Fiction writers often forget where they drew that line between fantasy and reality. Every character created is a real person whose lives depend on the pen in the writer’s hand. Killing them feels like committing murder. The proof reader’s blood red marks only increase the culpability.
Nothing, however, could compare to the horror experienced by Tom Taylor in Mike Carey’s and Peter Gross’ The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity. After a life wasted in the shadow of his father’s globally popular character of the same name, Taylor’s identity is stripped, shredded, destroyed, and publicly scrutinized. His lineage, even his humanity come into question as he attempts to understand his role in the world as well as his role as others define it for him.
A second important line blurs in The Unwritten as well. Peter Gross’ imaginative use of the page highlights the Greek chorus of bloggers, pundits, and news feed updates. Taken with Mike Carey’s ability to capture voices and tones across a variety of media, this challenges the line that separates the reader from the story. By mixing these mundane aspect of the modern world with the fantastic, Gross and Carey create a series of touchstones. Readers finding themselves surrounded by symbols of the world they trust can lose themselves more deeply within the story.
Two volumes have been published so far. Newcomers who missed the individual issues on the shelves of their favorite comic-book shop will have the wonderful surprise of discovering the original covers and sketches by Yuko Shimizu.
Shimizu’s illustrations should look familiar to readers even if she’s not yet a household name. With a background in marketing and advertising, and an Illustration MFA, Shimizu is the freelance world’s rising star. Her work has appeared across a wide variety of cultural strata with a client list that includes Pepsi, Playboy, NPR, Microsoft, and The New Yorker to name a few.
Drastically different from Gross’ style, her work in The Unwritten acts like a well placed page break. It divides the story appropriately while refreshing readers’ palates.
For those fans who’ve already devoured the first two volumes, number three becomes available towards the end of March 2011.
(Vertigo 2010)
