The Unwritten #2

The second issue of Mike Carey and Peter Gross's Vertigo series arrives with a striking cover by Yuko Shimizu — a wide-eyed young man peers over a vintage typewriter, one hand pressed to his mouth with a trace of blood on his fingers, set against a rich red-toned background that feels equal parts literary and unsettling. That image alone — the collision of old-world storytelling machinery and something clearly gone wrong — sets a compelling tone for a series about the tangled relationship between fiction and identity. Bill Willingham of Fables fame called it "a wonderful story," and this 2009 Vertigo release makes a strong case for why.