By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (covers), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)
The Story: How are people reacting to Tommy Taylor down under?
Review (with minor SPOILERS): If you were looking for The Unwritten to return to the regularly scheduled story with a BANG, you might be disappointed with this issue. That was probably an unrealistic expectation for a methodical and thought provoking book like The Unwritten anyway, but coming off the War of the Words story arc where events happened in rapid-fire (at least rapid-fire for this series), it was a little jarring to go back into slow mode.
There are those who take issues like this one as evidence that The Unwritten “reads better in trade”. And….it might be more satisfying in some ways. But, even with the slowness of the story, something is lost when you consume 5 issues in one sitting. The Unwritten is still a good story to carry in your mind from month-to-month. What do stories really mean?
The story choice here is interesting. For one thing, Tom Taylor doesn’t make an appearance. Except for the “special issues” of The Unwritten, I’m not sure if Tom has ever failed to appear. But, the other thing is that we bounce the story all the way to Australia where we see the Australian police investigating a cult that is causing people to disappear. The cult is a pretty interesting place too. Their leader (who I’m 99% sure has been appearing in the series since early on as a bit character) is upset over the fact that stories are ending. That concept of the “end of stories” was the big take away from last month’s issue #36 featuring our favorite, foul-mouthed bunny rabbit.
That’s such an interesting concept: The end of stories. I really liked how the leader says to his group, “You can trace the progress of this trauma in the books you lay aside, discouraged. In the holes left by the stories you can’t remember anymore…” I dunno about you, but that really speaks to me. I’ve noticed as I age, it’s harder and harder for a book to grab me by the throat and demand to be read and I’ve also noticed that I don’t remember stories the way I used to. In reality, this is just normal aging: We become desensitized; we’ve “seen it all” and aren’t as easily impressed as when we were younger. Plus, our memory is like a bucket filling with water. When we’re young, everything stays in the bucket. But eventually the bucket overflows when new information is added and the only way to “save” the slipping information is with a complex network of auxiliary storage areas that aren’t quite as easy to recall on a moment’s notice. I KNOW that’s what’s really going on, but it’s kinda fun to imagine that it isn’t Dean getting older, it’s that the stories themselves are somehow defective.
And what would it mean to the world if we couldn’t have stories anymore? What could a dedicated cult DO to try to jump-start the story engine? And why does it involve body-painting?
The issue also has a lot going for it from an artistic standpoint. The art is (again) very straight forward, basic and attractive. It tells the story without firing off random salvos in the interest of being visually impressive. Peter Gross deserves a lot of credit for that. It’s the mark of a mature and confident artist not to fall victim to hubris and the desire to make a fancy double-page spread every issue.
Yuko Shimizu’s covers never cease to amaze me. There’s always some depth to them that only becomes clear AFTER you read the issue. We’re trained to just ignore covers because they usually suck, but when you come back to this one, you see that it’s the book that is bleeding, not Tom. That makes sense since it’s the story that is wounded in this story arc. And of course, the cover is also visually gorgeous.
So what’s holding this issue back from getting an “A?” Well, a few things… Don’t like the talking TV sequences. I know they’ve been around for years and that Frank Miller used them to great effect in The Dark Knight Returns, but they screw up the pacing of the book. The TV sequences aren’t the major element of the story in this issue, so they should take the longest to read. Plus, the concept of reading the TV anchor’s voice AND having to read the scrolling text at the bottom of the TV screen doesn’t work very well. In real life, our brains can process HEARING the TV anchor’s voice and simultaneous read the ticker at the bottom. But, we can’t read two things at once. I just think this is a mechanic that doesn’t work particularly well in comics. The only other problem is that the story is kinda slow.
Conclusion: A good story, but one that is a little slow and has a few flaws. Still, it is asking some very interesting questions and I’m very eager to see where it eventually ends up.
Grad: B
-Dean Stell
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Conclusion