Roland of Gilead, the Marvel comic.

[Zippyy]

http://www.marvel.com/publishing/stories....htm?id=51

  Hardcore Dark Tower fans probably already know the news.  But I'm curious.  For me the first book is my favorite of the series.  It was a fairly straight up mythic mash up of western, horror, post apoc and fantasy.  The later ones seems to be either a love it or hate it with the 'meta' direction. 
 
  But based on the blurb, unless I read it wrong, it will cover Rolands' younger days, and not just an illustrated form of the books.  The rumor seems to be it might have the battle of Jericho Hill in more detail.  Maybe even the fall of Gilead.  I'm somewhat mixed, on one hand I'm very curious.  On the other, sometimes things don't need to be explained away to death.  (Midichlorians anyone?)
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I love the entire series, and over time I've been able to forgive or forget some of the major blunders of the story. Many people hated the ending, but I thought it was perfect and powerful ("flamePoster(Zippyy)"). I cried twice while reading the last book. Once at the ending. People who have read it can probably guess the other part.

Picturing the story in comic book form doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, but I'll reserve judgement until after I've seen it. A novel (or series of novels) relies on imagination, and the whole septology has been constructed in my head. Sure, several of the books had a few illustrations. Books 1, 6, and 7 had particularly good ones. Book 5's were awful. Anyway, I was easily able to ignore the illustrations that didn't fit my own picture of the characters and locales. In a comic book that might not be so easy, since they rely much more on visuals than a novel does. The narrative is still there, but not nearly as wordy.

I'm going to cast my votes for books 1 and 4 as the best books of the series. Both could easily be great standalones. In the context of the story however, I feel that book 4 edges out book 1 ever so slightly to claim the 1st place prize.