The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log » DC Comics

The Unwritten – it’s all about the story, all about the fictions

Richard — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:10:59 +0000

The Unwritten Volume 1: Tommy Taylor And The Bogus Identity

by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Vertigo / Titan Books

This reads very much like Vertigo books of old, with all the high fantasy elements you used to get with Gaiman’s Sandman. And so it should, since it reunites Carey and Gross, who previously shared 70 odd issues of the Lucifer series that I remember fondly from years ago.

With The Unwritten. I think I’ve finally found a Vertigo title I want to follow (I have a feeling Fables is another, but I missed out on that and I’m too, too far behind to catch up now). I’m hoping that Carey has a definite idea of where he’s taking this, building up his literary conspiracy theory into something huge. Because based on the first volume this is definitely something I’ll be picking up with each subsequent volume. It’s old school Vertigo, but that’s no bad thing, because it’s intriguing, packed with potential and very, very satisfying.

The story centres around Tom Taylor; famous for being his father’s greatest creation, immortalised in the hugely popular 13 book Tommy Taylor series, featuring the adventures of a boy wizard and his friends – yes, Harry Potter makes it to comics, just via a different name.

Tom’s is someone else’s life, and almost inevitably, he scrapes a a living on the minor celeb tour circuit, hawking signed photos, making appearances at the cons, with crowds all full of questions about his father, Wilson Taylor, who famously disappeared before writing the final volume in the Tommy Taylor series.

(That’s the moment it all goes badly wrong for Tom Taylor. Just one question. But it’s going to change his life. From The Unwritten Volume 1 by Carey and Gross, published DC Comics/Vertigo)

But Tom Taylor is in for the surprise of his young life when he finds out that his entire world may have been based on, if not a lie, then certainly a fiction, or maybe a series of fictions, maybe a whole library of the things.

In the middle of a con a young woman, with a name from Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend” plants the seeds of doubt in his mind. Worse still, when the story breaks that Tom Taylor might not be Wilson Taylor’s son at all, the fans turn on him, some with anger and recrimination and others who make the claim that this merely feeds into their theory that

“Tom Taylor has no past because Tom Taylor wasn’t born in this world…. Tom Taylor is Tommy Taylor .. He’s the messiah, the word made flesh.“

And you know, there may be more than a conspiracy theory in that idea, because all through The Unwritten there’s an awful lot of words made flesh, fictions coming to life, and the idea of writers influencing reality. It’s all about the power of the written word to shape the world, the power of words, the power of the writer. So Tom Taylor finds his life falling apart, and it looks like he may really be the boy his father wrote about, made real from the pages of the books.

(From the pages of the Tommy Taylor books, villains loom large. But the real villains of The Unwritten are perhaps the men controlling the stories or maybe those contolling the writers? From The Unwritten by Carey and Gross, published DC/Vertigo)

What’s worse is that, as Tom discovers that his life may be far more complicated than simply being a washed up D list celeb, he may be the next target for a very dangerous, very powerful group of men, men who’ve had a hand in influencing the shape of the world through the words of writers they’ve manipulated and controlled through the ages, men who influenced countries, wars, society. And it’s these men and their influence on one Rudyard Kipling that ends the book, with it’s final story shifting from Tom Taylor and journeying back to turn of the century, with Kipling, Twain, and the reappearance of these mysterious, powerful men who use fictions to create fact, stories to create history.

(Back to the real world – whatever that really is. Tom Taylor finds himself at the mercy of a deranged fan. But that makeup’s far too real for a fan, and it looks like fiction and Tom Taylor’s reality are about to come crashing together. From The Unwritten by Carey and Gross, published DC/Vertigo)

The future of The Unwritten appears to be focused on Tom Taylor’s flight from these powerful men and his journey to uncover exactly who, or what he is that will take him around the world, following his fathers map of stories, stories that are such powerful things that they have manipulated reality and history in their telling.

I’ve been relatively disappointed with quite a lot of recent Vertigo comics, but The Unwritten got me from very early on. Carey carefully lays his story before us, with shifts from Tom’s life going badly wrong, extracts from WilsonTaylor’s books, cutaways to the mysterious men who may be the controllers of this real/fictional world we find ourselves in.

And all along the artwork by Peter Gross is brilliantly competant. There’s no insult in that, I merely mean that to me this is Carey’s book, a writer’s book about words. Gross’ job is to translate those words, those ideas onto the page – which he does quite wonderfully well.

I have to say I really, really enjoyed The Unwritten. Now maybe this is because it reminds me of the very first set of Vertigo titles, or maybe it’s simply because it takes an old favourite of fantasy writing – the very concept of a metafiction and reality bending to accomodate fictional characters, or maybe it’s just because it’s a really solidly written, solidly drawn piece of enjoyable comics. Any one of those works for me.

As always, the best recommendation I can give to The Unwritten is that I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on Volume 2.

Richard Bruton.

Marvel Vs DC

Joe — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:02:18 +0000

Conor, Josh and and Ron on iFanboy discuss one of the all-time biggest things in comics, bigger even than Power Girl’s, er, reputation, it’s DC Vs Marvel:

Everything changes at DC…..

Richard — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:01:04 +0000

Warner Brothers and DC Entertainment have lit the comic equivalent of the papal smoke and the names of the five replacements for Paul Levitz’s vacant Publisher post were announced by DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson yesterday.

Dan DiDio and Jim Lee are named as co-publishers, Geoff Johns is the new Chief Creative Officer, Pat Caldon becomes Executive Vice President, Finance and Administration and John Rood becomes Executive Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Business Development.

Go and read the official word from Diane Nelson, followed by notes from each of those involved: Dan Didio & Jim Lee, Geoff Johns, Patrick Caldron and John Rood. And there’s an awful lot of people saying an awful lot of different things about the news. I could link to them all, but Heidi at The Comics Beat has done a great job; here, here, and here.

What will it all mean? Will everything change? My money is on not that much really and no, not at all.

The regular Bill Watterson interview slot (next one due 2030) ……. and Watchmen 2????

Richard — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:01:30 +0000

Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, and famous recluse, breaks a 20 year silence with an interview for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

“By the end of 10 years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say. It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.

I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it. I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.”

Yes, completely agree with that. There’s a continued magic in Calvin And Hobbes that passes through the generations of the Bruton family. I’ve passed it to Molly, I hope she’ll pass it on to her children in time. There’s so little Calvin & Hobbes to read. And it’s magical.

However, there are members of the comic community who don’t seem to share that feeling. DC Comics Dan Didio for one.

Rich Johnson ran the Watchmen 2 story this week, pointing out that it’s one of Dan Didio’s pet projects to get more comic product out of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. For years Paul Levitz saw to it personally that Watchmen was allowed to stand alone and untouched, even after Moore had his big falling out with both DC and Levitz.

But Paul Levitz isn’t with DC anymore and, according to Rich, this means there’s the possibility of more Watchmen – sequels, prequels, Watch-babies, crossovers with Green Lantern (and consequently the possibility to make more crappy plastic rings to go with another DC Comic). The possibilities are endless.

Still, let’s not forget that just because Rich says it’s a possibility doesn’t mean it’s a done deal. And, like so many have said, the only good result from it will be many more incredibly entertaining interviews with Alan Moore where he stays just shy of exploding with contempt for his former employers.

Absolute Justice

Joe — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:34:08 +0000

I watch Smallville periodically (although not religiously) but the Absolute Justice ep? Yeah, that’s seriously perking my interest! Looks fab. (via the Geek Syndicate Twitter)

The next step in superhero comic evolution – the McHappy Read

Richard — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:01:52 +0000

If the return of variant covers, metallic shiny covers and the rest wasn’t enough, DC announced this week that their promotion for the recent Blackest Night event – giving retailers plastic lantern rings to give away – was so successful that they’re going to repeat it with the forthcoming Brightest Day event. For every 10 copies of The Flash #1 or Green Lantern #53 ordered retailers can order Flash and Green Lantern rings.

Now, is it just me or does anyone else think this means we’ve joined with that greatest supplier of modern cuisine and we’re now getting the equivalent of McHappy Meals? Or perhaps this is merely DC’s big idea for fighting back against digital comics – because you can’t give shiny plastic crap away on a download.

You know what comes next don’t you? Every Marvel and DC comic comes complete with it’s own piece of plastic crap selotaped to the cover, just like ever comic on the UK news-stands does. Oh, what a great day that will be.

Ian Rankin signing in Edinburgh

Joe — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:03:55 +0000

We had the pleasure of hosting bestselling author Ian Rankin in the Edinburgh Forbidden Planet last night, signing copies of his debut graphic novel Dark Entries, which sees John Constantine involved in a demonic reality show (what do you mean, all reality shows are secretly demonic?) for a delighted crowd of readers (click the pics for the larger images):

(you lookin’ at me?)

(all the best people shop at FPI, you know)

Darwyn Cooke’s Jonah Hex … ooooh, that’s nice.

Richard — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:01:52 +0000

Over on his blog Darwyn Cooke has an in-depth and interesting look at the art from Jonah Hex #50 where he spends time describing the process of experimenting with his art style, his influences and the sterling work of his colourist Dave Stewart:

Couple of teaser quotes from Cooke:

“The technique applied to the inks on Hex is an amalgam of several great adventure artists filtered through the hand of a guy many are convinced normally inks with a corncob.
Moebius, John Severin, Reed Crandall, Jack Davis and Walt Simonson all had immense effects on me as a young artist and you’ll see that in the linework on Hex.”

“As I reached the last few pages of the issue something dawned on me. I flipped back through for confirmation and was stunned to realize that somehow Dave had coloured every daytime sky something other than blue.”

Jonah Hex #50 should be in stores about now and online from FPI’s comic store.

Jeff Lemire revamps his site

Joe — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:03:56 +0000

The excellent Jeff Lemire has revamped his official website and blog; if you’ve not read Jeff before its a good time to get in on his work, which I’m glad to see is gaining a wider audience. I first came across Jeff’s work via the engrossing Essex County trilogy which Top Shelf published (the series, set in a partly imagined version of his home stomping ground and characters in Ontario, was gathered into an omnibus edition this summer, highly recommended if you haven’t picked it up yet), DC has now published a hardback of his The Nobody while he also has an ongoing DC/Vertigo series, Sweeth Tooth, running at the moment (with a trade collection due sometimes mid 2010). If you’re already a Lemire fan go and check it out, if you’re not then you should be reading him (yes, that is another good suggestion for a Xmas present!).

(a cool version of Rom, Space Knight, by Jeff Lemire, borrowed from his site)

Peter Bagge’s Other Lives

Richard — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:01:31 +0000

Fresh images from the Vertigo blog of Peter Bagge’s 2010 Original Graphic Novel; Other Lives. It does look good – don’t you think?