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The Unwritten
Vol 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Peter Gross
2010
Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/
The Unwritten
Vol 2: Inside Man
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Peter Gross
2010
Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/
The Unwritten
Vol 3: Dead Man's Knock
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Peter Gross
2011
Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/
The Unwritten
Vol 4: Leviathan
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Peter Gross
2011
Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/
The Unwritten
Vol 5: On to Genesis
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Peter Gross
2012
Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
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The Unwritten
Vol 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Peter Gross
2012
Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/
Where does the real world end and the imaginary one begin? No. Wait. Scratch that. That's a little bit too airy-fairy for me. (Sounds like the trailer voice-over for a Disney film).
Instead: let's talk about the Oscars.
I don't think I've ever actually sat down and watched the whole Oscar ceremony from beginning to end (basically because - well - come on: it's like five hours long or something isn't it?) but I still know what's it like (call it: cultural osmosis or whatever) - and I'm guessing you do too - right?
Now: I don't know where it exactly it came from - but you know those videos that they sometimes show in-between the awards? Where it's a white backdrop and then there's a celebrity who walks in and says something like "Hi. My name is Steve Speilberg." [1]: well - me and some of my friends kinda came up with an imaginary über-version of that kind of thing that encapsulates the (well) silliness / self-seriousness of it all: "The Power of Story." Can you picture it? A bunch of talking heads all staring out at the camera and intoning semi-blah-platitudes like: "Stories define us." (Cut to Martin Scorsese): "Stories make us what we are." (Cut to Tom Hanks): "We all love to tell stories." (Cut to Whoopi Goldberg) "...and we love to listen to them." (Cut to Julia Roberts) "We live to share them." (Cut to George Clooney) "and we live to make them."
In a nutshell (and hopefully not giving too much away) the "Power of Story" is what The Unwritten is all about. And it's utterly
fantastic.
This is going to sound slightly harsh - but up until The Unwritten I never really cared that much for Mike Carey. His Hellblazer stuff was alright. Lucifer had some strong points - but overall (and especially towards the end) it felt like it's reach outdid it's grasp and his stuff on Ultimate Fantastic Four just wasn't as good as the books by Bendis, Millar and Ellis (yeah - tough crowd).
I guess I should have realised that he needed his own book and the chance to lay down his own set of rules - away from other people's pre-existing properties - to show the world just the sort of amazing things that he could do. Because - damn it - this book is good, good, good.
As you should know by now - I'm of the belief that stories are always best when you know next to nothing before you venture in. So - without giving too much away: The Unwritten is a fast paced supernatural horror story that encompasses all the ways that stories can affect people and the world and the very thin line between things that are real and things that are not. Previous Mike Carey work has always left me feeling underwhelmed - but this is a top notch read that is totally worth getting lost in... And top of the pile of all the recent meta-fictional books out there [2].
And the Mr Bun The Rabbit story at the end of Vol 2 (it's basically Winnie The Pooh with a nasty attitude and lots and lots of gratuitous swearing - and if that doesn't give you the itch to want to try this series out then - well - I don't think I know what will) is one of the funniest and smartest issues of any comic that I've read for a long, long time. (Special mention also goes to the Lizzie Hexam Issue in Vol 3 for mixing the fun in with just the right amount of the experimental). Yes - the further you get down the rabbit hole the more crazy things get: but I wouldn't want things any other way. I mean: ok - yeah: the artwork can be a little bit flat sometimes (and really - that's one of the few things holding me back from proclaiming this as an absolute stone-cold classic) - but then again: hey The Sandman had some pretty ropey artwork too at some points - so what the hey right? And the way it manages to make it's sly points about everything from messiahs to superheroes (same thing) and how (if you look at things at the right angle) all we are are the stories we tell about ourselves (gah: they put it a lot better in the book - so maybe ignore the way I'm making it sound trite). One of the long running arguments I have with my literary flatmate is that the problem with some much "intelligent" Booker Prize literature is that it has absolutely no interest in telling a good story: rather it just uses the outlines of (boring) stories in order to hang on pretty sentences and intricate set-pieces [3]: what I enjoyed so much about The Unwritten is that it's very obviously made by people who've spent a long time thinking about what a story is, what it does and how exactly it works best: which means that it hits a sweet spot in my brain that leaves me constantly carving for more.
Perfect reading for fans of Rowling, Gaiman and Wynne Jones or - well - just about anyone who enjoys a good story, well told and curious about what exactly that means. More like this please.
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[2] Meta-fiction (or whatever you want to call it: stories about stories? I dunno) is definitely the new genre of choice for 21st Century writers. It's not quite post-modernism (which is a fraught term I know): where the emphasis was more (it seems) on pulling things apart and going: "Look how stupid all this is!" - meta-fiction is more about putting as many different storytelling elements as possible to show how brilliant they all are. Or (let me try and put this another way): it's the difference between characters who are constantly saying "this is just like a film or something" and creating an ironic distance between the reader and the text (yeah - this is all just make-believe: isn't it silly?) and characters who have their lives taken over by fictions (or their lives
are fictions: or whatever) which (I would say) helps to shrink the space between the story and the audience (yeah this is all just make-believe: isn't it amazing?).
[3] My favourite example of this would be Martin Amis' London Fields: but please feel free to choose your own.
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Links:
Hooded Utilitarian Review #5,
Relevant Magazine Review,
Forbidden Planet Blog Review of Vol 1,
Comics Alliance Article: The Unwritten: The Power of Stories, From Harry Potter to Frankenstein,
Comics Alliance Review #17: Choose Your Own Adventure Wisely,
Multiversity Interview with Mike Carey and Peter Gross.
Further reading:
Planetary,
Locke and Key,
Death: The High Cost of Living,
Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere,
Promethea,
Swamp Thing,
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century,
Chosen,
Joe The Barbarian,
The Sandman,
Lucifer,
Aetheric Mechanics,
Stardust.
All comments welcome.
Chosen
