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Unwritten Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity |  | Author: Mike Carey
Creator: Peter Gross
Publisher: Vertigo
Category: Book
List Price: $9.99
Buy New: $5.59
as of 7/30/2010 06:16 CDT details
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Seller: allnewbooks
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 17415
Media: Paperback
Pages: 144
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 6.6 x 0.4
ISBN: 1401225659
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN: 9781401225650
ASIN: 1401225659
Publication Date: January 12, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Tom Taylor's life was screwed from go. His father created the Tommy Taylor fantasy series, boy-wizard novels with popularity on par with Harry Potter. The problem is Dad modeled the fictional epic so closely to Tom's real life that fans are constantly comparing him to his counterpart, turning him into the lamest variety of Z-level celebrity. In the final novel, it's even implied that the fictional Tommy will crossover into the real world, giving delusional fans more excuses to harass Tom.
When an enormous scandal reveals that Tom might really be a boy-wizard made flesh, Tom comes into contact with a very mysterious, very deadly group that's secretly kept tabs on him all his life. Now, to protect his own life and discover the truth behind his origins, Tom will travel the world, eventually finding himself at locations all featured on a very special map -- one kept by the deadly group that charts places throughout world history where fictions have impacted and tangibly shaped reality, those stories ranging from famous literary works to folktales to pop culture. And in the process of figuring out what it all means, Tom will find himself having to figure out a huge conspiracy mystery that spans the entirety of the history of fiction.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 An excellent comic that gets better as it goes along January 20, 2010
Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm probably grading this slightly on the curve because it gets so much better as it goes along. And, as they say, the plot thickens. The first few issues introduce us to Tommy Taylor and his sad little life. As a child he was the model for a series of kid's novels about Tommy Taylor, boy wizard, who was aided by two friends who bear a sharp resemblance to Ron and Hermione and a flying cat. There is even a Voldemort equivalent, the evil vampire Count Ambrosio. At first, you think that the Harry Potter resemblance is pretty much all there is going to be to the book, but the plot, as they say, quickly thickens. The heart of the story is not wizards and vampires, but the act of writing and the role of stories in our lives. As of the most recent issue (I write this shortly after having read Issue No. 9) it isn't clear what all the threads are leading to, but we know that there is a centuries old conspiracy connected to great writing. The key will certainly turn out to be Tommy's map of places where great fictional events took place, but the identity of the mysterious organization behind it has yet to be revealed or all of their purposes determined.
This marvelous series is still in its early stages and is going to be with us for a while. If you haven't started reading this, you need to. It is going to be another great series in the best Vertigo tradition.
A promising new title March 23, 2010
B. Rowland
I picked this volume up by chance at Dr. No's, the local comic book shop, and it piqued my interest. A young man, the real-life subject of a wildly-popular boy wizard series (yes, just like Harry Potter), starts to wonder if there's more to his role in the series than he always thought. Tommy Taylor's father disappeared years ago after leaving the world hanging with his last installment in the Tommy Taylor book series. Now, a mysterious woman suggests that Tom actually sprang from the pages of the book because of a prophecy foretold in the series. Full of literary allusions and characters, The Unwritten has an intriguing start. The art is not bad either. This volume leaves the reader hanging. I will be buying the next volume when it comes out.
fabulous! April 25, 2010
a_guy_in_boston (Boston, MA USA)
Wow -- this is really good. I picked this up on a whim, having no idea what it was about, but once I started reading I couldn't put it down. If you liked the first two volumes of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or any part of Sandman, then Unwritten should be next on your list. Like those two predecessors, Unwritten is brimming with literary references, but it weaves them into its own clever, unique, and unexpected new direction. Highly recommended!
A terrifically offbeat and original idea! July 8, 2010
S. Penrose (Small Town, OH)
Mike Carey delves into a literary hodge podge of the past and combines it with a Harry Potter-esque hype to create an incredible mystery that seems to have more layers than even the readers know. The art is very simple but that's not a bad thing. Peter Gross makes all the normal human characters identifiable and that's not always easy. I can't wait to see what happens next to Tommy Taylor, er I mean Tom Taylor.
Carey kicks things off nicely. January 14, 2010
S. Curley (Charlottetown, PE, Canada)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Mike Carey is one of the many British comic writers to make his name at DC's Vertigo imprint. Carey began his North American writing career with his famous "Lucifer" series (a spinoff of Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman"), as well as a run on the longrunning "John Constantine, Hellblazer". Subsequently he's spent some time at Marvel Comics, most prominently with a lengthy period on "X-Men", which has met with quite a bit of fan acclaim. Now he returns to Vertigo with his next big indie project, "The Unwritten", which revisits a passel of familiar Vertigo themes and should prove very popular among literary enthusiasts. This trade paperback collections issue 1-5 of the series. Some spoilers follow.
Our protagonist is Tom Taylor, the now-adult son of the famous author Wilson Taylor; much like A. A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin, Wilson integrated his son into his writing, making him the hero of a thirteen-volume fantasy series that (the series helpfully tells us) is popular enough to make Harry Potter look like, ah, I guess the hero of "Eragon" by comparison. The now-adult Tom makes a living at fan conventions and the like, while his father vanished without a trace years before. At least, that's what Tom believes. But after an encounter with a mysterious woman inquiring into his past, the question of exactly what Tom is comes to the fore. This kicks off a strange and as-yet-largely-unexplained journey into conspiracy and metafiction.
In comparison to past Vertigo series, one can very easily see many similarities with "The Sandman", which was also very much concerned with the nature of story and the interactions between fiction and reality. Carey's writing demonstrates quite a wide range of literary influences, with the core of the series being quite obviously based on Harry Potter, the defining literary product of the first decade of the 21st century. But perhaps the most impressive work comes in issue five, a standalone story focused on Rudyard Kipling, the great imperial poet, where Carey manages to reinterpret Kipling's entire literary output and personal life in the context of the series' ongoing plot. It's quite a bravura piece of writing. Peter Gross, the artist, does a terrific job rendering the world of Tom Taylor, and he doesn't miss a beat in the skips between different storytelling styles.
An interesting, if still somewhat inscrutable, start to a new property at Vertigo.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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