The Unwritten vol. 9: The Unwritten Fables

There’s just the tiniest bit of bait and switch at work here in this long-awaited volume.  See, while Tom Taylor does wind up falling through reality to meet the cast of “Fables” these aren’t the same versions of the characters we know from that title.  What Mike Carey and Bill Willingham have given us with this volume is Tom’s encounter with an alternate universe of “Fables.”  One where Mr. Dark still reigns supreme after taking Snow White as his wife and the children she had with Bigby Wolf as his own.  It’s a universe where everything has gone wrong — wait until you see what Richie Savoy is like in this place — and it’s up to Tom to help put things right before Mr. Dark realizes that there are other worlds out there for him to conquer.  Problem is that our protagonist isn’t going to be much help as he is.  At least, not without Frau Totenkinder unlocking his innate power and manifesting Tommy Taylor, Sue Sparrow, and Peter Price in the flesh for the first time in the series.

Essentially this storyline is an “Age of Apocalypse”-style crossover with a literate, mature Vertigo bent.  Even if the version of “Fables” that we’re getting here isn’t the real one, the characters still feel true to their original incarnations thanks to Willingham’s involvement.  That being said, the volume reads like Carey handled most of the dialogue for Mr. Dark and Frau Totenkinder and he proves to be a natural for handling these characters.  Though the battle between the Fables and Mr. Dark’s forces is good, nasty fun it feels like an exercise in fanservice more than anything else.  Seeing Tommy and his friends is cool, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how *ahem* dark everything got with these incarnations of Snow, Bigby, Boy Blue and the rest of the cast, but there’s very little advancement of “The Unwritten’s” plot until the very end.  As a crossover event, it’s certainly better written and put together than most.  It is, however, ultimately not up to the title’s usual high standards.