With Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ The Unwritten charging to its conclusion, the creators are pushing themselves even further as they delve into the nature of stories and how they shape the world. Carey’s scripts for The Unwritten: Apocalypse have consistently impressed with their balance of metatextual story dissection and riveting character drama, and Gross’ art has reached new highs by experimenting with style and layout to make each issue a visually distinct chapter. Placing the characters in the middle of the Apocalypse has considerably raised the stakes for the story, but the do-or-die circumstances never detract from the main appeal of The Unwritten: seeing the creative team explore centuries of fiction and build a narrative from the connections found between those narratives.
In this exclusive preview of next week’s The Unwritten: Apocalypse #6, the villains plot their next moves while Tom Taylor and his friends learn the origins of the Holy Grail, a tale that draws from Mesopotamian, Arthurian, and Christian legend. Featuring a gorgeous cover from Yuko Shimizu (whose work on this series deserves an oversized hardcover collection when it’s all over), ornate layouts by Gross, and atmospheric colors by Chris Chuckry, this preview continues to make the case that the end of the world is the best that could have happened to this series.