Comic Review: The Unwritten #3 (Vertigo) by Adam P.

The plot thickens...

The Unwritten is a new Vertigo series created by writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross. A reclusive novelist has created an immensely popular series called Tommy Taylor which bears a close resemblance to Harry Potter. After the writer's mysterious unsolved disappearance, his son, also called Tom Taylor, is pushed into the media limelight. His fame is largely because his father patterned the book's protagonist after his son.




However, rumors first begin circulating that Tom Taylor was not the novelist's true son. Then bizarre incidents occur in which fictional events in the books appear to play themselves out in Tom's real life. Tom needs answers and decides to pay a visit to his childhood home, a villa in Switzerland when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein and John Milton created Paradise Lost.

Flashbacks from Tom's troubled childhood begin to occur to him now that he's back where so many confusing experiences first occurred. Despite his general skepticism, Tom is assisted in his investigations by Lizzie Hexam, who seems to know a lot about him and the connections between his father's fiction and his own life. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, Tom's enemies begin to close in as he gets tantalizingly close to discovering his father's secrets in the villa.

The pace of the story slows down slightly compared to the first two issues but is enthralling nonetheless. The art is good but seems to be a little rushed compared to the earlier issues. It is highly advisable to pick up the first two issues before diving into The Unwritten #3. The forty-page first issue is extremely satisfying and hard to beat at an introductory cover price of $1. A second printing of #1 was recently released at $2.

The series brims with unsolved mysteries that will surely be incredibly satisfying once revealed. It's also an extremely fascinating look at the relationship between stories and reality.

8.5/10
Adam P.
Review Co-Editor