The new series from Vertigo is written by Mike Carey and drawn by Peter Gross; it was announced at the recent New York con, and now photocopies of the first issue (priced at $1 and scheduled to ship May 13) have gone out to reviewers.

The concept (at least, as revealed in #1) is something along the lines of: What if an internationally popular fantasy series (like the Harry Potter books) had been written starring the author's son (like A.A. Milne's Christopher Robin) -- and then the author had disappeared? Picking up the action as the author's son (Tom Taylor) is an adult trying to eke out a living on the convention circuit, the story quickly plunges into what it would mean to him when his life is suddenly exposed to turmoil.

DC's promotional copy says, "To discover the truth about himself, Tom must search through all the places in history where fiction and reality have intersected. And in the process, he'll learn more about [an] unwritten cabal and the plot they're at the center of, a plot that spans all of literature, from the first clay tablets to the gothic castles where Frankenstein was conceived to the self-adjusting stories of the internet."

One of the first people to enter the tale is a young woman named Lizzie Hexam, who says she's studying media at King's College. Unrevealed in the first issue is that "Lizzie Hexam" is a character in Charles Dickens' last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend. In that novel, written in 1864-65, Lizzie is a lower-class woman pursued by two men, both of whom are changed by their fascination with her. But Our Mutual Friend isn't a fantasy -- and The Unwritten is. Is this the same Lizzie -- and is she one of the intersections? I have no idea. But this is so promising, I'm eager to find out.