By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators, writers & art), Vince Locke (inks on 1930s sequences), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Karen Berger (editor)
The Story: Tom Taylor learns about his half-brother.
Review: This is another of those “hard to review” series because I find myself saying the same stuff every month: Unwritten is very good. There is momentum from issue-to-issue, but it isn’t the hot new comic anymore (being up to issue #30). It always irritates me when the comic blogosphere drops its coverage of titles like this that remain excellent, but aren’t new and fresh because Unwritten is precisely the type of title we need more of in comics. One of the more common threads on comic message boards is “how do I get my girlfriend/wife into comics?” Well….giving her a pile of Wolverine comics isn’t going to be appreciated, but there are a LOT of folks not reading comics who would find the themes of Unwritten very appealing precisely because it isn’t superheroes. It expects you to understand a little about literature, it expects you to pay attention from issue to issue, most altercations are solved without muscles coming into play, it doesn’t objectify women and the hero isn’t a dude with bulging pecs.
This issue wrapped this story arc and, as we’ve come to expect, there were a number of reveals in the issue. Throughout the series, one of the major questions has been the relationship between Tom Taylor and the character from the novels, Tommy Taylor. Were they the same character? Was the literary character based on the real life boy? Well, I don’t want to completely SPOIL anything, but this arc has made it pretty clear that Wilson Taylor leaned some things back in the 1930s from his relationship with his cartoonist girlfriend about how he could birth a character in fiction and then rip them over into our reality. The specifics are still a little fuzzy, but the questions of Tom’s origin are becoming pretty clear. Of course, there is still a lot of stuff up in the air. Namely, why did Wilson do this? What is the purpose?
We also have a recurrence of the Frankenstein creature in this issue. I’d really love to have a few stories about him. The entire Frankenstein story is that of trying to create life, so one wonders if Mary Shelly was a forerunner of this technique of ripping a literary creation into the real world. And what’s with Mingus the cat?
Again, this issue is quite visually appealing. It’s so nice to see an issue where the artists aren’t just overdoing it all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good splash page (although my reading of digital comics is making me HATE double-page spreads) but splashes don’t need to be flung around willly-nilly. There’s only one splash in this issue and it’s very appropriate for the action. In the rest of the issue, it’s just Gross doing the hard work of telling the story. Very nicely done. And, these days, you won’t find a better lettered comic than anything with Todd Klein’s name on it.
Conclusion: Another strong and powerful issue of Unwritten that gives us a few reveals and makes us look forward to what’s next.
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell
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