Unwritten Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

The Unwritten starts with Tommy Taylor, the son of a famous writer who wrote a series of books about a kid magician called Tommy Taylor. The author named the character of his books after his son. The books are a huge hit in the world, much like Harry Potter and after the thirteenth book the author went missing. Nobody knows where he is. The first issue introduces the characters smoothly and it leads us to question whether fiction became reality (is Tommy Taylor, the Tommy Taylor from the books?) Throughout the story we get more questions. The comic is fun, interesting and full of questions I want answered. Exactly the kind of comic I love. The art in this comic is terrific. Most panels have a very detailed background and Peter Gross is able to make the comic feel very different when drawing excerpts from the Tommy Taylor books compared to when drawing "real life". I love the style, he makes a world feel real and it works in an intuitive level. Without explanation, it is very clear from the beginning that what is happening is supposed to happen in a book and not in real life. The fifth issue is interesting in that it leaves the main story on the side and tells us the story of Kipling (the writer) and how he is related to the villains. The villains in this book seem to believe in the power of the written word so they try to use writers. A very good issue that builds the atmosphere of the comic, while straying from the main story a lot. This is something that comics can do quite well that movies can't. TV shows could do this too if they wanted. A very good new series that I'll continue reading.

I'm probably grading this slightly on the curve because it gets so much better as it goes along. And, as they say, the plot thickens. The first few issues introduce us to Tommy Taylor and his sad little life. As a child he was the model for a series of kid's novels about Tommy Taylor, boy wizard, who was aided by two friends who bear a sharp resemblance to Ron and Hermione and a flying cat. There is even a Voldemort equivalent, the evil vampire Count Ambrosio. At first, you think that the Harry Potter resemblance is pretty much all there is going to be to the book, but the plot, as they say, quickly thickens. The heart of the story is not wizards and vampires, but the act of writing and the role of stories in our lives. As of the most recent issue (I write this shortly after having read Issue No. 9) it isn't clear what all the threads are leading to, but we know that there is a centuries old conspiracy connected to great writing. The key will certainly turn out to be Tommy's map of places where great fictional events took place, but the identity of the mysterious organization behind it has yet to be revealed or all of their purposes determined. This marvelous series is still in its early stages and is going to be with us for a while. If you haven't started reading this, you need to. It is going to be another great series in the best Vertigo tradition.

The team from Lucifer team up in this new, slightly post-modern fantasy. Tom Taylor lives in the shadow of his missing father - but even more in the shadow of "Tommy Taylor", his father's Potter-esque fictional creation. As things start to get a bit weird (serial killers, death threats, magical tattoos...), Tom Taylor starts out on a quest to figure out what's really going on. He doesn't get too far in this first collection, but the set-up is very intriguing. A bit of Fables (what with the "power of stories" shtick) and a bit of The Magicians (with its combination of angst and fantasy). The lead characters are, so far, slightly forgettable - with the absent father being the most appealing of the lot. However, the story is great - and the occasional creative segue to "Tommy Taylor books" (or Rudyard Kipling's diary) is incredibly well done. Carey and Gross should settle in for a long and fascinating run. One to keep following.

Mike Carey is one of the many British comic writers to make his name at DC's Vertigo imprint. Carey began his North American writing career with his famous "Lucifer" series (a spinoff of Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman"), as well as a run on the longrunning "John Constantine, Hellblazer". Subsequently he's spent some time at Marvel Comics, most prominently with a lengthy period on "X-Men", which has met with quite a bit of fan acclaim. Now he returns to Vertigo with his next big indie project, "The Unwritten", which revisits a passel of familiar Vertigo themes and should prove very popular among literary enthusiasts. This trade paperback collections issue 1-5 of the series. Some spoilers follow. Our protagonist is Tom Taylor, the now-adult son of the famous author Wilson Taylor; much like A. A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin, Wilson integrated his son into his writing, making him the hero of a thirteen-volume fantasy series that (the series helpfully tells us) is popular enough to make Harry Potter look like, ah, I guess the hero of "Eragon" by comparison. The now-adult Tom makes a living at fan conventions and the like, while his father vanished without a trace years before. At least, that's what Tom believes. But after an encounter with a mysterious woman inquiring into his past, the question of exactly what Tom is comes to the fore. This kicks off a strange and as-yet-largely-unexplained journey into conspiracy and metafiction. In comparison to past Vertigo series, one can very easily see many similarities with "The Sandman", which was also very much concerned with the nature of story and the interactions between fiction and reality. Carey's writing demonstrates quite a wide range of literary influences, with the core of the series being quite obviously based on Harry Potter, the defining literary product of the first decade of the 21st century. But perhaps the most impressive work comes in issue five, a standalone story focused on Rudyard Kipling, the great imperial poet, where Carey manages to reinterpret Kipling's entire literary output and personal life in the context of the series' ongoing plot. It's quite a bravura piece of writing. Peter Gross, the artist, does a terrific job rendering the world of Tom Taylor, and he doesn't miss a beat in the skips between different storytelling styles. An interesting, if still somewhat inscrutable, start to a new property at Vertigo.