Name: The Unwritten
ISBN: 9781401233594

Chris Chuckry

Mike Carey

Todd Klein

Peter Gross

Armed with his father's journals, Tom Taylor begins a journey across the United States that also takes him into the past - to the Golden Age of a new artistic medium and the birth of a new type of hero. But following in Wilson's footsteps creates dangerous echoes.

On to genesis. 5

The Unwritten

Fraser Simons

It’s difficult to talk about this without spoiling the innovative and most compelling aspects of the book. In vague terms, it’s very hard to sell people on it. It’s about a guy—Tommy Taylor—who is son of a man who wrote a massively popular set of fiction books for children and young adults that parallels Harry Potter in some ways. His dad has since vanished, abandoning him, and the world for many years. Tommy’s only source of income is showing up at cons where there is still some cache in the assumption that the character in the books were based on him as a child as well.

Only, we enter his life precisely when that fact may not actually be the case. A culture war ensues when a woman announces that the baby his father used was allegedly the son of a Romanian housekeeper, and on paper, Tommy doesn’t exist at all. The public has become so entrenched and enamoured with the franchise that this becomes the story everyone has in their heads. All people talk about and all people care about. Sound familiar? 

It’s far more interesting than just that though. The start of the story is slightly interesting but doesn’t feel like it has anywhere to go because this isn’t tropey. It’s about a trope. But no one could predict what vehicle or road this setup was for. 

In broad terms, it’s about story itself. At an instinctual and primordial level, what creatures humanity uses story for, and who controls it and for what purpose. The agency behind a story in the general intellect and the ethical consumption and creation of it—and by extension, art—and the power of the public consciousness or Anthropocene unconscious. It literalizes story itself in some ways. And by giving it a physicality and substance that can be interacted with and manipulated, it allows for a meta story about story, as well as enabling a more myopic narrative about characters navigating these literalized concepts. 

It is whole unique, though takes some time to get into, and to-date still unlike anything I’ve read. One of my favourite comics of all time, and by the end of this book, 10 issues in total, I think most readers should have an appetite for what’s to come. It’s an absolute blast to re-read this now, knowing more about literature and post-modernism and where this all goes. You should be so lucky. Truly.

The Unwritten On to genesis. 5