By: Mike Carey (script/creator), Peter Gross (art/creator), Ryan Kelly (select finishes), Chris Chuckry (colors) and Todd Klein (letters)
The Story: Tom & Gang try to escape a screwed up London.
Review (with minor SPOILERS): This was a much lighter issue of The Unwritten. Often this series dives into some pretty deep waters in terms of story, but this issue is really here just to introduce the villain.
Of course, that villain is Pullman, but he isn’t introduced in all of his glorious depth. He’s really just introduced as a “bad guy” and we don’t get into how he represents the story of original sin (or the devil or evil personified….whatever) and how humanity’s fixation on that story has both warped that story and made it worse….but also irritated the story itself and the story – through Pullman – has become sentient and fought back against humanity. Carey and Gross certainly get all of the important pieces/mechanics on display in this issue, but they don’t really shake them in the reader’s face. That’s fair enough. That portion of The Unwritten’s story is really deep and these final 12 issues should be at least somewhat welcoming to new readers. They haven’t dumbed the series down yet…..and I don’t think they will now. They just didn’t emphasize the greatest depths of the narrative in this particular issue.
The only bad thing is that it leaves the issue a little light and it stays strictly in the action-adventure realm. I mean….the issue is fun as we watch Tom & Gang trying to escape from a London that is beset by all the armies that have invaded London in all of fiction, but it is nothing more than fun. Given that this series only has 8 issues remaining, I am reluctant to fully endorse any down-shift in ambition…..even if it is a temporary.
I also don’t remotely understand what is going on with the young Australian man and the veiled woman. It makes no sense to me. I know it’s just because I don’t get it yet. Or perhaps I’m not supposed to understand yet? I don’t doubt that once it is explained, these issues will merit a re-read.
Artistically, the issue has an interesting look as Ryan Kelly comes on to do some inking on select pages. This is something that The Unwritten used to do a lot to give certain parts of the story a different look, but the series had gone away from “guest inkers” in recent times. It does work to give those pages where literary characters appear a different – fictional – look and feel. It also made me miss when the series used to bring in Vince Locke to do these inking sequences. I’m a huge Ryan Kelly fan (I have a framed piece of his art hanging in my office at work), but I do miss that detailed frenzy that Locke brought to these pages a few years ago.
The basic storytelling is as rock solid as ever. Storytelling always gets short-shrift in comic reviews, but we certainly notice when it is done poorly. Unwritten never has an unsteady sequence or an emotion on the characters’ faces that doesn’t fit with the story.
Conclusion: A less-deep issue of The Unwritten mostly serves to reacquaint us with the villain of the story.
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
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