The Issue: The Not So Just So Story Of 'The Unwritten' #5
Mike Carey and Peter Gross' The Unwritten is a Vertigo fantasy thriller starring Tom Taylor, the namesake --- and potentially word-made-flesh incarnation --- of fictional boy wizard Tommy Taylor, as he tries to take down the shadowy cabal threatening his life. At the end of issue #4, we're left with a major cliffhanger, with Tom arrested for a murder he didn't commit, a killer on the loose, and the unexplained appearance of his magical alter ego's pet winged cat.
Instead of picking up those threads, The Unwritten #5, "How The Whale Became," recounts the life story of Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book, a full two centuries before Tom's tale begins. There's no explicit magic in the issue, and most of the events it depicts are a matter of historical record. But only most of the events in this issue are true, and that's where it starts to get really interesting.