Comic Info
Comic Name: The Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Robin Furth/Peter David
Artist: Jae Lee/Richard Isanove
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2010
Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill #2 (Variant)
Reprints Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill #1-5 (February 2010-June 2010). With the fall of Gilead, one of the six Beams has been destroyed. Now Roland is leading the survivors of Gilead in an attempt to regain the land before heading to the Dark Tower to heal the land. The army of John Farson led by General Grissom and aided by Marten Broadcloak is still trying to stop Roland and his friends, and this time they have a plan to get inside the group and destroy it from within.
Written by Peter David and plotted by Robin Furth, The Dark Tower Volume 5: The Battle of Jericho Hill is a Marvel Comics adaptation of Stephen King’s fantasy saga which began in 1982 with The Gunslinger. Following The Dark Tower Volume 4: Fall of Gilead, the collection features art by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove.
The Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill marks the end of the lead up to Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger which feels like it has been coming for so long. The series started with an adaptation of The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass and despite filling out story information, it felt like the series was kind of spinning its wheels. The Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill wraps up the plotlines that have been going on for four limited series.
Like most of The Dark Tower series thus far, the comic doesn’t cover much territory in the five issues, but this series has nine years passing between the first issue and the second issue. This is one of my biggest problems with The Dark Tower. It is one of the more expensive comics and nothing ever happens in it except the last issue. That means, this comic works well as a collection, but as stand alone issues it isn’t always recommendable.
Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill #1
The plot of the limited series also marks the end of Roland ka-tet and Roland striking off on his own. Part of the excitement of The Dark Tower was this moment. You knew that Roland was alone at the beginning of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, but you didn’t know how Roland ended up alone necessarily. It was going to be bad and it was going to be brutal…and at least this collection paid off in that sense. The background of Roland and his friends has been nice, but I look forward to the story moving on.
The saga of The Dark Tower is a very adaptable story (at this point) and it has been interesting to follow its course. The series seems to keep getting sidetracked however and it feels like for the sake of completing the series and the adaptation that the story must move on a quicker pace. Finally reaching, The Gunslinger is a good first step, but I’ll believe the series will be completed when I’m reading the last volume of The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. The Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill is followed by The Dark Tower 6: The Gunslinger—The Journey Begins.
Preceded By:
The Dark Tower Volume 4: Fall of Gilead
Followed By:
