Written by Chris Roberson
Illustrated by Michael AllredThe quiet town of Eugene has suddenly gotten very loud. Gwen and her friends have their hands full when a whole mess of zombies roams the streets, but these aren’t nice and cuddly zombies like Gwen. And when the Dead Presidents get to town, things get really complicated. Meanwhile, just what has Galatea been making from all of those dead bodies she’s been stitching together down in her secret lab?
I’ve never read iZombie before. I’m going into this review blind and have no idea what will come of it. Find out with me after the jump.
Like I said above: I’ve never read iZombie before. I think what kept me away was the fact that it’s called iZombie; never underestimate the power of a book’s title. More than that, though, I’m just burnt out on the new supernatural vogue. I’m sick of vampires, I’m sick of werewolves, I’m sick of zombies, and whatever else people want to bring up into a modern context. (I’m mostly sick of superheroes too.) Still, just because a vein is tapped to the point of total collapse doesn’t mean it won’t get sought out again and again in the hopes of working one last hit. It was with that sort of gross analogy in mind that I decided to read an issue of iZombie, with absolutely no preparation or knowledge of what’s going on.
Now that I’ve read the issue, I’m still not entirely sure what was going on, only that there was a lot of it and that maybe I should flip backward a bit. The mistake that most modern-supernatural stuff makes is that it takes itself deathly seriously even when it’s genuinely dumb as a rock (hi, True Blood). iZombie starts off with a monster hunter and his zombie girlfriend lowering themselves into a sinkhole in a cemetery, and from there pinballs around wildly: a monkey putting on a hat, a guy playing skeeball with a girl floating around him, a comic book convention, a horde of dessicated zombies, a werewolf trapped in a cave, someone with a vampire assistant cutting out a cadaver’s brain…
I’m sure that I picked exactly the worst issue to get in, since these are all plots in motion, and apparently in the middle of that motion as well — neither origin nor ending in sight. So I’m not exactly sure what the hell’s happening, but it’s still readable, and these characters show enough personality to make me want to know what their deals are. This might sound like damning with faint praise, but it’s really not, trust me: nine times out of ten when I pick up a comic I’ve never read before thinking ‘oh, maybe I can review this for the site,’ I’m treated to a parade of characters who inspire nothing but ‘Ugh, who cares.’
Then again, I’m not sure I’d be having this reaction if this comic was drawn by anyone but Mike Allred. Allred is like a modern-day John Romita Sr.: he creates elegantly simple worlds where even the nerds are square-jawed and chic. It’s hard not to want to be in the places Allred draws, or to want to hang out with the people he designs. Even his underground caverns don’t seem like that horrible a place to kick back.
One of the Vertigo imprint’s preoccupations has always been mixing the macabre with the hip — iZombie reads like the lived-fast-died-young The Vinyl Underground, if it was more preoccupied with monster movies and comic books than internet porn and SVU. This is how junk culture should be handled: loosely and deftly, not held aloft as something precious or secretly deep. (Some junk culture is secretly deep. Assuming that all of it is, though, means that you have failed to understand the descriptor “junk.”) iZombie is fun and quick on its feet, like some sort of Mr. Show monster party, and that’s what I want out of a b-movie, not delusions of thematic grandeur.
It’s hard to really dig deeper on the strength of an issue that’s just 20 pages of “plots in progress” without any real context. Still, the most basic tenet of criticism must be respected: “I know what I like.” And I like this. And now I’ve got some back issues to dig up. Dammit.
Final Verdict: 7.5 / The best part was how it ignored every single zombie-movie cliche I could think of
