IZombie #20 – Review

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

The Story: With the feds on site looking for leftover zombies from the big outbreak, how’s a girl supposed to get a brain to eat?

Five Things: 

1. A new direction for the series. – The ending of this issue really causes one to wonder if the series is headed into a new chapter.  The first story cycle really seemed to mostly be about establishing the characters.  True, there was a story going on with Galetea’s plans and the big zombie outbreak, but most of it was about undersouls and oversouls that the differences between ghosts, zombies, mummies, revenenants, were-creatures, etc.  Now Gwyn has gone running off with the Dead Presidents I guess to be part of their super-team?  It should be very interesting to take Gwyn out of her hometown and see what happens, especially with the Dead Presidents who are such interesting and mysterious characters.  And, we’ve also got the were-terrier and his new boyfriend, someone getting chloroformed behind a dumpster, Ellie’s new boyfriend, etc.  Lots of good stuff…

2. Maybe getting a little busy again. – If I’ve had a long-standing bone to pick with this series, it’s that it has a little too much going on in each issue.  It reminds me a little bit of when you’re trying to download 8 things onto your computer at one time.  Sometimes it is more rewarding to let just one thing download first and be done with it while the other stuff happens in the background.  To that point, there are 6 distinct plotlines rolling through this issue and that’s a lot to get into 20 pages.  It’s Roberson and Allred’s book and they can pace it how they please and I really do enjoy it, but I might enjoy it even more if they’d prioritize one of the threads and move the others into the background.  Or, kill some characters.  That’s always good for sales.