By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators, writer & pencils), Vince Locke (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Karen Berger (editor)
The Story: An origin of the nasty nun with the marionettes.
Four Things:
1. These .5 issues are seriously good. - The biggest problem with the .5 issues of The Unwritten is how badly they overshadow the regular issues of. These stories have so much meat on the bone. You really feel as if you could catch some new filbert of information on the 5th reading. And, they’re so involved in the background mythos of The Unwritten with how they keep touching on the power of story and “the whale” that is made up of all of us and eats stories. When you compare to this deep and adult storytelling, it’s really hard for a story about a man with a magic wand (i.e. the regular issues) to not seem a little silly and lightweight.
2. Wonderful, self-contained story. - This was a great story. We’ve seen bits and pieces of Ms. Toller and her marionettes over the last year or so in the pages of Unwritten, but it wasn’t really clear who she was. Well, this gives us a great insight into why she’s such a nasty old lady. Given her dark childhood and the scars visited upon her by her father, it’s no wonder that she has no trouble being a torturer or sorts for the Cabal. This issue’s story is heartbreaking, violent and thrilling.
3. Vince Locke is such a good inker. - It’s funny, because if you go to Vince Locke’s website to see his “normal” art, it’s a lot of dark and demonic stuff. But, he’s clearly a very talented artist so I guess it’s no surprise that he’s a pretty talented inker. He really makes the pencils from Peter Gross better. I just LOVE that Locke isn’t afraid to spend the time to inks shadows with a who mess of lines (giving them an undefined border) rather than taking the easy way out and just making every shadow uniformly black (which you only get with spotlights or the Sun). It makes these pages SO alive. But, even while Locke is doing his thing, he never obscures Gross’ basic look and feel. Since the beginning of the series, the Locke-inked issues have been the BEST. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention how much I enjoyed the chunky (and colored) panel borders in this issue. For some reason, they reminded me of Tudor architecture. Perhaps that doesn’t make a lot of sense for a story set in a 1700′s Germanic kingdom, but it still helped with the “set in the past” mindframe.
4. Not a lot of insight into the BIG story. - The only knock I’d have on this issue is that I’m not sure how it relates to the “modern day” story. Maybe it isn’t supposed to connect and these .5 issues are just background for the entire series? Still, beyond letting us know who Ms. Toller is (and that she’ll probably be an ongoing character), there wasn’t a lot of connection. I guess my basic question is one of reading order. It seems that by calling this #33.5, it should be read between #33 and #34, but this issue really feels as if it could be read at any point after about issue #20. Still, this is a very minor complaint.
Conclusion: Wow, what a great issue. Even though it doesn’t connect that much with regular story, this dark and twisted tale of how a cute little girl could become a torturer is very effective. Great art too.
Grade: A-
-Dean Stell
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Filed under: Vertigo Tagged: | Dean Stell, Joe Hughes, Karen Berger, Lee Loughridge, Mike Carey, Peter Gross, review, The Unwritten, The Unwritten #33.5, The Unwritten #33.5 review, Todd Klein, Vertigo, Vince Locke
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Well, that was extremely disturbing. I’ve noticed that children in this story don’t seem to ever fair too well at all. Tom had a pretty traumatic childhood in several respects, though I’d say he doesn’t hold a candle to Toller.
I’m curious about the rest of her story though. Despite the grim ending, it ended on a note with Toller going with Rausch to what would hopefully be a happy life, though I’ll guess something went wrong there. I’d hazard that her rather long life may have to do with her declaration at the end “Forevermore.” May even tie into her goals.
These .5 issues really are nice with the backstory and glances to the power in this world beyond that of the current goings on.
It’s nice that Volume 6 will feature both the main issues of War of the Words as well as all the .5 issues thus far.