The Unwritten, Vol. 7: The Wound (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
Tom Taylor's war with the villainous Cabal is over. Pullman (or should we call him Cain?) is finally dead, after a life spanning (if he is to believed) most of human history, but the damage he did on his way out continues to resonate. Before he died, Pullman harpooned the Leviathan, the manifestation of humanity's collective storytelling unconscious. Now, around the world, creative types are finding themselves unable to create, and people everywhere are finding themselves unable to get lost in the worlds of even the most immersive literature. The Leviathan is not dead, but his wound remains...and it seems someone is seeking to finish the job. Lizzie, however, is gone, reduced to mere words by the touch of Pullman's magic wooden hand. In the meantime, Tom has become an international superstar once again, playing to packed-out venues in a one-man show that consists of mostly him just reading from various stories he finds interesting or significant. Richie Savoy has gone on to publish his bestselling account of their war, becoming a media sensation in his own right in the process. The Church of Tommy has become a dominant social force, led by Lucas Filby (who totally looks nothing like Alan Moore, I have no idea what you're talking about), but the church's reputation is marred by a series of missing persons cases that nobody can explain.Well, I have to give it to Carey and Gross, they've managed to make the second stage of their ongoing series nearly as interesting as the first. A lot of the questions that have nagged at us from the beginning have been answered, but not all of them, and there are enough dangling plot threads unresolved to draw you into this volume. Once you're here? I suspect that the new slate of problems will be enough to keep you around. This volume opens with yet another backup feature with that foul-mouthed rabbit Pauly Bruckner, and later in the volume you'll actually learn just what he's all about. The Tinker makes his appearance too, on his way to the Underworld to try and rescue his true love. The main story deals with the Church of Tommy and all their screwiness, providing answers to some of the remaining niggling questions along the way, and then the volume ends with another backup feature. This time, it's the immediate aftermath of the battle between Tom and Pullman, and I'm a little confused as to why we had to wait until the end to see that tale, but oh well. Bottom line: I'm sticking around for this series until it ends! The Unwritten, as a whole series, is one of the best comic book series I have ever read. It takes something familiar, the premise of Harry Potter essentially but here called Tommy Taylor and bases it upon the life of the writer who wrote it and his son, and then it just explodes it in a whole new direction from there.The act of reading, the power of imagination, and believing in stories, and what they give back to the world, is itself made into something magical, and this power is what is fought over throughout this series. The main story arc, and what the series built up to over the preceding volumes, is essentially resolved in volume 6. Volume 7 looks like it is starting a new story that may lead to subsequent volumes that follow this tangent. The first 6 volumes would make an awesome series of films if anyone dared make them.
What do You think about The Unwritten, Vol. 7: The Wound (2013)?
Will continue to read this series, hopefully the library keeps buying it.
—August
Continuation of Tommy Thompson's story by Carey and Gross
—edward
