The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

Pretty much a must read if you've spent any time on Gothic or Brit Lit.

The Unwritten has wickedly good premise, some biting satire of the publishing industry, and really great cover art. The interior art is solid as well.

One of only three new comics from the past year to stay on my pull list past five issues.

There once was an author named Wilson Taylor, who wrote a series of fantasy novels based around a fictionalized version of his son, Tom. The Tommy Taylor books were in the vein of Tim Hunter or Harry Potter, but even more popular than the latter. Then, right after the penultimate volume in the series is released, with Tommy on death's door - Wilson disappears.

That's the backstory for The Unwritten, which begins with the real Tom Taylor making convention appearances and otherwise cashing in on his father's legacy. Until a woman confronts him at the San Diego TommyCon, claiming that he isn't Tom Taylor, and that in fact there is no such person as Tom Taylor. The fallout of that is rumour and scandal enough to drive Tom into hiding, and we start to get some hints as to who Tom “really” is, and what his relationship is to his father's work.

It's a Vertigo comic from a pair of Vertigo veterans, doing the type of book that Vertigo does best (literary urban fantasy). Anyone who is a fan of Sandman or Fables would feel really at home with this story, for example.

The one thing that did bug me about it, though, was that the book itself seems more like an introduction of premise or proof of concept than an actual story; there's little actually there, beyond introducing characters and laying hints for future volumes. I know that it's an ongoing series, so they couldn't have wrapped up everything, but a little more meat on the bones would have been appreciated.

This was a book that, in the beginning, I didn't expect to like. I anticipated this book being a pot shot at Harry Potter and its fandom. A deconstruction of the series (and YA fiction) by someone who doesn't appreciate the genre.

Instead, I enjoyed this volume and definitely am going to read subsequent volumes. My concerns about subsequent books have shifted to something else though. As it stands, I am somewhat concerned that importance the series' universe has on literary convention could end up turning into dueling TV Tropes users.

Hopefully, as with my preconceptions, I'll be wrong.