Having been dissapointed by the last series and a half of Dark Tower comics, I had very mixed feelings going into issue one.  At last, we had reached the point where Stephen King started this story over thirty years ago: “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.”

Those exact words didn’t appear in this issue, but that’s clearly where we are.  And, in this issue, Furth & David’s plotting appears to be pretty consistent with King’s original story.

The art, however,  is a huge let-down for me.  I thought, with Jae Lee officially off the title, and Sean Phillips on we might see a different color pallete, a different look to the characters.  A lot of time has passed since the end of Jericho Hill, and we could have had some art that was brighter.  I don’t mean happy and shiny, this is a post-apocalyptic western, but maybe, just maybe, we could have less shadows on the faces, less blood red sky with nothing in the background.  I realize this is a desert, but there are things in deserts besides stark red horizons.  The art feels like a missed opportunity, and I think, will be the downfall of this series.

I’m certainly dropping this.  I’ve read the original story many times, and was interested to see what it would look like in visual format.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look appealing.  It may have worked better as a black and white comic.  Phillips’s pencil previews in the book look pretty solid, if still a bit too shadowy for my tastes.