Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" is my favorite book series. I didn't discover it until about five years ago, long after I was pretty sure my favorite book at the time ("The Golden Compass", incidentally) was locked in for life.

I was pretty much instantly entranced, and (save for a little bit of rockiness during the fourth book), I was captivated the entire way through by Roland and his ka-tet's journey for the Dark Tower, the center of all creation. I would drive around late at night or take long, long walks, just listening to it on audiobook and losing myself in the Mid-World.

Some people have said The Gunslinger starts off slow and it doesn't hit its stride until the second book, but I disagree. I'm reading The Gunslinger for the third time now (first time through a physical book!), and I'm just immediately engaged by this world and by Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger himself.

I've been thinking about him a lot lately, so I wanted to draw a coyote version of him. Backgrounds are not and never have been a strength of mine, but I at least wanted to do my best at creating the same sort of moody, western desert atmosphere that the book evokes.

I stepped out of my shell a bit here to make a more serious piece than my usual toony stuff. That and that alone prevented me from titling this one "The Bark Tower".


Go then, there are other worlds than these.