Did you know the CIA once pretended to shoot a movie adaptation of Roger Zelazny’s Lord of the Light as cover to smuggle US diplomats out of Iran? Go ahead, Google it.
I love that stuff. Random trivia about ways books and movies have affected the world. That’s why when Mike Carey and Peter Gross pitched me THE UNWRITTEN, they might as well have titled it, “The Pornsak Geek-Out Book.” When I pointed that out to Mike, he deadpanned that it’ll hopefully keep him from having to do too many rewrites.
But the truth is, that also made me nervous. Might the fact that I was so the book’s ideal audience mean my gauge would be off about whether other people would respond?
Fortunately, my paranoia was unjustified. Rave reviews are still piling on for the first two issues, with issue 1 selling out in 10 days. Maybe Mike and Peter can make anything interesting, or maybe it’s easy for all of us to be infatuated with the behind-the-scenes stories about the stories we love. So, with that in mind, here are four random behind-the-scenes UNWRITTEN facts and four unused cover sketches for issue 1. Enjoy…
1) Tommy Taylor’s flying cat is basically Peter Gross’ cat, Narnia, with wings. Peter swears his daughter named the cat.
2) The visual effect of Pullman’s touch was actually inspired by a design element cover artist Yuko Shimizu employed on an alternate cover for UNWRITTEN 1.
3) Yes, this means there’s an alternate cover to UNWRITTEN 1 that no one outside DC offices has seen besides Mike, Peter and Yuko.
4) The best behind-the-scenes look of the first issue is the one Mike wrote here.
