iZombie (graphic novels)

Chris Roberson, Mike & Laura Allred, Todd Klein

★★★★★

I recently went back and re-read the entire iZombie comic book series for the first time since the TV adaptation launched. If you only know the TV show, it’s very different, though they both share a similar quirky not-quite-horror, not-quite-comedy tone.

The show took the basic premise: a woman in the Pacific Northwest becomes a zombie, but can continue living as a human as long as she eats brains frequently enough. She picks up flashes of memories from the brains she eats, sometimes with a compulsion to resolve unfinished business.

A figure wrapped in bandages like a mummy, wearing a smoking jacket, lifts the cover from a food tray to reveal a brain. Reflected in the lid, a woman with short white hair, yellow eyes and very pale skin is licking her lips as she looks at the brain.

The comic deals with supernatural rather than biochemical zombies, with werewolves (well, a were-terrier anyway), ghosts, vampires and more. It starts off in the mystery/monster genre just a bit darker than Scooby Doo/Buffy level, with a dash of secret agent intrigue, slowly building to a Lovecraftian cosmic horror cataclysm with a side of Michael Moorcock’s eternal champion (whose expy, here, is a minor character at best).

Here, Gwen gets her brains working at an eco-friendly cemetery (no embalming!). Her best friends are a ghost who died in the 1960s and a were-terrier. She barely remembers her family, who think she’s still dead, as her pre-zombie life keeps fading.

It’s full of off-the-wall concepts that they just run with. There’s a group of vampires who run a paintball outfit, draining customers out in the woods just enough to leave them woozy instead of leaving a trail of bodies. (Naturally, the story is called “uVampire.”) An artificial construct who’s building her own Frankenstein-brand monster for nefarious purposes. A secret international order of monster-hunters, and an even more secret group of monsters working as government agents (under the alias of the Dead Presidents). A diner proprietor rumored to have been either a hit woman or the original model for a popular doll line. And a several-millenia-old former mummy with a mysterious agenda involving Gwen.

Early on, Roberson establishes a remarkably simple cosmology to tie all the monsters together: the idea that every living being has both an “oversoul” and “undersoul” (roughly corresponding to intellect and emotions, or conscious and subconscious, or superego and id).

  • Dead body where the oversoul sticks around: Vampire. Still intelligent, wants blood to make up for the missing undersoul.
  • Only the undersoul? Now you’ve got a zombie, who wants brains.
  • Disembodied oversoul? Ghost.
  • Disembodied undersoul? Poltergeist.
  • Human possessed by an animal’s undersoul? Werewolf etc.

I’d forgotten how much I liked Mike and Laura Allred’s art here. Their clean style makes for a great contrast with the monsters and occasional gore, and helps keep it on the lighter side of the genre. And seeing it again reminded me I should look up some of their other work!

The 28-issue series is available as a 4-volume paperback set or a massive 1-volume omnibus, as well as digitally.