By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (writer and artist), Vince Locke (inks on a few pages), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) and Karen Berger (editor)
The Story: More goodness in the Unwritten universe as Tom and gang continue to find clues about the secret society that seems to be pulling the strings of the world.
The Review: It sounds ugly to say this, but this was a fairly unremarkable issue of The Unwritten. That isn’t to say that it is a “bad” issue, as it is cleverly written and has art that tells an excellent story, but the “big mystery” of the series has been hanging out there for soooo long that any issue that isn’t a payoff is going to be somewhat unremarkable. The feeling it reminded of me was reading the Star Wars: New Jedi Order books years ago. For those unfamiliar, the NJO books were a ~20 novel series (ugh!) that promised to “remake the Star Wars extended universe” as the Star Wars galaxy was invaded from aliens from a whole other galaxy. There were lots of mysteries about who these aliens were, how they had come here, how their technology worked, what their weaknesses were, etc. But by about the 15th novel, I had gotten wholly sick of reading a 5-page description of a lightsaber fight and just wanted to skim ahead to find out who won the fight. At some point in a story, the “journey” becomes less enjoyable and we need to see an ending in sight.
Unwritten is getting that way for me a little bit and it could be that this part of the series will read much better in collected editions. We’ve now been following the story for over 2 years and the story is at the point where any issue that doesn’t have a major reveal feels light. I understand how important the collected editions are to Vertigo’s strategy, but they still make the bulk of their revenue on the single issues and a bigger effort needs to be made to ensure that each and every single issue has a BANG to it that makes it worth reading.
So, the upshot on this issue is: not enough happens.
The art is typically good stuff from Peter Gross. I really respect him a lot as an artist for not feeling the need to show off and toss in a big-splash page that doesn’t serve the story, but will sell very well in the original art market. Unwritten is never anything but solid sequential storytelling. And, I love when the Gross brings in Vince Locke every 5 issues or so to do inks on some flashback panels. Doing so gives them a great variety and makes the reader really accept that those panels are happening in another world. It’s also a great example of what inkers do and how different inkers can make pages look differently.
And, kudos (as always) to Todd Klein on lettering. His lettering is always easy on the eyes and allows you to just breeze through the issue and he never puts a word balloon in a weird place where you aren’t sure what balloons to read first.
Conclusion: This is another quality issue of The Unwritten, but any issue that doesn’t have a reveal is going to feel lightweight at this point. It’s time to let us in on the big secrets.
Grade: C+
-Dean Stell
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