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From A Library: iZombie

Created/written by Chris Roberson & created/drawn by Michel Allred
iZombie: Dead to the World (iZombie #1–5 and part of The House of Mystery Halloween Annual #1)
iZombie: uVampire (iZombie #6–12 and The House of Mystery Halloween Annual #2)
iZombie: Six Feet Under and Rising (iZombie #13–18)
iZombie: Repossession (iZombie #19–28)

Now that iZombie has premiered on television, it seemed a good time to talk about the books from which the show has been adapted. The concept behind iZombie appeals to me – I bought the first issue (bargain priced at 99 cents) – because the main characters are a zombie (Gwen) who lives in a cemetery and works as a gravedigger, a ghost (Ellie, who died in the 1960s) who is her best friend, and a werewolf (well, a were-terrier, whose name is Scott but he gets called Spot), who live in a town (Eugene, Oregon) where vampires run a paintball camp, and where Gwen gains the memory of the dead person when she eats the brain. That’s the sort of set-up that will get me interested. However, the execution never quite grabbed me in that first issue, so I only got round to reading the book through the generosity of libraries.

There is more to the book than just the central hook – Roberson has worked out his own reasons for the folklore of the individual creatures, which involves the multiple types of souls that the Egyptians believed in being responsible for different varieties of mythical creatures. Roberson’s version has two souls – an oversoul and an undersoul: the oversoul is in the brain, the undersoul is in the heart, referring to the conscious and unconscious mind, respectively. A bodiless oversoul is a ghost; a bodiless undersoul is a poltergeist; a vampire is when the oversoul remains in the body; a zombie is when the undersoul remains in the body; a bodiless soul can infect a living body, so an animal undersoul infection can lead to a werewolf; a bodiless oversoul can infect the living, which is a possession. Because of all these types, there is obviously an organisation that hunts these monsters: the Corporis Fossorii, who have come in contact with John Amon, the ‘mummy’ who explains all of this to Gwen.

The first volume is all set-up, but this continues into the second trade paperback with the ‘origin’ of Spot the were-terrier and how the oversoul of his grandfather got into the body of a chimpanzee. Then there is the burgeoning relationship between Gwen and Horatio, a hunter in the Corporis Fossorii, the introduction of a Frankenstein’s Bride (Galatea, known to Amon, who Roberson describes as ‘the creation of an alchemist in seventeenth century [sic] Germany’), and the back story of Ellie the ghost, expanding this little universe that Roberson has created. The third volume sees the introduction of the Dead Presidents, who are named after former presidents but are a zombie, a were-cat and a disembodied entity, led by Zombie Lincoln. Comics! This volume also has some of the sloppiest knowledge-dropping in the series – Galatea goes to talk to Gwen but runs off when Ellie tells her about all the zombies in the catacombs but Galatea somehow drops a photograph of Amon and Gwen from when Gwen was still alive, which is found by Ellie – but plots have to be fed, I suppose.

iZombie Vol 3 coverWe learn that Eugene is a place where the walls between the worlds are thinner and that something is going to break through soon, something which Amon wants to stop. Things are complicated by the arrival of the Dead Presidents and the Corporis Fossorii in Eugene for the zombie outbreak, plus Horatio’s partner in the Fossorii announces that Gwen is a zombie. Gwen’s brother is possessed by a revenant who used to live in the writer/artist of the comic book character The Phantasm. And then Gwen touches Amon and finds out that she knew Amon before: he skilled herself because Amon asked her to save the world.

The huge fourth trade paperback, collecting the final 10 issues, sees the zombie invasion in full effect, with the army brought in to try to contain it, and the build-up to the return of Xitalu (a giant Lovecraftian-type monster), who will consume the earth. There’s a lot going on in this final storyline, with sacrifices and kidnaps and possessions and natives of higher dimensions, but it feels rather rushed, making you wonder if Roberson was trying to fit everything in before the book was stopped.

I thought that iZombie was an interesting book with an interesting take on the classic film monsters, with a vibrancy enhanced by the use of real places in Eugene. It was also positive to have a female lead character, still rarer than it should be. I didn’t think that the book completely gelled – the idea and the characters were interesting, but the entirety of the series never seemed to fuse and come to life (if you’ll pardon the pun). The other problem I have is with the art – I’m not a fan of Allred’s pop-art style. I can see that he is a good artist who knows how to tell a story and has a quirky and engaging style, but it’s never worked for me (I always thought that his art in X-Statix was rather ugly). It is a good choice for the book because it counters the ghoulish nature of the creatures involved by presenting them in a colourful and non-threatening manner, but it left me cold and I know that’s my issue. In fact, I preferred the fill-in artists (J Bone and Jim Rugg), which is the reverse of how I usually feel about a book – the original artist is the defining influence on the art style and representation of the comic book.

Despite my reservations about the book, which I mostly enjoyed, I hope that the TV show does well – it seems to be a different thing, going for a police procedural with Gwen as the equivalent of a psychic with her brain-digested memories, and none of the other characters from the comic book, which is a shame because it would have been nice to see the actual comic book on screen – but Veronica Mars was a great show, so I trust Rob Thomas enough to oversee it. I hope we get to see it in the UK, and I hope that it sees some interest in the book (even if Roberson did burn his bridges with DC).

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