Within the context of the larger Dark Tower mythos, King furthers his interest in the social and political backdrop of the 1980s (as in It, and later, The Tommyknockers), the 1970s ( The Dead Zone), and the 1960s (touched on in King's earliest stories, and fully explored later in Hearts In Atlantis). The decades Roland finds through the doors put King on familiar turf. Though The Gunslinger dropped hints that it had some relation to our world - a man singing 'Hey Jude,' for instance - it here that we begin to uncover how closely these worlds (and others) are related. The odd combination of mysticism and Western imagery in The Gunslinger here gives way to a high science fiction concept: doors standing alone in intervals along the beach that lead into 'our' world at different time periods in American history. Roland's new circumstances lend the novel a greater sense of urgency he is now not only searching for the Dark Tower, he is also racing against death. Also like Paul Sheldon, Roland must push ahead on his mission, in spite of his pain. As with the writer Paul Sheldon in Misery - whose typewriter throws keys and whose captor severs his thumb - Roland is divorced from the things that make him who he is, and effective at what he does.

Additionally, the ocean itself hinders him by wetting his bullets, rendering many of them duds. In this early solitary section, creatures called 'lobstrosities' roll out of the ocean and attack Roland, eating several fingers and infecting him with poison. Whereas The Gunslinger seemed sparse in story and words (even in the revised edition), the first pages of Drawing hint at a new richness and depth. Immediately, we sense a shift in tone from the first volume. The Drawing of the Three begins roughly seven hours after Roland's confrontation with Marten in the bony golgotha at the end of The Gunslinger.

800 numbered and signed by King and Hale.

35 lettered and signed by King and Hale.

The drawing of the three first edition