TOMMY TAYLOR AND THE SHIP THAT SANK TWICE: CAREY & GROSS AND POST-MODERN COMICS

This graphic novel is an origin story of sorts for the Unwritten series, built around Tommy Taylor, a children's book character, and Tom Taylor, son of Wilson Tucker, the writer of the Tommy Taylor books, who has disappeared. Taking off on the Harry Potter series, they have referenced Potters' borrowed fantasy archetypes, and here, with Wilson Taylor placed in the fore, they go even further into the idea factory from which these tales are generated. Yet in its mixture of the writer's life and neuroses, and the parallel father/son relationships in 'life' and in the Tommy Taylor world of magic, this comic plays with the darker areas in which the protection of fantasy shields a child's own life. It's full of stories within stories, and the shadowy way in which the fantasy tale reflects the writer's own life, and the two Toms come together, is a shifting metaphor for the whole creative process.

In the previous post I discussed Sidekick, which plays with super-hero tropes, and referenced Alan Moore as a starting point for such explorations. In a sense, the Unwritten is part of a second strand which does similar things, but in a vein of fantasy which can be traced back to Neil Gaiman and The Sandman. Writer Mike Carey worked on a number of Sandman projects, which makes the link obvious; we can see it also in Mike Willingham and Mark Buckingham's Fables, in which fairy-tale characters take on 'life'; not surprisingly Vertigo has published an Unwritten/Fables crossover, which I reviewed last year here (follow this link).

The Ship That Sank Twice draws you in from the start, with Wilson Taylor's efforts to find a story blending into the original tale of the ship, and a lost baby delivered by Leviathan to the wizard Tulkinghorn, who runs a school for young wizards. But the sunken ship holds a secret which is desperate to escape...

What makes this work so well is the deftness in switching between the Potteresque school, the horror-movie type evil, and the story of Wilson Taylor and his son, which has its own aspects of horror about it. Peter Gross's art (he's credited with layouts, and the collaborators on both art and finishes use line, tone and colour to reflect and indeed set mood) moves just as deftly as Carey's script. In fantasy, emotional realism is essential, and they bring that home well. It's a wonderful dark story well told.

The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor And The Ship That Sank Twice
by Mike Carey & Peter Gross
Vertigo/DC $14.99 ISBN 9781401229771

THE UNWRITTEN FABLES

This graphic novel is a crossover between The Fables and The Unwritten, two long running Vertigo comics. I've read a number of the Fables stories, written by Bill Willingham and drawn by Mark Buckingham; in them the characters of fairy tales live real lives—and I suppose you can read a lot of the influence here of Neil Gaiman, both in American Gods but also in the Sandman series. The Unwritten, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross, is about Tommy Taylor, a boy turned into a Harry Potter-type hero in a series of novels, who becomes his character, as it were. I hadn't read any of them before, but it's easy to see how close the connection is.

Now the Fables are fighting their last stand against The Dark Man, who wishes to wipe away their power, the power of story, and as they suffer defeat after defeat, Tommy Taylor appears from his world where story is real, to help.

The story appeared as five issues of The Unwritten, and Carey and Gross are the primary creators (the Fables creators are credited with only three pages each, though oddly not the same three pages; Buckingham is also credited as the 'continuity cop' for the storyline) but it seems to flow smoothly in the Fables universe. As in those stories, the real pleasures are in the more human sense of evil that lurks behind the friendly familiar faces: this of course is where the Fables' traction arose, the reality that our fairy tales are dark and fearsome at their core. Seeing the Big Bad Wolf as a human; Boy Blue as a Galahad hero; or Frau Totenkinder as the ambiguous force behind the fables resonates with deeper meanings.

And on the other side, the beautiful conceit of Snow White, having gone over to the Dark Man, and given her children by the Big Bad Wolf to him, gives the story a human depth appropriate for our times. It reminds us how those archetypical stories not only reflect our consciousness, but help form it.

Or it's just a lot of apocalyptic fun. Which it is.

The Unwritten Fables

by Carey, Willingham, Gross and Buckingham

DC Vertigo $14.99 ISBN 9781401246945