Read All the Comics!: Unwritten

Unwritten 10-24

I’ve reached the end of the issues I own (minus the upcoming crossover with Fables, which doesn’t count), and I think I know why past me stayed with it for twenty four issues, and why he stopped buying.

I stayed for the mysteries - What’s the deal with Tom Taylor? Is he real? Did Wilson Taylor somehow manifest his fictional creation into a living, breathing person? The arc that ran through the eighteenth issue builds up to the release of the long-awaited fourteenth Tommy Taylor novel. Mike Carey effectively ratchets up the tension as the plot gets closer and closer to that point, while keeping all of the details murky the whole time; I never knew why the release was important, the stakes that were involved, or what was going to happen. I knew the novel was a fake, that the cabal of bad guys was waiting for Wilson to turn up, and that was about it. And I was perfectly happy with that arrangement. The not-knowing is what made the experience exciting, and I was looking forward to the grand reveal.

The book release itself didn’t disappoint. The publication of the piece of crap not-written-by-Wilson novel was a smokescreen, lulling the Cabal (the enigmatic bad buys) into a false sense of victory while the true novel was being printed in secret. Sweet fake, I thoroughly enjoyed that. But everything else completely let me down. Wilson gets his head cut off, Tom casts a spell in the real world, the Cabal gets a leadership change, and Tom sets off on his next quest. It all sounds exciting, but it just sets up more questions without giving me any kind of satisfying resolution.

Carey and Peter Gross do give us an ambitious Choose Your Own Adventure issue, but after the initial novelty wears off, it just becomes a pain in the ass to read. Way too much flipping for what is at its heart a very basic story.

The subsequent Leviathan story arc completely falls apart for me, and totally understand why I tapped out. Where the book release plot felt like it was leading to something big, with a propulsive wave pushing it along, this one was inert from the get go. Tom’s looking for a whale, but doesn’t know why. Once he gets trapped in the whale, he looks for a way out, but at a lackadaisical pace. There’s no urgency to any of it. Tom’s just waiting for something to happen to him, and that’s boring to follow.

Other things worth mentioning:

In issue 12, Wilson Taylor exiles one of his associates into a Winnie-the-Pooh analog world. Pauly Bruckner is now Mr. Bun, and he’s not happy about it. Imagine a self-aware Avenue Q puppet trapped in the sanitized world of Sesame Street, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how his life is going. He swears and struggles to find a way out, only to find himself banished to an even worse fate at the end of the issue.

I thought that was the end of it, but twelve issues later, he reappears amidst a group of literary talking animals who’ve left their stories in search of the Maker. They’re climbing an endless stairway, chasing a vague promise of something better. Mr. Bun usurps leadership of the wandering collective (like Napoleon in Animal Farm) until he finds a way out of that world as well. Carey clearly has bigger plans for this character, and I’m a little curious to know how this thread ties itself off.

I can't hear the name "Mr. Bun" without thinking of this.

Speaking of, I just discovered Readcomics.io, which somehow has a ton of comics available to read for free. It’s not comprehensive, but I might use it to see how Unfollow and Unwritten finish up. I’m certainly not going to buy any more of those issues.

This might be Peter Gross’ best work. The art has a level of detail and refinement that I don’t normally see in his usually minimal style.