The Unwritten, Volume 2

Inside Man
written by Mike Carey
art by Peter Gross

Arrested and arraigned in Switzerland after the mysterious and murderous events at the Villa Diodati, perpetrated by The Unwritten's goon Pullman but pinned on Tom Taylor, Carey's protagonist is transferred at the request of the French to the Donostia, Maison d'Arrêt de Roncevaux, made famous by the massacre of Charlemagne's rear guard and its commemoration in the anonymous medieval poem La Chanson de Roland,  where he will stand trial.  Extradited with his future cellmate and (unknown to him at the time) undercover blog reporter, Richard Savoy, Taylor is forced to navigate prison life, at which to his surprise as much as the reader's he proves alarmingly adept; confront continued incursions of the literary world into his own at his command, sort of; and make his escape from bribed prison guards and agents of the Committee.  However, the "Inside Man" portions of Volume 2 are more about the transformation of prison governor Claude-Louis Chadron, whose love for his children and their faith in Tommy Taylor leads him to compromise his principles, cooperate with the Committee, and suffer the consequences of his interference.  Like Tom, who must face the ramifications of being written into and therefore transformed by his father's novels, Chadron becomes what literature tells him to be.  Bereft of his children and consumed by his blame of Taylor, Chadron becomes exactly the enemy that has already been written for him:  Count Ambrosio.  If literature can make and remake people, like Frankenstein's monster or Taylor himself, it can unmake others.

Following their escape, Tom Taylor, Lizzie Hexam and Richard Savoy find themselves IN Jud Süss, on a different kind of rescue mission, to reclaim the "unhappy novel," as Savoy calls it, from its unstable heritage.  A story whose multiplicity makes it a "canker," a monster created by conflict between its composition and its appropriation by Nazi propagandists.  Tommy, by virtue of his sporadically appearing and glowing hand-tattoo, restores the novel.  It is a prime example of the un-writing Paul Cornell points to in his short but unusually fine introduction when he comments, "The title of the series itself might refer not to something that hasn't been done, but to something that's being undone, a tapestry that's being unpicked."

However, the real gem in this collection is the final issue, "Eliza Mae Hertford's Willowbank Tales," which like closing issue of Volume 1—"How the Whale Became"—is tangential to the primary story.  A sort-of parody of children's animal literature (à la The Velveteen Rabbit or The Wind in the Willows) which is re-imagined as a singularly cruel punishment.  Pauly Bruckner, a man who crossed Wilson Taylor, is banished into a geographically finite children's story as a white rabbit in a waist coast named Mr. Bun.  Gruff and disgruntled at his capture, Bruckner repeatedly makes attempts at escape, always to find himself whisked back home for tea with the other forest animals.  If the premise is cruel, and the ending quite grim, its execution is very comical. 

Collects The Unwritten #6-12:  "Inside Man,"  "Inside Man: The Song of Roland," "Inside Man: Interlude," "Inside Man: Conclusion," "Jud Süss, Part I: The Liar," "Jud Süss: The Canker," and "Eliza Mae Hertford's Willowbank Tales"

ISBN:  978-1401228736