As you may have gathered from our recent 10 out of 10 review for its finale, we’re awfully fond of Mike Carey and Peter Gross’s “The Unwritten”. The Vertigo series that follows Tom Taylor as he tries to sort out the story of his life – was he the inspiration for his father’s Harry Potter like character, or is he the actual character himself? – was a literary tour de force, and an exceptional follow-up to their partnership on Vertigo’s “Lucifer”. Now that it has wrapped, though, it’s hard not to wonder “what’s next?” for one of comics’ truly great partnerships.
Well, thanks to the power of Twitter, we found out fairly quickly.
@waltorr Peter and I have another book, Highest House, coming out later this year from Editions Glenat in France. US publisher TBC…
— M. R. Carey (@michaelcarey191) February 4, 2015
“Highest House”, their latest comic, will be arriving at some point in 2015 from French publisher Editions Glenat. That’s exciting news, although for US readers like myself, the fact that it doesn’t have a publisher here yet means that its arrival stateside could be a bit later. After Gross joined Twitter and posted a first look at the art of the book (which you can see below), I reached out to the team to see if there was anything else we could share about “Highest House”. As with everything they do, they delivered.
“Highest House” is a fantasy story, although Carey shared it’s a “different kind of fantasy from either ‘Lucifer’ or ‘Unwritten'” The story will be told in hardcover “albums” in the French market, delivering 46 pages of story per album, although how it will be delivered in the US market is currently uncertain. The sprawling cast is led by Moth, a slave boy who inherits a magical powers (“quite reluctantly!” Carey assured us), and is a book that finds a good measure of political themes running throughout its fantasy story.
Three years passed between the duo working together on “Lucifer” and “The Unwritten”, so this time, Carey and Gross did everything they could to make sure they’d have another project up and running shortly after the end of their latest Vertigo title. As “The Unwritten” was telling its last year of stories, the pair has been developing “Highest House” concurrently, which is a big reason why they were able to have a new project and a deal with a publisher in place so quickly.
This is immediately one of our most anticipated titles of 2015, and bravo to the team at Editions Glenat – namely editor Olivier Jalabert – and writer/editor Jean-David Morvan for helping Carey and Gross find a home for the project so quickly. Here’s hoping that a US publisher picks it up so we’ll get the chance to read it shortly after its initial release. After all, if it’s as good as their previous collaborations, Carey and Gross could have another absolute gem on their hands.
More on this as we get it, and thanks to Mike Carey for the additional insight into the book.
