The Man in Black *possible spoiler?*

BevVincent

Perhaps this topic has been addressed before but I have not seen it in my limited perusal of the board so I'm going to ask it.



Did any one else notice that from the original telling of The Gunslinger and the following 3 books (Drawing, Wastelands, Wizard) that Walter and Martin

were two entirely different people and that in the last 3 books (WoC, SoS and TDT) they were the same person and that until the revised version of TGS came out this went uncorrected/addressed. Even the forwards in DoT, WL and WaG speak of them as two different people. Walter worked for Martin unbeknownst to either Roland or his father. It tells us so in the original Gunslinger. I read the last books before acquiring the new revised version and was stunned at this glaring error. (There is always the possibility that SK decided they should be the same person I will definitely concede to that.)



My opinion on this merging: I didn't like it. I had always thought of Walter as a lackey... an annoyance thrust on Roland to keep him just one step further away from Martin Broadcloak... to keep Roland "out of his road" as it were. The way they are described in the originals Walter was so inferior to Martin as to be comical. This could be clever disguise I'm not arguing Martin's acting prowess in the slightest but it was such a sudden leap as to gall me a bit. I kinda liked Martin even if he was an evil !@#&;#$%&... I hated Walter... he was a weasel. He seemed to do the small mean things that Martin could not be bothered with until he made his appearance WaG. I have an easier time merging the Randall Flag from the movie version of The Stand with Walter than I do with Martin ( though he is also Flagg and I must admit to never having been able to complete The Stand but what I have read is more like Martin than Walter as well).



I will reserve further babbling for later posts....;D I tend to rant on this subject... he he he.



Please give me your opinions on this, this is just one of the many things I want to discuss with people.

BevVincent

King's evolution of his ideas about who Walter/Marten/MiB were is clear from the introductions to the five stories that were published separately starting in the late 1970s and later brought together as The Gunslinger.



Before “The Oracle and the Mountains,” he writes, “Marten, the sorcerer physician who may have been the half brother of the man in black.” Before “The Slow Mutants” he adds, “Or is he the man in black himself?” And before the final story, he says, “the court sorcerer who may have somehow been transformed into the man in black he now pursues, and who, as the charismatic Good Man [i.e. Farson], pulled down the last kingdom of light.”



In the Marvel series, they seem to have decided that Farson is a distinct person, but in 1981, King believed Farson was Marten was Walter.

Coral

I can see that. The arguments were what really threw me off. When the books are being restated it says plainly in, I believe, Drawing or perhaps Wastelands, that Walter worked for Marten who was also the Good Man. Perhaps I simply preferred the speculation of Roland never really knowing and so we didn't "really" know either, kind of like Sauron in the LoR trilogy... seen and felt briefly but never clearly and not for long. He comes right out and says it in the new Gunslinger and I feel that maybe that is stating things to clearly to early. *shrug* Just my opinion...lol.



Thank you for you rapid response! I think perhaps I will enjoy this board.

BevVincent

My idea about certain minions, like Farson, was that they either WERE Walter or were so completely under his spell that they were indistinguishable from him. Separate entities but possessed by his control. The Marvel retelling makes Farson seem far stronger and it's not yet clear who's stronger. That may play out later in the series. We know that Walter persists and Farson isn't part of the Mid-World story that starts with the man in black chasing Roland across the desert.