffle. I had to stay, I figured my odds were pretty good with that few people there. I think they had something like 10 of the first variant, and I got not even close to my number. The second variant they only had three of. Second number, 521!!! Whoo hoo!!! (I actually said that) I got that one signed, too, and headed on home. I must be crazy staying out that late on a work night. Why do they do cool stuff like that and concerts during the week???

I got home after 1, and was too buzzed to sleep. Read the whole thing before I attempted to go to bed. Very cool, not exactly by the book, but very faithful to it. I had pictured Gabrielle as a blond, though. I can hardly wait until the next one comes out!!!