By: Mike Carey and Peter Gross (story and pencils), M.K. Perker (finishes), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Karen Berger (editor)
The Story: A big finale to the War of the Words storyline as Pullman explains most everything to Tom/Tommy.
A few things: [SPOILERS]
1. So….THAT’s what’s going on! – Presuming that Pullman is telling the truth, this issue makes 90% clear what is going on in world of The Unwritten. Basically, there is this “leviathan” that is representative of the consciousness of the entire population of the world; remember that wonderful image of the whale as composed of thousands of little stick figures back around issue #22 or so? And when the leviathan takes a fancy to a particular story the characters from those particular stories become real. Thus, Pullman as the original Cain is a story that has persisted for thousands of years because the leviathan likes that story a lot and won’t give it up (like a dog with a rag). Tom/Tommy is just a recent manifestation of that leviathan phenomenon. So, circling back to the first issues of the series where people criticized The Unwritten for being like Harry Potter…..it is exactly like Harry Potter! It just isn’t similar to Harry Potter in the way that you thought. And then the next logical step is that some dastardly humans decided to exploit the leviathan phenomenon for greedy purposes.
There are still a ton of questions though. Is there a distinction between Tom and Tommy? Can he be “just Tom”? Is Leviathan real? He sure seems real when he smashes through that wall! And if Cain is around as a story, where are the other figures from religious books: Moses, Jesus, Mohammed? And what of modern myths with LOTS of books written about them like Abraham Lincoln? Luke Skywalker? Spider-Man? Tarzan? I just wouldn’t think that of all the stories in the Bible that Cain is what leviathan would like the MOST. What about John 3:16?
2. Loss of a friend… – I hope this isn’t the last we see of Lizzie….and I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Tom and Richie will have to try to salvage her, right? This isn’t just a minor thing either. I still don’t particularly enjoy reading about Tom. He’s kind of a dick. But, I DO enjoy Lizzie and Richie and would be sad if they weren’t around to humanize Tom (which is ironic since they’re literary constructs too).
3. Very solid art. – The art in this series almost never blows my doors off (except for the issues inked by Vince Locke), but it also never has so much as a bad panel. Every panel is well constructed from a perspective and storytelling standpoint, the characters are clearly drawn and the actions are always clear. Everything is nicely colored and when you have Todd Klein doing your letters….well….it’s going to be really nice. It’s just so damn professional looking.
4. Extra money = extra story. – 38 pages for $4.99. It always chaps my butt to hear people complaining about these inflated cover prices because you are also getting more pages. And who buys their comics by the page anyway? The extra length in this issue allows the creators to tell this dramatic part of the story in one solid run. Plus, when you consider that Vertigo is going light on external ads to run their “Previews” for all the new Vertigo series coming out, there are only like 2-3 ads in the whole issue. It’s almost like reading a mini-trade.
5. Great cover (again). – Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone’s hair depicted as text. But that’s what Shimizu has done on this cover. And, how fitting! Lizzie is a literary construct just like Tom/Tommy, so she kinda is made of words. If you read the words, they make a lot of sense too. The cover also foreshadows the comic. Reading Vertigo comics makes you realize how crappy most comic book covers have become.
Conclusion: Great climax to a story that has been holding my interest for several years now.
Grade: A-
-Dean Stell
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