The House of Ideas, Harry Potter and Star Wars

Dr. Doom is one of the greatest comic villains ever drawn. The fact that the man inside the mask is disfigured doesn't matter. It is the metallic face, the dark green hood that covers the rest of his head, the giant buckles on his shoulders that keep his cape in place, the armored gauntlets he wears with his body armor. And the fact that he rules the country of Latveria, what more could be wanted of a villain. King had the right idea in choosing the character to be his representation of robots with the Wolves. The difference is that the mask is a wolf's head, not that of a human. The Wolves themselves are armed with familiar laser blades that hum and hiss when used in combat along with a certain golden ball that a certain lightning scarred wizard boy chases in Quidditch games. King has gone beyond simply lifting source materials in the Dark Tower series, he reshapes it in different ways. The sacred and peaceful Jedi Lightsabers are turned into menacing weapons of destruction by the Wolves as are the Golden Snitches of the Harry Potter Books.
What King does is show how events and things can be modified from world to world. In our world lightsabers do not exist as a thing other than in movies. In Roland's world they are real and they decapitate people. The Golden Snitch has been dubbed the Sneetches and they are essentially missiles used by the Crimson King and the Wolves. The Crimson King has crates of them to throw at Roland when he nears the Dark Tower. King also takes liberty with certain places and explains this with the portals called Thinnies, where literally, reality is becoming thin and merging with other worlds.
This is some of the appeal of the Dark Tower, that King's stories overlap.
Next: The Stories that Connect...