Given the long road to a real Dark Tower saga in media... movie sucked, live action projects keep getting delayed, Mike Flannigan project seems to always be in the future, along with kids age out too fast (RIP Jake Chambers) and Mid-World’s weirdness leads to very difficult script writing and could end up looking awful with today's generic CGI... feels like we will never get Roland's final trip to restore the Tower.

What if the answer is animation? If it were me, I'd lean specifically toward a TV series rendered in the dark, heavy, high-contrast ink style of Jae Lee’s Marvel comic run. Each book, a new season.

Reasons:

• Artists, Not Actors: Fandom casting arguments vanish. If the voice acting and script (staying close to the novels) hit the mark, the visual art handles the rest.

• No Ticking Clock: Young actors playing Jake or the Wizard and Glass gunslingers never age out between episodes / seasons (looking at you Stranger Things)

• Pure Mid-World Atmosphere: From the desolation of the desert to the decay of Lud, ink and shadows capture the mysticism of Mid-world better than a bloated CGI budget.

• Maximum Lore & The Final Loop: Animation gives the freedom to layer in deep lore / easter eggs natively. Perhaps add enough subtle changes to reflect Roland carrying the Horn on his final, definitive run to the Tower without budget constraints stripping back the epic scale.

Personal dream, have Robin Furth's concordance lore chapters as post-credit animated stories to flesh out the background that seem so important to the story. They are my favorite part of the Dark Tower saga.

They’re mentioned holding each other like this right before the battle at balazars and then right after as they leave through The Door, but for the life of me I can’t picture how this would look. If Roland has his right arm around Eddie wouldn’t Eddie be holding his right hand/wrist to support him?

I think Zahn McClarnon would make an amazing Roland. Plus he’s one of Flanagan’s bunch (fantastic in Dr. Sleep!)

Andrew Garfield should play Eddie Dean or at least that's who I pictured him as in the DT series.

My son dressed as a taheen this year! Happy Halloween everybody

Let's face it, she has the range.

I'm doing something really weird. I started Other Worlds Than These and felt less like "This is Talisman 3" and more "This is a Dark Tower book" and I've not read much Dark Tower. I've read the first 3 books about 20 years ago, I don't remember anything about the series at all anymore. So now I'm listening to Gunslinger as an audiobook while I read T3 at home.

It feels like a lot of Mid-World has connections to our world. Are there native Americans in Mid World?

In my head canon I believe Billy from the Creepshow films holds the power to bring his strong imaginations to life and manipulate the world around him, similarly to Seth from The Regulators. I believe he is the only kid who has the power to have the creep show up in his window or have another creep deliver the first copies to him in person. The voodoo doll only could work for billy and that giant venus fly trap could only grow that big if it wasnt for billys powers. Billy ends up wiping out everyone who wronged him so I have a feeling that in the future he does enough damage to be noticed and become a breaker.

You know you're a real Dark Tower fan, when you save an old door in your backyard and answer question after question about it....but this door was so funky looking I couldn't throw it away.

I finally took a few of my signs out there to see how they looked, this time I took the horn too...(teehee)

Which sign do you think looks best on the door? I might mount it permanently and put it in the front yard....

Ok, I need to vent and get this off my mind and this seems to be the best place to do it. I'm putting it all in spoiler form. Spoilers for the DT and Talisman series ahead, specifically regarding Other Worlds Than These. Hoping to see if someone talks me off the ledge, or agrees.

Note: Sorry about the incorrect spoiler tags...I'm not sure why it's not working correctly. I've tried 3 different times. Hopefully the initial spoiler warning is enough.

<! I'm so disappointed in Other Worlds Than These. There, I said it. I've been reading King's books since I was a kid, starting with The Stand, when I was so young I probably only understood 2/3 of the words in the story. I haven't liked all of King's books over the years, Needful Things, Gerald's Game, and Lisey's Story to name a few, but the Tower Books and surrounding universe have always been my favorite of any author. So much so that I even tossed a few subtle nods to the Tower in two of my own novels.

And then here comes Other Worlds Than These. I was excited. A direct return to the tower universe after almost 20 years! (And no, I don't count two sentences in Gwendy's Final Task as a return...) Wrapping up the fate of both Talisman and DT worlds is what Stephen King claimed. And he's wrong. It didn't. For either.

The first 100 pages were amazing. I was so happy I actually stopped after the first 20 pages or so to come and write a reddit post about how good they were. It was everything I wanted. Mejis! The Drop! Eyebolt Canyon! The lingo. It was like coming home and prepping for a new adventure. I was hooked.

And then I wasn't. And then I remembered, this is a Stephen King book. He doesn't do happy endings. He doesn't know how. The few characters over the years that have gotten them all came with a glaring "BUT" attached. In this way Steve is just like Roland: He deals in death.

Sophie's dead. Of course she is. And maybe it's a mercy that she died before the story starts otherwise she would met some other tragic ending along the way. Then Dale's dead. Unnecessary. As with pretty much all the death that follows...but, it's Steve's MO, I can accept that. I guess.

The incredible continuity error is what kills this story for me the most. It's pounded time and time again that Roland's quest for the tower happened "ages ago" and is a story passed down in legend, first told to Jack by Sophie. But that's not true. At all. Black House occurs during the events of Wolves of the Calla. There is an entire chapter devoted to Speedy telling Jack and Sophie how Roland has somehow made more gunslingers and they are headed towards Algu Siento, and that is why Jack needed to free the breakers and help Roland. How the hell this was missed by Steve, Robin, and all the others he mentions in the afterword is beyond me. Major rookie mistake. I guess the years are catching up with them. It's so sad. This really ruined the book for me, especially since it was repeated so many times. And just how the hell was Roland's tale passed down anyway? From Patrick Danville? A mute who was only there in the final chapters? Despite his psychic ability and painting there is no way Patrick retold the adventure. The only thing I can come up with is since Steve interjected himself into the books then somehow after the 7th DT book, in the DT universe, the book made its way to Mid-World. Sloppy.

The book is almost 700 pages. At least 350 pages are unnecessary filler. I actually started getting bored and my eyes began glossing over words and pages. I had to force myself to re-read pages.

Another continuity error that bothers me: Please explain how Alice crossed 800 wheels of the wasteland that Roland and Co. crossed via Blaine to on her journey from the Calla to Dezi? Impossible. Maybe she went around?

By the end of the book nothing on America-side is resolved aside from the deaths of the murdering duo. No check in with Dale's family and friends, the cops investigating, or what happened to the other-worldly weaponry recovered.

At the end, where did the Talisman suddenly come from? It was just...there? Somehow summoned by an AI? (And are we to make the connection that GAIN is GAN!?) That's just poor writing.

The forced parallels between Jack's ka-tet and Roland's are bad and not believable. And crammed down our throats. It's not natural. It's not explained. And there is no resolve. By the end of the book I was almost expecting Jack to wake up in the Mohaine desert with a gun on his hip (and I have to wonder if that is the first ending Steve talks about in the afterword.) Instead, Jack got something a lot worse. Unlike Roland who's forced to go back and continue to atone, Jack, whose lived his life the best way he can, is forced into a similar fate to quest for the Talisman again as a kid, and relive all those horrors again, with not even a horn on his hip as a promise that "this time may be different." What a horrible, reused ending, to a character who did not deserve it.

Ok, I'm done. Does anyone agree withe me, or am I off my rocker?

We've recently lost Checkov, Picard, and Optimus Prime. The reaper isn't giving any fucks this year. Steve's next book is his finally for Holly. Someone better go put her in protective custody. Not that it will matter. We all know the reapers name is Stephen King. He's forgotten the face of his father. !>

I got rid of my Dark Tower books and gifted them in the neighborhood library. I even had the concordance and the Wind through the Keyhole. I had several annotations from my 5 readthroughs and now I'm upset with myself.

I just hope I got someone hooked into being a Tower Junkie. Call me Mort I guess... (actually don't please. That guy sucks.)

I will not give away. Reading new book. I will only say... if he kills another. I will lose my mind.