Comic News And Reviews

By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators), Vince Locke (inks on a few pages), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters) & Pornsak Pichetshote (editor)

The Story: Our heroic trio takes their act to the States and we get more confusing background on the mysterious organization.

What’s Good: Peter Gross does a wonderful job with the art in this series.  It seems sad that we don’t mention it more because this series just doesn’t lend itself to sexy splash pages very often, but the panel-to-panel art is just nice and tight linework.  Every so often, Unwritten brings in a guest artist just to change up the look a little bit.  So, the 5 pages inked by Vince Locke are a real change and really do jiggle the look of the book, making it clear that we’re doing something new in that scene and that the reader should pay attention.

The story is also entering a new phase.  Tom Taylor now accepts that he is some kind of magical construct created by his “father” for reasons unclear.  And he has magic, even if he doesn’t really know how to control it.  Presumably, we’ll learn more about this power and why Wilson Taylor created Tom to fight this mysterious organization.

What’s Not So Good: This is several issues in a row of The Unwritten where the story had been confused.  Some of it is due to the plot becoming a bit complex.  They could fix that problem by simply adding a recap paragraph at the beginning of the issue.  Just do it.  Does Dan DiDio’s proclamation against recap pages extend to Vertigo?

But, the pacing also seems to be a bit of a problem as well.  Part of the reason that it is hard to remember specific plot points from issue to issue is that the action is darting around between scenes.  Some information is covered very quickly whereas some rather mundane character development scenes are driven into the ground.  And, speaking of character, of all the characters in the book, the main character (Tom Taylor) is the one who elicits the least feeling from the reader.  He is just kinda there and to the extent that you feel anything towards him, you probably think he’s a bit of a dick.  His companions are far more interesting and for this reason, when [SPOILER] Lizzie makes romantic with Tom in their hotel room, it was a little cringe worthy.  We like Lizzie, but recognize that she is emotionally damaged and seeing her making out with Tom (who is just a blah character) felt like catching someone taking advantage of your little sister.

I’m a huge defender of the single-issue comic book, but this story is getting to the point where it might read better in trade.

Conclusion: The story is now confusing and the splendid art can’t save it.  This is the worst issue of Unwritten so far and is actually subpar when compared to the hypothetical “average comic on the shelf”.  It makes me sad because I’ve had a soft spot for this series since it launched, so I hope it improves.

Grade: C-

- Dean Stell Filed under: Vertigo Tagged: | Vertigo, Mike Carey, Chris Chuckry, review, Comic Book Reviews, Weekly Comic Book Review, Todd Klein, Peter Gross, The Unwritten, Dean Stell, the Unwritten #19, Vince Locke, Pornsak Pichetshote, The Unwritten #19 review

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