By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators – writer & artist), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)
The Story: What became of Tom & Richie after the War of the Words?
A few things (with minor SPOILERS): 1). Bits of answers from puppets. – For me, the most enlightening scene of this issue was the kinda dream sequence where Madam Rausch appears to Tom and Richie in their dreams and explains that all things touched by Pullman’s hand become words. As a smart reader of this site pointed out a few months ago, much as “the words become flesh” so can the flesh become words. Those words are then “fed” to Leviathan and Rausch indicates that Lizzie may be alive in the stomach of Leviathan. Of course, this implies a connection with the story arc from around issue #21 where Tom got stuck in the belly of a whale. Now….what that really means to me as a reader, I’m not exactly sure. As I’ve said in these reviews in the past, I’m not clever enough to connect all the dots on the first reading. But, it illustrates the thing I love best about The Unwritten: this series is attempting to be great. It’s rare for a comic to have such ambition and while we won’t be able to fully evaluate the greatness of the series until it is finished – and even then we’ll need to reread and allow the story time to breathe – we should applaud the ambition of the creators.
2). Ghosts! – Also filed in the category of “cool, but not sure precisely what it means” are the ghosts we see from the first story arc of The Unwritten. These are all the modern horror writers who were killed by Pullman as he rampaged though the Villa Diodati around issue #3 or so. Of course, I’m sure there is some connection between the fact that all those horror writers were killed in the same house that once was a retreat for Lord Byron & Mary Shelly and that this house is now seeing the kinda birth/creation of Richie as a vampire. It’s another of those nuggets that makes me really eager for the reread of this series.
3). Richie is changing. – The revelation that everyone is just a pawn in a game that swirls around Tom/Tommy is pretty interesting. Here we see Richie losing his shit over it and this connects well with what we’ve seen of him in the last few issues. It seems that Richie is no longer content to be Tom’s pawn or sidekick; he’s going to be his own man. I like the concept that he kinda unwittingly acquired these vampiric powers merely by his association with Tom, but now that he really knows what is going on, he’s going to use/warp/control those powers for his own purposes. Of course, by doing so, he is really creating his own story and it’ll be curious to see whether he is ultimately an ally or enemy of Tom. I also wonder if Richie’s new story is in any way related to the loss of stories plaguing the world???
4). Wonderful cover. – Yuko Shimizu has done it again. The covers for this series are sooooo good. What I love is how these covers are appealing just sitting on the shelf even if you know nothing about the series. It looks like no other comic cover out there and makes you want to pick it up. But, if you go back to reexamine the cover after reading the issue, you find it is almost a part of the story itself. This cover shows Richie wrapped by police crime scene tape. Written on the tape are a bunch of sayings like, “I am not your bloody toy” and “died in London nothing special or magical I just died” and “you’re not like us you’re like them”. None of these sentence fragments means a darn thing until after you read the issue and then they serve to accentuate certain parts of the story. I wonder if she collaborates with Carey/Gross on these covers, because it always seems like her cover emphasizes the RIGHT moments in the story. In a world of generic superhero covers (like all these crummy DC #0 covers), the covers of The Unwritten are a real treat.
5). Useful art. – The art just tells the story in a non-glamorous way. As I’ve said before, Gross’ art always opts for clear storytelling over doing something flashy just for the hell of it (although I wouldn’t mind a few more of his flourishes as it seems those aren’t showing up as much anymore). The standout for me in this issue is when he shifts art styles for the Madame Rausch/puppets scenes: everything become angular, sinister and dark. Gross makes great use of odd perspectives here.
Conclusion: Another wonderful issue. I really can’t recommend this series highly enough.
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion