The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived

The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived: How Characters of Fiction, Myth, Legends, Television, and Movies Have Shaped Our Society, Changed Our Behavior and Set the Course of History
by Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan, and Jeremy Salter
317 pages

This is a book about all of the influential characters throughout the history, through legends and literature.  It's very tongue in cheek and not scholarly at all, but that's why I liked it.  The authors lay out why they ranked the way they did and how they came to include the 101 characters.  Some of these characters include: Big Brother,  Lady Chatterly, Robin Hood, Don Quixote, Jay Gatsby, just to name a few.  It's a quick read and very insightful.

The Unwritten: Volume 4: Leviathan

by Mike Carey (story), Peter Gross (art), and Yuko Shimizu (cover and incidental art), 136 pages

Tom, Lizzie, and Savoy arrive in New England searching for clues to the "source" of story-bound magic so Tom can start to figure out how to control it instead of just being at its whim and crossing his fingers. While he inadvertently gets pulled into the story of Moby Dick, Lizzie and the increasingly sun-averse Savoy get caught up in one of the Cabal's webs.

Oh no, Savoy's looking a little green around the gills! But I worry less after seeing Lizzie's practical but undisturbed reaction. As long as somebody brings him his meals and he stays out of direct sunlight, maybe he'll be ok (as will the jugulars of those around him). Stupid Ambrosio, biting people without their permission.

I do love the way this series draws on literary allusions and philosophical theories as a basis for its magic. All the whale business this time around was rather fun (Tom meets up with some interesting personages in the belly of one). And the continuation of the story of Pauly, former acquaintance of Tom's father, in the form of a deranged rabbit now exiled to a scary staircase land with a bunch of other (somewhat familiar) talking animals is weird and disturbing and a bit cool (I do hope he gets his comeuppance, the selfish thing).

The Unwritten: Volume 3: Dead Man's Knock

by Mike Carey (story), Peter Gross (art), and Yuko Shimizu (covers), 152 pages

Lizzie struggles with her own identity issues and Savoy has an unlucky run-in with Tommy Taylor's immortal nemesis, the vampire Ambrosio, as the release date of missing Wilson Taylor's fabled fourteenth Tommy Taylor book draws near. At the center of a complex plot he doesn't understand, Tom believes the only way he'll find any answers is to track down his father and demand a full explanation. But he should know better than to assume he'd get anything like a straight answer from the man who may have written him into this chaotic mess in the first place.

Lizzie and Savoy appear to be the "real world" mirrors of Tommy Taylor's loyal friends Sue and Peter, who are themselves rather Ron and Hermione-like (on purpose), so I can only hope they fair better in the end than most of the unfortunate people caught up in this word-woven web. Poor Lizzie's messed -up background is laid out for the reader as a choose-your-own-adventure chapter. I've never had much patience for those, so I ignored the "go here," "go there" instructions and just read the pages in order, trying to link them together logically in my head, which seemed to work ok. I've grown rather attached to Savoy's comic relief, so Ambrosio and his possessed vessels had better keep their sharp pointy teeth well away from him. But as unpleasant as Wilson's intentionally Voldemort-like "fictional" vampire is, the shadowy cabal of wordsmiths and string-pullers trying to shape the world to their liking is far more frightening.

Tom and friends are off to Nantucket next to "catch a whale." Hee! Being a fan of Moby Dick, I'm looking forward to seeing how Carey ties it in with Tom's metaphysical quest for truth.

This is one series where the lovely dream-like cover illustrations balance out the cartoony Tommy Taylor segments and the main story's more traditional, old-school comic book look. The mix of art styles blends interestingly with the dark violence, reality-bending philosophical examinations of literature, and moments of levity (the latter being rare but, oh, so appreciated!).

The Unwritten: Volume 2: Inside Man

by Mike Carey (story), Peter Gross (art), and Yuko Shimizu (covers), 164 pages

With all the circumstantial evidence against him, Tom Taylor loses the love of his erstwhile fans as well as his freedom following a spree gruesome murders at a historic villa. In prison, he meets his new cellmate Savoy, the only person who seems remotely sympathetic about his situation. But even on the inside, Tom's not safe from the powerful forces looking to remove him as a threat. And he's still struggling to accept the truth of who or what he is, the depth of his father's elaborate plans, and the existence of what it is increasingly difficult to deny is magic.

This volume gets even darker and more surreal than the last as Tom and his companions (Savoy and Lizzie Hexam, a possible agent / pawn of his father's) step out of the bloody reality of the prison under siege and into a pre-recorded-film-like WWII Nazi Germany. It's all harmless enough...until you focus your attention on something and give it substance. A twisted tale's corruption takes on physical mass and threatens to swallow everything in its path. The power of words to shape people, perceptions, and history, itself, takes some work to wrap your head around, but it's interesting stuff. And the side story about one of Tom's father's enemies trapped in a Beatrix Potter / Winnie the Pooh-ish story with a dark underbelly is both disturbing and cool. (The first volume ended with a chapter about Rudyard Kipling's assisted rise to prominence, the effects his writing had on the British Empire, and his desperately clever efforts to fight back against his "handlers" with more words when he realized what he'd contributed to. Neatness!)

The Unwritten: Volume 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

by Mike Carey (story), Peter Gross (art), and Yuko Shimizu (cover and incidental art), 140 pages

Having your emotionally distant beloved-children's-author of a father base a universally popular character on you is hard enough, what with the legions of adoring fans who can't tell the difference between fact and fiction. But it only gets worse when he disappears after publishing the thirteenth and final (?) book, leaving you to fight for your identity, fend off the increasingly suspicious police, and deal with the possibility that you may have no better a grasp on what is and isn't real than your father's readers.

I quite liked this first installment and will definitely read more. What starts out as a peek behind the curtain of the publishing and convention worlds becomes an intriguing tale of magic and mystery dark enough to qualify as horror, all with a literary, philosophical bent.