The Unwritten #20 – Review

By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (as creators since they don’t specify what they each do), Vince Locke (inks on ~5 pages), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters) & Pornsak Pichetshote (editor)

The Story: Big event happens in the relationship between Lizzie and Tom as they tackle the story of Moby Dick.

What’s Good: This issue really made me feel that The Unwritten was “back”.  If you read my reviews of the last few issues, you would see that I was becoming a little disenchanted with the series as the narrative started to get a little too confusing.  Carey and Gross don’t fix that by stopping to explain things in this issue, but by using a trick that worked so well for Lost: Just keep moving!  This issue starts to throw out all sorts of new mysteries and gives us reminders of old ones that we enjoyed.  I don’t want to spoil too much, but it is a nice approach and it keeps us from fixating on some of the more confusing aspects of the last few issues.  Anyone who enjoyed the first few story arcs of Unwritten when it was all about the “power of stories” and the concept that stories are almost living, breathing things once they have been created, will enjoy this back to basics issue.

The Punisher: Force of Nature #1 (One-Shot) – Review

By Duane Swierczynski (writer), Michel Lacomb (art), Stephane Peru (colors)

When I first glanced at the cover I thought this was going to be some weird Punisher versus Moby Dick tale. As beautiful as the cover is, my interest immediately waned.

Thankfully, I was wrong. Set in Garth Ennis’ insane Marvel Max corner of the universe, this one-shot features the cold, ruthless, and gratuitous version of the Punisher that we all love. Clocking in at 35 pages, this story features Frank Castle toying with a trio of two-bit criminals as he tries to get to foil the plans of the bigger fish in the game – the Russians. What’s funny about these lowlifes is one of them is so cocky that he actually names his own yacht after himself!

The Punisher sinks their new yacht and puts some of his own goodies in with their life raft. What follows is a slow, sad series of events as the three criminals struggle to survive aboard their life raft. As hours and days pass, the criminals’ begin to lose any hope of being rescued. Then, paranoia and despair set in. The Punisher watches this all unfold from afar, taking pleasure in their misery.

Interestingly enough, the Punisher takes a secondary role in this book. Sure, he facilitates all the mayhem, but this story is really about the criminals’ struggle to survive out at sea. It’s obvious that these criminals will die, that’s just the Punisher’s way, but how they arrive at their demise is what makes this such a well crafted story. Great artwork by Michel Lacomb compliments this story. My only complaint is the $4.99 price tag – ouch. (Grade: B)

– J. Montes