iZombie

It’s pretty rare for me to read an issue from the moment it starts right through to the end (a preference for trades over single issues and a lack of time tend to mean I’m always catching up), but Chris Robeson and Mike Allred’s iZombie somehow grabbed me and I stuck with it. It’s hard to describe without making it sound like sub-Buffy nonsense, but it concerns the lives of a bunch of monsters in Eugene, Oregon. The central conceit (that Gwen, the main character, eats the brains of the dead and solves unresolved issues relating to their deaths) is abandoned early on for a more freeform structure, giving focus to the full cast of characters and paying more attention to the arc. I’ve been a sucker for Allred’s artwork since I first encountered him on X-Statix. Robeson’s plots are pacey, leave a lot of dangling threads, and introduce enough new weirdness to keep a reader hooked. Sadly, after he left DC Comics over his criticism of their treatment of writers and artists, the series had to be wrapped up in a hurry, and all those dangling plot threads were shoved into a final 7-8 issues at a pace that couldn’t really support them all. It’s a shame because while the series was never brilliant, it was always a lot of fun, and it would have been good to see it wrapped up at the pace at which it was intended. Hopefully Roberson’s experience and the recent changing of the guard won’t stop people from creating great things at DC / Vertigo.