The Dark Tower 4: Fall of Gilead

Comic Info

The Dark Tower: Fall of Gilead #2

Reprints The Dark Tower: The Sorcerer and The Dark Tower: Fall of Gilead #1-6 (June 2009-January 2010). Marten Broadcloak is making his move, Roland is imprisoned for killing his mother, and Cort is caught in a trap by Farson’s followers. With the stakes raising, can Roland’s father maintain control of Gilead or will the fabled kingdom fall to the forces of Farson?

Written by Robin Furth and Peter David, The Dark Tower Volume 4:  Fall of Gilead is a Marvel Comics fantasy comic book series.  Following The Dark Tower 3:  Treachery, the collection continues the comic based upon Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series which began in 1982.  The series features art by Richard Isanove and contains both The Dark Tower:  Fall of Gilead limited series and the stand-alone issue The Dark Tower:  The Sorcerer.

I was excited to hear that The Dark Tower was being adapted by Marvel into a series…and I was all in for a bit.  I kept waiting and waiting for the series to get to the novels, but besides The Dark Tower VI:  Wizard and Glass and some supplemental material, the comic has largely been new content.  The Dark Tower is finally getting ready to move on and this story is a necessarily story to tell how Roland ended up alone.

The story has been a long time coming. If you’ve read the Dark Tower books, you know that Gilead didn’t end well and  Roland is going to lost his ka-tet…you just don’t know exactly how.  This series starts to dive into what officially destroyed Gilead, but it has taken too long to get here.  The books as a collection are somewhat satisfying, but the books as individual issues are pretty flimsy due to large indexes with material about the content.

The Dark Tower: Fall of Gilead #6

The art continues to be strong in The Dark Tower: Fall of Gilead, though it is quite minimal. The characters are a bit over inked and it is difficult to tell some of Roland’s friends apart, but it is still worlds above the art of many comic books.  This is also amazing in the fact that The Dark Tower continues to be on time in stores.  Many times when a comic really has decent art, it ends up being late (or when the art is actually pretty crappy…aka early Image).

In general, this is a pretty good series and this is one of the better volumes in the series.  It provides the build-up you’ve been waiting for and now I look forward to getting on into the books written by Stephen King instead of original backstory fill-ins.  I always found Stephen King’s books girthy enough and the story presented in Wizard and Glass (which was related in the first limited series The Dark Tower:  The Gunslinger Born) provided enough back story for me.  There is a lot of ground to cover between Roland and the Dark Tower and I worry that the series won’t be able to cover it in the competitive comic book market.  The Dark Tower 4:  Fall of Gilead is followed by The Dark Tower 5: The Battle of Jericho Hill.

Preceded By:

The Dark Tower Volume 3:  Treachery

Followed By:

The Dark Tower Volume 5:  The Battle of Jericho Hill