The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy (34 page)

Roland discovers that the not-men are real men wearing jackets from the Dogan that render them invisible. They are using instruments on Susan and other women, though their reasons for doing so are vague. He bursts into the chamber and shoots four men, but a fifth activates his jacket and vanishes. Invisibility isn't protection from a gunslinger, though, and Roland kills the reinforcements while Jessica and Susan free the other prisoners.

One of the not-men takes Susan prisoner and attempts to escape. Roland is about to shoot him, but the billy-bumbler leaps at the not-man, blocking his shot. The man throws the billy-bumbler aside, impaling it on a tree (foreshadowing an event far down the gunslinger's path). Roland kills the last villain, spends the night with Susan and returns to the trail at first light.

His tale done, Roland leaves Brown's cabin and sets out on foot after the man in black.

E
XTRA
F
EATURES:

I
SSUE
1: _______________________________________________

T
HE
J
OURNEY
C
ONTINUES

Robin Furth discusses the nature of the new thirty-issue story arc, which will describe how the young Roland became a bitter, lonely and dangerous drifter. Little is mentioned in the Dark Tower novels about the twelve years following the battle of Jericho Hill, so Furth had few signposts on which to base her plots. Furth changed the perspective of
The Gunslinger
's familiar scene. Roland is pursuing, but the man in black is also leading Roland on. Her essay includes an excerpt from her original outline. She and her editors decided to flash back all the way to Jericho Hill, to give Roland a chance to grieve for his dead friends.

I
SSUE
2: _______________________________________________

T
HE
J
OURNEY
C
ONTINUES

Furth articulates her fears and anxieties about adding things to the well-known tale of Roland's exploits, details like the addition of not-men and a billy-bumbler. Some readers think she has fallen off the Beam by breaking with the known story line. She explains her decision to expand Aileen Ritter's role from the brief mentions in the novel and shows how she used this character to make Roland more sympathetic and how his actions with her after Jericho Hill foreshadow some of his future behavior. For those readers who might wish Furth's plot lay closer to the one they imagined, she offers familiar words of comfort: There are more worlds than these.

I
SSUE
3: _______________________________________________

T
HE
J
OURNEY
C
ONTINUES
: T
HE
H
ANGING OF
H
AX

Furth argues that Roland's loss of innocence began when, at the age of eleven, he turned in Hax for treason and witnessed his hanging. She relates the story as it appears in
The Gunslinger
and draws the analogy to Roland's training with a hawk—he will need to kill the dove of innocence within himself to advance as a gunslinger. In the moment when he and Cuthbert decided to turn Hax in, they chose their allegiance and decided what truly mattered to them. Yet, standing beneath the gallows, they experience doubts. The unruly crowd that turns out to witness the execution and the shoddiness of the gallows
disabuse them of the notion that the hanging is a purely honorable process. Hax clings to his allegiances at the end, and Roland realizes that many in the crowd are on his side, not that of Gilead.

I
SSUE
4: _______________________________________________

A T
ALKING
B
ILLY
-W
HAT
?

Furth discusses a creature that is common in Mid-World, the billy-bumbler (also known as the throcken), to readers who aren't familiar with King's novels. These intelligent animals can parrot human speech and some can count or do simple math. Some people swear that they have a near-human capacity for emotion. Their loyalty to humans is not automatic—as it is with most dogs—but once earned, it is a lifelong bond. After the fall of Gilead, billy-bumblers became feral, though they remembered their bonds with humans. In the days of the Old Ones, they were bred to hunt down the Grandfather-fleas, parasitic creatures that followed Type One vampires. In later years, they helped keep the rat population in Barony castles under control.

I
SSUE
5: _______________________________________________

T
HE
W
HEEL OF
K
A

The team creating the stories for the Marvel comics had a prime directive, issued by Stephen King: the forces of
ka
must dictate their story. The word “
ka
” is both nebulous and replete with a multitude of meanings: life force, consciousness, duty, destiny, goal, destination, karma, fate. A
ka-tet
is a group of people who share the same goal. Roland believes that Mid-World's
ka
spins from the Dark Tower and that, by reaching and climbing the Tower, he can force the god that dwells in it to change Mid-World's fate. Because
ka
is a wheel that circles back to the beginning, Furth and her colleagues inserted elements into Roland's early journey (a tavern girl named Susan, a billy-bumbler from Oy's
ka-tet
, Dogans). The Tower, however, is not simply the center of Mid-World—it is the axis of all universes. There are people who exist as slightly different versions of each other (called twinners in
The Talisman
and
Black House
) who share each other's
ka
to a certain extent. Susan Black and a bumbler named Billy share some of the
ka
of the people they resemble: Susan Delgado and Oy respectively.

T
HE
L
ITTLE
S
ISTERS OF
E
LURIA

Original release dates:
December 2010 through April 2011 (5 issues)

Credits:

•
Creative Director and Executive Director:
Stephen King

•
Plotting and Consultation:
Robin Furth

•
Script:
Peter David

•
Art:
Luke Ross and Richard Isanove

•
Lettering:
Rus Wooton

The Little Sisters of Eluria demonstrates the difference between adapting a novella and a novel. For the novels, plot had to be sacrificed to fit the stories into five or six issues. Here Furth is able to use the entire story almost exactly as it was printed. She even has room to expand one scene.

Furth establishes a time line for the story, setting it a year after the battle of Jericho Hill. After the slow mutants attack Roland in the Eluria town square, the Little Sisters appear, which is a small difference from the novella. It also explains the slow mutants' uncharacteristic behavior. Normally they are creatures of the darkness. They venture out into the daylight at the bidding of the Little Sisters, who need to make sure the slow mutants don't kill their victims.

One of the other patients in the tent hospital is given a name, Mr. Abraham, whereas in the novella he is simply the drover. John Norman's story of how the slow mutants attacked their wagon train is expanded. Norman and the others wanted to take a road that led around the Desatoya Mountains instead of through them, where they would have to pass close to the radium mines. The slow mutants began their attack in the mountains. An avalanche buries one of the older guards. John and Mr. Abraham stay behind to bury the guard while Jimmy continues on with the caravan. Instead of completing the journey to Tejuas, Jimmy and the rest of the convoy wait in Eluria for John and Mr. Abraham to catch up. More slow mutants attack, guided by the minds of the Little Sisters. When John arrives, he finds himself in the midst of a battle, just three men against a hundred mutants. Jimmy is struck in the head and falls into a trough, where he drowns. Abraham runs out of bullets and is brutally attacked by the mutants. John gets off lucky with a thump to the head. Just before he passes out, he sees the Sisters arrive to take charge of the situation.

E
XTRA
F
EATURES:

I
SSUE
1: _______________________________________________

M
Y
M
OST
M
EMORABLE
D
ARK
T
OWER
M
OMENTS

The tent where Roland finds himself in “The Little Sisters of Eluria” will be familiar to readers of
The Talisman
. It is similar to the one that is used as Queen Laura's pavilion and sickroom. Nunlike nurses in white habits tended to her. The image of that tent was King's inspiration for the novella that is being adapted in this chapter of the graphic novel miniseries. The tent he saw, though, had fallen into ruins, haunted by wraith-women who were nurses of death. The context of the novella in Roland's journey was vague: it happened after he had lost his first
ka-tet
and before the opening of
The Gunslinger
. Robin Furth elaborates on the tale of Roland's adventure in the abandoned town of Eluria. One thing she added to King's story was Roland's vision of being tied to the cross above the town's gates. Eluria was, after all, a Christian place, so invoking Christian imagery seemed appropriate, she says. As Mid-World's would-be savior, Roland must at times pay for his sins.

I
SSUE
2: _______________________________________________

T
HE
L
ITTLE
S
ISTERS OF
E
LURIA AND THE
L
ANGUAGE OF THE
U
NFORMED

Robin Furth discusses her struggles with the natures of the Sisters. Where did they come from? If they were purely evil, why did their little doctors cure the sick? Why did they wear the rose, a
sigul
of the Dark Tower? Stephen King assured her that the Little Sisters were human long ago. They were hospitalers who served the White but had been turned to the dark side. Jenna's bells came from the Tower originally. “All things serve the Beam,” King reminded her. The little doctors, unlike their mistresses, had not been turned. These
can-tam
continued to heal. Furth found some of the answers to her questions in the pages of
Desperation
, a novel that also takes place in the Desatoya
Mountains and uses the same language uttered by the Little Sisters. These words are neither High Speech nor Low Speech—they are the language of the unformed, also known as the language of the dead. The demon Tak who overtakes Desperation, Nevada, is an ancient god who comes from outside the world. Though the Desatoya Mountains exist in our world, Desperation does not, so the novel does not take place in the Keystone reality. The evil that drew Tak to his prison in the mines beneath the mountains may be the same force that corrupted the Little Sisters, Furth argues.

I
SSUE
3: _______________________________________________

T
HE
D
ARK
B
ELLS
, P
ART
I

Part I of a story inspired by “The Little Sisters of Eluria” and the novel
Desperation
. It takes place in the early years, when Arthur Eld was still struggling to tame Mid-World. Back then, the Little Sisters were still human. Two brothers illegally venture deep into a copper mine in the Desatoya Mountains at night, convinced they will find gold. Vaughn hopes they can pocket enough to get them out of town. The younger brother, Jess, isn't as eager to leave; Vaughn thinks Jess is sweet on the Little Sisters who arrived in town, healers who tended to the victims of a recent cave-in. As they labor, they hear whispers. Then the shaft collapses on them—only Jess survives, ending up in the medical tent run by the Little Sisters.

The Big Sister is a young woman named Alejandra. Others of her order, including Sister Mary, are jealous that the previous Big Sister chose Alejandra to replace her. Sister Mary covets the Dark Bells that Alejandra wears as a sign of her leadership position—the todash kamen that echo in the empty places between the worlds—instead of the silver bells on her own wimple.

One of Arthur Eld's knights, a familiar figure named Bertrand Allgood, thinks the cavern found beneath the mine might be worth exploring because it may be one of the Old People's bunkers, containing their terrible weapons. In the templelike cavern, the miners discover precious stones and animal sculptures known as
can-tah
, or Little Guardians. The faces on the walls represent the twelve Guardians of the Beam, but each one has a scorpion-shaped tongue. Sister Mary's anger leaves her susceptible to the dark power that inhabits this cavern, first seen as a red eye staring through an opening in the wall.