Aug 7, 2012

[Comics] The Dark Tower: The Sorcerer

I've recently found myself with a lot more time on my hands, and so I finally returned to reading the various Marvel comics books set in Stephen King's The Dark Tower universe. I've enjoyed a number of the prior collections and now it was ahout time that I returned to Gilead to learn more of Roland Deschain's dark childhood.

These comics do make for an interesting journey into the history of one of my favorite book series around. The Dark Tower isn't exactly light reading and the way it was resolved didn't necessarily please everyone. However, it's hard to argue against the beauty of the setting and the richness of the storytelling ground that the novels provide for. And these comic books do make for a great way to explore those histories.

What makes this one-shot unique versus even the other comic book titles is how it explores the perspectives of everyone's favorite man in black - he who is known as Marten Broadcloak and many other names across Stephen King's books. And this does reveal a lot more about his side of the story, even just within a single comic.


Synopsis: The Dark Tower: The Sorcerer is a one-shot comic released by Marvel set in the universe of Stephen King's Dark Tower universe. The story was provided by Robin Furth with Richard Isanove responsible for the art.

The book starts with a bit of a self-indulgent prologue as Marten Broadcloak addresses the reader directly as he discusses a bit of his history and his unique abilities with magic. We then proceed to go back a bit behind the scenes of "recent" events in Dark Tower history as we see Marten's involvement with many different plots that were realized in other books.

Thus we become witness to when Marten convinces Gabrielle Deschain to kill her husband. We also learn more about Marten's "sister" of sorts, as created by their father in terms of the magic that he now wields. And Marten is not an idle man in the least. Outside of any direct orders that he receives from Farson, it seems the sorcerer has no limit to the number of plots and schemes he has going at any one point in time. From ways to retrieve the "grapefruit" and plating poisoned artifacts to be found by our heroes, Marten leaves nothing to chance in pursuit of his goals.

Apart from learning more about what Marten had been up to "behind the scenes" of the various plot points and intrigues across the various Dark Tower comics, what I found most interesting was the introduction of his "sister" - who is somehow the physical manifestation of one of Maerlyn's spheres. Given she does represent the grapefruit, she is presented in the same glowing pink hue and maintains an almost "incestuous" relationship with Marten.

She's quite the major character who also takes a rather active role in things, especially given all of her manipulations of young Roland himself. Thus it becomes better explained what part she played in things as well and why Roland ended up shooting someone so close to him through her magical machinations.

For a one-shot, the comic covers a lot of ground across the titles and it certainly makes for interesting reading. Many may end up skipping this title due to its brevity and the fact that it covers old ground, but in the end it does provide readers with a more complete picture of the entire saga and it's darkly fun as well.

The Dark Tower: The Sorcerer is a great addition to any fan of the Dark Tower's collection, assuming you've already read the other books. If anything, it does go a long way to explaining just how evil Marten truly is. Thus it rates 4 disturbing demonstrations of Marten's magic out of a possible 5.


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3 comments:

  1. Wala pa akong nabasang novel ni Stephen King. Shame on me :(

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  2. Again, it's never too late to do the things that you want to do. :P

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  3. Baka 'di ako makatulog 'pag nabasa ko novels n'ya :)

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