Tom, with the help of Lizzie, enters the journals of Wilson Taylor. While there, he learns that something horrible happened to Milton Jardine, the man whose name Miriam Walzer was using as a pen name. And Tom is shocked when he goes looking for Miri in present day.
On to Genesis continues in THE UNWRITTEN #29 this Wednesday!
With THE UNWRITTEN, Mike Carey and Peter Gross continue to innovate and push the limits of comic books. Issue #28 is no exception.
Below are Vince Locke's finishes on a two page spread from the 1930s sequence in the main story. These are then combined with Peter Gross' rendering of the Tinker comic.
Below is the Tinker comic in its beginning stages "as drawn by Miriam" from the two page spread illustrated by Peter Gross. Doesn't that staircase look familiar?
And here is the script for pages 7 and 8 written by Mike Carey. Please note that some things have changed from script to final page.
PAGES 7 & 8
Structure is kind of weird here. The centre of the spread is a page from a Tinker comic – not finished inks but pencils, rough but full of vibrancy and potential. To either side of it, we’re seeing Miriam and Wilson interacting both while the page is being created and after it’s done. I’ve done the panels in reader-experience below, dividing the page into three sections: area to the left of the Tinker page, page itself, area to the right of the page.
LEFT-HAND BIT
PANEL 1
Miriam’s studio. She’s at the drawing board, sketching with furious concentration. In background, Wilson watches. He’s in shirt-sleeves, jacket over his arm. He looks slightly irritated.
1 WILSON: The Thin Man starts in thirty minutes.
2 MIRIAM: Shut up, Will.
3 MIRIAM: I’m onto something here.
PANEL 2
Tight on Miriam. She carefully traces a line.
4 MIRIAM: It’s what we were talking about. Plugging your own story into
what’s already there.
5 MIRIAM: Making your one voice be part of a symphony.
PANEL 3
Close-up on what she’s drawing – the Tinker kneeling beside a woman’s dead body.
6 MIRIAM: God, I wish I was better.
7 MIRIAM: I wish I could do what Herriman does with a straight line.
THE TINKER PAGE
PANEL 1
A street in Tomorrow City: a lady is being held up by a gangster. The lady is young, beautiful and glamorous, but we’re not seeing her at her best because the gangster is shooting her through the heart. She staggers and falls. In background, the Tinker is running or seven-league-striding in to the attack.
1 GANGSTER: Sorry, lady.
SFX: BLAM
2 GANGSTER: The boss don’t want you on that witness stand!
3 LADY: Ohh!
PANEL 2
Two-shot. The Tinker punches out the gangster.
4 TINKER: You cowardly rat! You’ll get the chair for this!
5 GANGSTER: Oof!
6 TINKER: Justice never sleeps!
PANEL 3
Out wide. The Tinker kneels beside the body, gently touches the woman’s forearm. A uniformed cop – a sergeant, comic relief, probably overweight – watches anxiously.
7 TINKER: But that won’t bring back an innocent life!
8 COP: I don’t like that gleam I’m after seeing in your eye, Tinker!
9 COP: Begorrah, and you lost this one, so you did.
PANEL 4
Tight on the Tinker. He takes a piece of chalk from his pocket.
10 TINKER: Maybe not. This chalk is from the shores of Lake Avernus.
11 TINKER: The ancient gateway to the land of the dead.
PANEL 5
Out wide. The Tinker draws out a stairway in perspective on the ground. The cop pleads with him.
12 COP: Faith, you can’t do this, Tinker! What’ll I tell the lieutenant, at all at all?
13 TINKER: Tell him what you like, O’Malley. I’m going to Hades.
14 TINKER: And I’m bringing Lucy Cabot’s soul back with me!
PANEL 6
Tight on the Tinker. His drawn staircase has become a real staircase, from which flames and steam billow up. He walks down fearlessly into them.
15 TINKER: I spend a lot of time dealing with the criminal underworld.
16 TINKER: The underworld of the dead probably isn’t too different!
RIGHT-HAND BIT
PANEL 1
Back in the studio, out wide. Wilson stares at the finished page, which he’s lifted from the drawing board. He’s amazed. Miriam stands by, a little bashful and awkward but full of excitement at what she’s achieved.
8 WILSON: This is - -
9 MIRIAM: It’s Orpheus and Eurydice.
10 WILSON: I know, Miri. I got that.
PANEL 2
Tight on Wilson. He lowers the page, stares at her, very serious.
11 WILSON: It’s brilliant. You’re telling stories with real resonance, now.
12 WILSON: Real depth.
PANEL 3
Close-up on Miriam’s face, ardent and passionate.
13 MIRIAM: I’m making myths.
14 MIRIAM: For an age that doesn’t have any of its own yet.
It's a complicated process, but the end result is totally worth it when you see the finished pages colored, lettered and ready to be read.
While the cabal continue their seemingly motiveless murder spree, Tom Taylor researches his father's journals to uncover the secret connections between Wilson Taylor and his deadliest enemy, Pullman--as well as a hint at an eighty-year-old mystery that could be a clue to Tom's own nature and origins.
Check out the two page spread below from THE UNWRITTEN #28, in stores tomorrow, with art by Peter Gross and Vince Locke. The setting is 1930s Brooklyn, NY--the Golden Age of a new artistic medium and the birth of a new type of hero.
Come back Friday as we reveal the making-of these two significant pages.
And here’s the first look at the cover of issue #31.5:
THE UNWRITTEN is an incredibly unique book. There "real" world scenes and scenes from the Tommy Taylor novels, there are TV news broadcasts and online chats, and so much more. All of these moments, which can be very complicated, are depicted seamlessly both in prose and visually, so I asked ongoing series artist Peter Gross what the secret is. And here's what Peter had to say:
I’m going to use the occasion of the release of Dead Man’s Knock: Volume 3 of The Unwritten to talk a bit about how we work on The Unwritten, and what an unusual sort of comic experience it is for all of us involved.
From reading reviews online and talking to readers at conventions I’ve heard a lot of questions about how Mike and I work on the book--partly because readers assume the writer comes up with the ideas, and partly because we are intentionally vague in the credits--usually listing Mike Carey and Peter Gross, script-story-art. We thought that might do the trick but the reality is that the Unwritten is a very unique series and hard to pin down. So here’s my take on The Unwritten method...
Mike and I create the story together on a pretty much 50/50 basis. It’s a fluid process filled with lots of discussion, straying off into interesting territory and filled with lots of trans-Atlantic “Eureka!” moments——many that don’t make the final cut (you wouldn’t believe some of those ideas!). But when we’re satisfied, Mike goes off and writes a first draft of the script, then we have even more discussions, change some things, nail down everything we want to be there, and discuss it with our editors (Pornsak Pichetshote until issue 24 and now Karen Berger and Joe Hughes). After that, Mike writes a 2nd and generally final draft, and I’ll go to layouts. I make notes and change some things as I go, usually emailing Mike all along that process. When the layouts are done we finalize all my questions and then get the inks done. After it’s lettered, we have another discussion to make sure it all flows, Mike tweaks the script, revisions are made while the book is being colored, and then we’re done (except for all the last minute errors we all missed but someone seems to find just before the book goes to press). And by that time were knee-deep in the process for the next issue.
So Mike does write every word--but Mike and I plot the book together--and the editorial department tries to keep us in check.
And while I’m revealing our working methods, I have a confession to make——I don’t draw the book completely by myself! When I do the inks on an issue, I have help. Barb Guttman and Brittney Sabo are the two fine artists who assist me. They help draw backgrounds and finish inks, and generally go hunting for the copious amount of reference we need each day. Kudos to them for helping The Unwritten to arrive on time!
On the issues I don’t ink (like the Choose Your Own Adventure type story in Volume 3) we get a finisher to do the inks on the book. What that means is I do really loose pencils and then I get a great artist/inker to “finish” those pages. We’re trying to do this in a way that adds dimension to the book and we want the look to be wildly different and reflect each artist and story. In V2 we had Jimmy Broxton on the Nazi arc, and Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon do the wildly different Willowbanks Tales, featuring the now famous foul-mouthed bunny, Pauly Bruckner. In Volume 3 we have the great Ryan Kelly, and in the next trade we’ll have Vince Locke and Al Davison. I love seeing these different artistic styles over the skeleton I give them and it works out fabulously for the subject matter of the Unwritten.
And the rest of the team can’t be spared from these creative revelations...
Todd Klein doesn’t do every bit of lettering! I feel guilty over all the work involved in the media type pages we do so I don’t make Todd letter them. Instead we do them in my studio, and poor Barb spends hours and hours on them. And in the crazy acid trip section of V3 where letters are swirling about in the foreground and background I did them on my ipad with a great little program called TypeDrawing. So don’t blame Todd if you don’t like those pages!
Chris Chuckry doesn’t color the book completely by himself! My wife, and great artist, Jeanne McGee does the watercolors for the Tommy Taylor world pages and some of the other “fictional world” pages early in the series--although we’ve gotten a bit away from the Tommy Taylor pages as we go. So, of late, it’s been all Chris, all the time...
Yuko Shimizu does do the covers all by herself! The only person on The Unwritten who seems to be completely self-reliant is Yuko——though I don't know how she manages it on a regular basis. One of my great happy Unwritten moments each month is seeing her cover sketch ideas, and always having a hard time deciding which one is the best, since they all look so good! So the only revelation I can give you is that despite what some of you seem to believe, our Yuko is not the Yuko Shimizu who invented Hello Kitty!
Let’s face it, this book is just too demanding for the usual methods and everyone involved has been a great sport at being flexible and giving their best work and I think it really shows in the end product. I know we’ve asked a lot of our team and they’ve all come through time and time again, and this wouldn’t be such a great book without them.
I know that for Mike and I, The Unwritten is a labor of love for storytelling and the comics medium, and there’s great stuff coming down The Unwritten road.
-Peter
