First, some background: The teenage Roland grew up in Gilead, a dusty hamlet in which the Old West and the even older medieval times meet, itself set in a timeless world underlain with curious technology, alternate universes, and of course magic. It’s the later that exacts havoc on Roland’s life: After becoming a full-fledged gunslinger, he’s eyed by the powerful and manipulative wizard-type Farson who’s itching to destroy both the fledgling Roland and his placid homeland.

So his dad convinces him to high-tail it out of Gilead. With a couple friends in tow, he lands in the town of Hambry where Roland takes possession of Maerlyn’s Grapefruit (a.k.a. a mystical crystal ball coveted by Farson) and romances a lass. Things are looking up, until said lady friend is whacked amid a plot to destroy him and his motherland. You see, the fine folks of Hambry—they’re friends of Farson.

Long Road Home follows the trifecta making their way back to Gilead, mulling over their traumatic sojourn to Hambry. With the Hambrians on their tails, the threesome’s walkabout gets that much more complicated once Roland’s soul is sucked into the Grapefruit. Forging ahead on parallel trips (think The Lord of the Rings or Empire Strikes Back)—Roland in an alternate reality, his comrades in the creepy frontier—Roland’s buddies struggle to bring him back to safety while eluding the baddies. Also figuring into this equation: the Hambry village idiot getting probed by a robot. We kid you not!

Despite being populated with killer canines, underworld demon-like lords, nefarious crows, and the like, a bunch of stuff happens but not a lot of stuff actually transpires on this Road. It’s an excellently ominous interlude—Jae Lee’s landscapes ache with menace and shadows—that can, at turns, feel like a stalling plot that reaches an inevitable conclusion: Roland has changed. (The narrator’s good-ol'-boy quips, which are too frequent and at odds with the characters’ feudal speak, don’t exactly speed things along.) But perhaps it’s unavoidable, this being an excursion from King’s original book. Our suggestion? Best to read Road’s gripping predecessor, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, to fully soak up its follow-up's rich, brooding color.

With Dark Horse and, surprisingly, Marvel pretty much phoning it in in terms of their major releases this week (The HC version of Stephen King adaptation Dark Tower: The Long Road Home and a rescheduled hardcover collection of Orson Scott Card's second Ultimate Iron Man series being Marvel's two exceptions), it falls to DC to pick up the slack... only they're having an equally quiet week: If you're not interested in the hardcover collection of shenanigans surrounding superhero marriage in Green Arrow/Black Canary's Wedding Album, Justice League origin Vixen: Return Of The Lion or virtual reality leading to wholescale destruction in Wildstorm's Number Of The Beast, then you're almost out of luck... but I'll keep DC's must-have book of the week until later.

Image Comics keep the interest flag flying with the first issue of Zero G, a scifi whodunnit monster movie on paper, while Avatar offer up the first official issue of new Warren Ellis superhero series No Hero.

But the two picks of the week are IDW's paperback collection of Peter David's Star Trek: New Frontier comic, and the first issue of DC's Top 10 Season Two, Zander Cannon and Gene Ha's revisit of the Alan Moore series from a few years back that puts Hill Street Blues into a room with superheroes and sees what comes out afterwards — Witty, filled with pathos and beautifully illustrated, it easily dominates the slow week (and would, to be fair, do so on a busy week as well). Add it to your shopping list immediately.

While you're adding things to lists, you can find a complete list of this week's new comic releases here to see what else you might want to think about, and then use the Comic Shop Locator Service to find out where your closest local store may be. Just... stay away from the financial news for awhile, okay?