Continued
The Path of the Beam (in the parlance of the Tower) took me to Earth-2 Comics on Ventura Blvd in Sherman Oaks, CA. When I arrived shortly before the doors opened at 11:00pm, I was not entirely surprised to find few people waiting outside. By few I mean four. I've been to many midnight sales for everything from Windows 95 to Star Wars DVDs, but I had a feeling that a comic book midnight sale would not draw huge numbers. After all, most comic book people I know go to their nearby store on Wednesday during lunch to get the new comics, so why stay up until 1:00am during the week to get something you can get twelve hours later? Once the store opened up there was a pretty steady trickle of people coming in leading up to midnight resulting in approximately 40 attendees. I accosted many of them and discovered that about half were not comic book fans at all, but rather just Dark Tower fans driven by that irresistible urge to consume more DT content as soon as possible.
Fans in line to buy the book
Store manager Darren Thomas was on hand to meet and greet, and while they could not legally sell any copies of the comic itself until after midnight, they were ringing out sales for raffle tickets that could be exchanged for the comic after 12:00am. Being locked in a comic store for an hour lends itself to the ever-dangerous comic browse that ultimately results in a purchase, and this night was no different for many attendees (I, myself, finally picked up a copy of Pride of Baghdad during the wait.) "Lost" figures were raffled off followed by a copy of Absolute Sandman, which was won by a woman who had no idea what it was (fortunately her husband was a fan or she would not have gotten far with it). Thomas expects the first issue to outsell some of Marvel's top sellers, but the quality of the book will determine how many stick around for all seven issues...or will it? While not many of the comic book fans at the sale put down orders for all seven issues in advance, most if not all the Dark Tower fans put their money down for the long ride. I also asked manager Darren Thomas if Marvel was prepared to ship each issue on time, and he sounded very confident that they would. I'd like to think that Marvel has the foresight to know that while comic fans will tolerate delays in ship dates to wait for their favorite art, Dark Tower fans will not. I fear for the Marvel offices if the last issue is delayed for months.
$125 variant cover for sale
So how's the comic? The series is written by comic mainstay Peter David and Dark Tower Concordance author Robin Furth with guidance by Stephen King himself, and features art by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove. The writing feels very Dark Tower and is in language which readers of the books are immediately familiar. The art is exceptional, and while it may not be how I interpreted the characters, it is close enough that it doesn't detract from the experience. The problem I have with the first issue, and perhaps future issues from what I've seen in the sketch book, is that it covers a story section that is already part of The Gunslinger. Granted, it is one of my favorite sections of the book, but I was hoping that the series would cover new ground. I think the plan is to go over some of the flashbacks from the book series while also revealing new information that the books left out. I'm content with that as long as the series doesn't turn out to be an adaptation of the young-Roland stories from the books. Who am I kidding, I'm going to buy all seven no matter what they are because "ka is a wheel and all things serve the Tower."
Another variant cover
