The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

There once was an author named Wilson Taylor, who wrote a series of fantasy novels based around a fictionalized version of his son, Tom. The Tommy Taylor books were in the vein of Tim Hunter or Harry Potter, but even more popular than the latter. Then, right after the penultimate volume in the series is released, with Tommy on death's door - Wilson disappears.

That's the backstory for The Unwritten, which begins with the real Tom Taylor making convention appearances and otherwise cashing in on his father's legacy. Until a woman confronts him at the San Diego TommyCon, claiming that he isn't Tom Taylor, and that in fact there is no such person as Tom Taylor. The fallout of that is rumour and scandal enough to drive Tom into hiding, and we start to get some hints as to who Tom “really” is, and what his relationship is to his father's work.

It's a Vertigo comic from a pair of Vertigo veterans, doing the type of book that Vertigo does best (literary urban fantasy). Anyone who is a fan of Sandman or Fables would feel really at home with this story, for example.

The one thing that did bug me about it, though, was that the book itself seems more like an introduction of premise or proof of concept than an actual story; there's little actually there, beyond introducing characters and laying hints for future volumes. I know that it's an ongoing series, so they couldn't have wrapped up everything, but a little more meat on the bones would have been appreciated.