A review by creepysnowman
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - The Way Station, by Robin Furth, Peter David, Stephen King, Laurence Campbell, Richard Isanove
2.0
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. The quality of the story telling in these graphic novels couldn't last forever. In "The Way Station" the Dark Tower graphic novels have started to go off the rails.
My biggest... not "fear", but what I'd been hoping against, was that once the comics started travelling the ground of the novels as they exist, that the story would still be as good. It's not.
This collection of the issues comprises the events that take place in the first "Gunslinger" novel, including Roland's first meeting with Jake, up to and ending with
My biggest problem with this book was Jake. I hated Jake. I hated Jake so much because I thought he was one of the best realized child characters in fiction - a complex foil for Roland, and a study in what happens when a kid is forced to grow up much too fast. I loved that about him in the books. So I hated that he was painted with a coat of "generic mouthy pre-teen" before publication.
In The Way Station, Jake is flippant, and snarky, rolling a cynical eye at the world around him. In short, he talks like "the popular kids" would at the Piper school (where, it has been established, he had zero friends).
Now the theme in a book is like a foot massage in Pulp Fiction - not talking about it is what makes it so cool. Plus - the whole book has Roland being confronted (OVER AND OVER) with his fatal flaw - and considering it, which actually takes until the last five pages of the entire SERIES. Moments that don't exist in the novel are slapped onto the page for the sake of comedy, and the two of them Roland and Jake - but especially Jake, wax on and on about the themes of the book.
Things get back on the rails more or less near the ending, but given the treatment of Jake in this book, I'm watching for the books that will be the Drawing of the Three with a little less enthusiasm.
My biggest... not "fear", but what I'd been hoping against, was that once the comics started travelling the ground of the novels as they exist, that the story would still be as good. It's not.
This collection of the issues comprises the events that take place in the first "Gunslinger" novel, including Roland's first meeting with Jake, up to and ending with
Spoiler
him finally catching and meeting with the man in black.My biggest problem with this book was Jake. I hated Jake. I hated Jake so much because I thought he was one of the best realized child characters in fiction - a complex foil for Roland, and a study in what happens when a kid is forced to grow up much too fast. I loved that about him in the books. So I hated that he was painted with a coat of "generic mouthy pre-teen" before publication.
In The Way Station, Jake is flippant, and snarky, rolling a cynical eye at the world around him. In short, he talks like "the popular kids" would at the Piper school (where, it has been established, he had zero friends).
Now the theme in a book is like a foot massage in Pulp Fiction - not talking about it is what makes it so cool. Plus - the whole book has Roland being confronted (OVER AND OVER) with his fatal flaw - and considering it, which actually takes until the last five pages of the entire SERIES. Moments that don't exist in the novel are slapped onto the page for the sake of comedy, and the two of them Roland and Jake - but especially Jake, wax on and on about the themes of the book.
Things get back on the rails more or less near the ending, but given the treatment of Jake in this book, I'm watching for the books that will be the Drawing of the Three with a little less enthusiasm.