For a book that received CraveOnline's Best New Series award for 2009, the arrival of the first trade paperback of The Unwritten is a hell of a way to kick off the New Year. Releasing on January 6 and collecting the first five issues of the critically acclaimed Vertigo series written by Mike Carey with art from Peter Gross, The Unwritten Volume 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity is your opportunity to see what it is you've been missing and jump on board from the get-go.
The Unwritten is many things; it begins as the relatively simple tale of a young man named Tom Taylor, who as a child was the basis of his father's line of hit children's novels (think Harry Potter). As an adult, he's making his rounds on the convention circuit, Ferrigno style, cashing in on his likeness and signing copies of books that he has little to do with aside from his namesake.
However, the story soon evolves into something much more - a literary conspiracy that stretches across generations, from Tom's father to Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde. As Tom Taylor's life becomes a strange brew of similarities to his supposedly fictional counterpart, The Unwritten burrows its way into your brain as the most engaging comic book on the shelves.
I've poured over the greatness of this series numerous times now, so I'm not going to babble on about that: it's damn good, and if you don't have $10 to spend on this collection then you need to get a new job. In some ways, if you didn't start this series with issue #1 and were pondering beginning your Tommy Taylor adventures with this trade, then I sort of envy you. You won't have to wait 30 days between installments, foaming at the mouth for more.
