IZombie #19 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), Michael Allred (art), Laura Allred (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: In the aftermath of the zombie outbreak, our main characters take time to regroup…..or hide.

Five Things: 

1. Nice settling point for the series.  We always make a big deal of “jumping on points” and their importance to new readers.  But, what about us existing readers?  Sometimes it is nice to have an issue that slows down and recaps what has happened and resets the action.  I Zombie is a kinda complex story….there’s a lot to remember from month to month and if you have a single month where you were perhaps sleepy or distracted when you read an issue, going forward it is kinda like juggling when your timing and rhythm is messed up.  So, I really appreciated how this issue slowed things down, allowed us to catch out breath, but also started a small pebble rolling for some new story action.

2. Glorious art!  When you engage fans on the weird “story vs. art” discussion, you’ll find answers all over the place, but I’m an “art guy”.  I can enjoy a story that is hectic sometimes if it has consistently superb art to carry the water from issue to issue and that’s what we’ve got with I Zombie.  I love the simplicity and softness of Mike Allred’s characters.  We get so detuned from reading superhero comics with their focus on detailed anatomy and rippling muscles that we forget that isn’t how people really look.  Allred’s characters are all wearing clothes and sometimes they are all the more attractive for it.  I mean…..our eyes/brains can just discard an image of Catwoman or Psylocke because they are so clearly not a realistic depiction of a woman…..but Gwyn (the central character of this series) just looks like a sexy lady you’d see on the street.

3. Enjoy Gwyn’s dilema.  Gwyn’s in kinda a pickle in this issue.  Eugene, Oregon has suffered a zombie outbreak and while the national guard and monster hunters have put it down, they’re still looking for stray zombies to kill so Gwyn needs to lay low.  But, that presents a problem because if she doesn’t eat a brain soon, she’ll stop being sexy, coherent Gwyn and become shambling, “Brraaaaiinnnnns!” Gwyn. I’m looking forward to seeing how this gets sorted out.