Walk through the Fire

The Unwritten #9

A secret strikeforce of assassins has invaded the prison where Tom Taylor is being held, killing everyone they can in an attempt to kick off a riot and assassinate Tom. An apparition of the literary knight Roland is roaming the prison grounds. Tom and Savoy are trying to get themselves out and help Lizzie Hexam get free before they’re all killed, with the aid of a winged cat and a magic doorknob, all while the warden and his two hyper-imaginative children run about the grounds. And it all ends tragically.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Beautifully written, beautifully illustrated. But man, what a kick in the gut that ending was.

Strange #3

Stephen Strange, almost-powerless former Sorcerer Supreme, and his new apprentice Casey, have been recruited by a demon named Larry to help foil a plot by a smarmy upstart demon named Virilian to steal souls by fixing a kiddie beauty pageant. While Dr. Strange and Larry travel to Hell to look up some of Virilian’s former clients, Casey is left behind disguised as one of the eight-year-old contestants to keep an eye on the proceedings. While she has to watch the all-too-human evil of the pageant mothers, she eventually realizes that Virilian has made a much more sinister bargain. Can Strange, Casey, and Larry fix everything in time?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Wow, all those crazed pageant mothers make some of the most awful villains of the year. Very nicely written by Mark Waid. Too bad this one is just a miniseries — it looks like the next one will be the final issue.