REVIEW

The Gunslinger Born (omnibus)

Posted: October 31, 2007
Category: Comics
In just a few days (Nov. 7) the hardback edition of Gunslinger Born is released. I got a chance to check it out a bit early and here is what you can expect. It’s a very nice book that we get. It’s a hardback in about the same size as the comics and it contains all seven issues. A chapter page separates them though so they are still like seven issues collected in one volume. I was kind of hoping that they would just have the pages go on like one book instead of seven. This isn’t a big problem though and the chapter pages are really cool but still…

Anyhow, it’s not something that I’ll loose sleep over. Is it a lot different from the separate issues then? Well, not that much. It’s in hardback off course and that is very nice. You can easily put it with the rest of your King books in the bookcase. That’s hard to do with comics.


We also get all the individual covers, all the regular, the sketch and the variant covers. We also get the covers for later printings and it’s nice to get all those collected and the once here don’t have all the text on it and that makes it extra nice. You might even consider buying an extra copy of the hardback and cut out the covers, frame them and hang them on your wall.

Except this we also get a letter from King, a letter from Ralph Macchio, some sketches and pencils by Jae Lee. Richard Isanove also shows us how the painting process goes. These things aren’t new though but it’s nice to get it all collected in one book.

Oh, and whatever you do, don’t forget to remove the dust jacket. Underneath you’ll find a very beautiful cover. I’m not sure if it’s real leather (probably not) but it looks like it and has a color that is blood red. It also have The Dark Tower logo on the front. Very impressing!

Lilja's final words about The Gunslinger Born (omnibus):

So, who is this edition for? Well, it’s obvious for the fans of The Dark Tower comic. But if you just like the series, like any other comic, you might do well with the single issues and save your money for the coming issues instead of spending them on this hardback, since most of what’s in it you get in the single issues as well.

With that said I won’t deny that it looks extremely good in my bookcase or that it’s very nice to have all issues in one book. That alone is worth the money it costs to buy this edition and I know I would miss it if it weren’t in my bookcase.

I do however miss the history lessons by Robin Furth that isn’t included here…