The Unwritten #46 – Review

By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators, writer and pencils), Dean Ormston (finishes), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: Didge seeks a way to end the zombie killings.

A few things (with SPOILERS): 1) Meta-commentaries continue.  – Last month, there was a lot of meta-commentary in The Unwritten #45.  This issue made it pretty clear that my perception of those meta-commentaries are true and accurate.  This current storyline is ALL about something metaphysical causing our “real world” to have tepid storytelling.  This issue we resolve the zombie issue and learn that people were killed by similar fictional constructs the world over, but that all of these people were left severely brain damaged by their encounters with crappy stories.  I love it!  This is Mike Carey and Peter Gross saying that watching American Idol and reading the National Inquirer makes you stupid.  I can’t quite tell if they’re brave enough to include Big 2 superhero comics in that generalization or not.  Interpret things in your own way.

The Unwritten #45 – Review

By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators), Dean Ormston (finishes), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: Braaaiiins!!!  The shambling undead make an appearance in The Unwritten.

Review (with SPOILERS): It’s no secret that I really love The Unwritten and this issue exemplifies what I love about the series.  The funny thing is that it is a hard series to review because the good issues (like this one) have multiple interesting things going on and it can be hard to meld my thoughts about everything into a coherent ~700 words.

The best thing about this issue is that the creators laid out why the “death of stories” is such a bad thing.  Ever since the wounding/death of Leviathan in the finale of War of the Words, this series has discussed this concept that stories are somehow dying.  We’ve seen the effects in “storyland” where characters from popular fiction are living in a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland.  That theme has been interesting, but it was never expressly clear why this should matter to us in the real world (or even the “real world” of the comic).  Sometimes I can be pretty literal and I wondered, “Death of stories?  Huh?  What does that mean?  Does it mean words vanish from the pages of books?”  This issue uses narration from the vampiric Savoy character to establish the consequences of the “death of stories” and show us that we’re living with the consequences right now in the real world.  It isn’t so much that the stories vanish from the page, but that we humans lose the ability to pay attention to a good story and instead focus on less demanding forms of entertainment like reality TV, porn, sports, etc.

The Unwritten #44 – Review

By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: Tommy Taylor has a bone to pick with the King of Hades.

A few things (with minor SPOILERS): 

1). Confusing, but enjoyable. – This is probably a series that reads better in collected editions.  I usually hate that phrase – “reads better in collected editions” – because it is often code for “lazy writing where not much happens issue-to-issue.”  But in the case of The Unwritten, the problem is that so much is going on, keeping a handle on the story is like trying to catch a greased pig.  This is a comic that gets special reading treatment and I simply won’t read it if I’m tired or distracted because I know I won’t fully appreciate the story.  It can be a little annoying sometimes when I’m going through a confused phase, but I do appreciate the fact that The Unwritten is always telling an ambitious story.  It is also interesting that I never find The Unwritten to be aggressively opaque the way I find some comics like Change #1 from a week ago.

The Unwritten #43 – Review

By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)’

The Story: Tommy Taylor finds a post-apocalyptic wasteland as he journeys through storyland to find Lizzie.

A few things (with SPOILERS): 1). The story is very locked in right now. – Sometimes The Unwritten makes me feel like I’m not quite smart enough to be reading it.  There have been 4-5 issues runs where “the story” felt like I was trying to grab onto a handful of eels.  That’s somewhat intimidating when you’ve been reviewing the series for a few years and you hope/need to say something intelligent about it every month.  But, right now, the story is very locked in and I know exactly – or at least “mostly” – what is going on.  I think I almost appreciate the story more now because I’ve had to struggle to understand it in the past.

The Unwritten #42 – Review

By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: The quest to rescue Lizzie begins.

A few things: 1). Unwritten is less fun when you don’t know the fable. – Over the course of the series, most of the “real world” stories that have appeared in The Unwritten have been stories that I’ve heard of or read:  We had an arc from Moby Dick.  Lizzie is from Dickens.  People are familiar with Nazi propaganda.  There are the obvious parallels between Harry Potter and Tommy Taylor….and I’m sure that if Carey and Gross had the legal right to use the Harry Potter characters, they would have.  It’s a lot of fun to watch these intersections between stories you know and this fictional world.

The Unwritten #41 – Review

By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators – writer & artist), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: What became of Tom & Richie after the War of the Words?

A few things (with minor SPOILERS): 1). Bits of answers from puppets. – For me, the most enlightening scene of this issue was the kinda dream sequence where Madam Rausch appears to Tom and Richie in their dreams and explains that all things touched by Pullman’s hand become words.  As a smart reader of this site pointed out a few months ago, much as “the words become flesh” so can the flesh become words.  Those words are then “fed” to Leviathan and Rausch indicates that Lizzie may be alive in the stomach of Leviathan.  Of course, this implies a connection with the story arc from around issue #21 where Tom got stuck in the belly of a whale.  Now….what that really means to me as a reader, I’m not exactly sure.  As I’ve said in these reviews in the past, I’m not clever enough to connect all the dots on the first reading.  But, it illustrates the thing I love best about The Unwritten: this series is attempting to be great.  It’s rare for a comic to have such ambition and while we won’t be able to fully evaluate the greatness of the series until it is finished – and even then we’ll need to reread and allow the story time to breathe – we should applaud the ambition of the creators.

The Unwritten #40 – Review

By: Mike Carey (writer), Peter Gross (art), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: Tom Taylor returns to the pages of The Unwritten.

Quick review: This series is kinda at a transitional point and it’s affecting the enjoyment of the single issues.  That’s a normal thing in a long running, on-going series that has a defined ending.  Something has to be in the middle after the initial climax and that’s what these issues represent.  It doesn’t make them “bad”, but they won’t have the same issue-to-issue payoff that we were getting during the War of the Words storyline OR the type of payoff that we’ll get in a year or so when this series starts its final story-cycle.

iZombie #28 – Review

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

The Story: Will Xitalu eat the world or Gwen find a way to stop him/it?

A few things: 1). A pretty good ending, considering. – I know we should only grade these comics on their actual merits (i.e. what’s on the page) because in time, no one will care that this series probably ended a little prematurely due to Roberson’s (kinda messy) departure from DC and lackluster sales.  If you go back 5-6 issues, there was nothing about the story that screamed, “The end is nigh!”.  So, it was a little worrying to see the end announced so soon and wonder how Roberson and the Allreds would wrap things up neatly.

Given those conditions, this is a pretty solid ending.  Not a “great” ending, but very good.  This story was really about Gwen and she gets to complete her story arc.  The way she ends things makes sense given what we know of her character.  And the people of the universe get to trade that nasty, tentacled Xitalu monster for a hot, naked cosmic being.  That’s an upgrade to any pantheon!

The Unwritten #39 – Review

By: Mike Carey (writer), Peter Gross (artist), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: Events in Australian finally loop back to the classic Unwritten characters.

A few things (with SPOILERS): 1). Connections! – The Unwritten had suffered for the last several issues because our favorite trio of characters (Tom, Richie & Lizzie) were no longer the center-pieces of the story.  It was just kinda jarring after having ~40 issues of a very focused story to suddenly jump to new characters in a separate (but related) situation.  When you think about how comics are published these days, this current story arc is almost one that would appear in a spin-off 5-issue miniseries (and we’d all complain about having to buy two series).

Well…THIS was the issue that tied things back together.  It doesn’t provide an answer to everything but it definitely heads in that direction.  Just learning that the central protagonist of this arc (Danny) is the same young man that we met at the end of the War of the Words (as a guy hired to be a writing minion for the Cabal) and that this Lucas Filby (the Jesus-looking guy) was not only the same guy who heckled Tom Taylor in the first issue of the series, but a former thug for the Cabal…..this stuff really made a lot of difference.  Maybe those connections were there to see all along, but they went over my head.

Punk Rock Jesus #1 – Review

By: Sean Murphy (writer, artist), Todd Klein (letters), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Karen Berger (editor)

The Story: A corporation clones Jesus so that he can star in a reality television show.

The Review (with minor SPOILERS): 

1. Loaded with cool concepts. – The pitch for this series was cool enough: company clones Jesus, puts him on a reality TV show and J2 rebels and forms a punk rock band.  That and Murphy’s art was enough to make me hooked, but there is a LOT more going on in this first oversized issue.  For starters, we’ve got the security guard for the company who is a former fighter for the Irish Republican Army and he rides a sweet old Indian motorcycle (awesome visual).  He adds this rich element of danger and physical, unshaven menace to what could be a pretty sterile story that takes place in a lab.  Then there are all these other nifty characters: the surrogate mother, the crusading scientist, the wicked company man…..  And it all adds up to a story that could be a LOT more than that initial teaser.  This issue was bristling with things to look at.

2. Ambitious. – We must give Murphy credit for “going for it”.  If you go back and read early works from many writers, you find much less ambitious fare.  Channel Zero (Brian Wood) or Nightly News & Pax Romana (Jonathan Hickman) were pretty straight forward affairs.  CZ had flavors of what Wood did later with DMZ or seems to be doing now with The Massive, but CZ stays in the box and tells a very linear story.  For as cool as Nightly New and Pax Romana are/were, they basically exist to tell a punchline on the final page of the series.  Murphy is eschewing that and has a LOT of cool characters in motion at once… And Jesus (or J2) isn’t really even a character in this issue…  So, he’ll be added to the mix yielding more complexity.  Bravo to Murphy for his ambition!  We’ve all seen complex stories fall on their face and that type of failure is always a risk is trying something bold, but I’ve read so many comics in my life that I have little use for creators who stay safely in the shallow end of the pool.  Go play in the deep end and show us something we haven’t seen before!  Murphy has at least the potential to do that.

The Unwritten #38 – Review

By: Mike Carey (writer), Peter Gross (art), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: More about the Australian Tommy Taylor cult.

A few things: 1). New colors! – The first thing I noticed when opening this issue is that the colors are completely different.  Everything is darker than the color palates of the past and this coloring is also much more shaded than the flat-ish colors that have pervaded this series.  The difference is striking enough that I wonder if the credits are in error and Chris Chuckry actually didn’t color this issue?  If he did, then he’s really trying out new stuff, which would be odd in the middle of a series and story arc.  I guess I DO like this coloring, but since it is the first thing mentioned in this review, I guess I found it a little distracting too.  Not sure that’s what the creators had in mind.

I Zombie #26 – Review

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

The Story: The end is near as the extra-dimensional squid-monster Xitalu (and his demonic minions) attack.

Two things: 1).  Story isn’t moving quite the way it should. – This series only has two issues left and there is a LOT going on.  In a way, this issue is a microcosm of the entire series where we’ve had more ideas and characters than we have pages.  I Zombie has an ensemble cast, but Gwyn is really the main character.  All of the other characters support her – or should support her.  But Gwyn is only on 6 pages of this issue!  And, it isn’t as if this is some isolated story arc in the middle of the series where the supporting characters move to the front…..only two more issues remain!  How is Gwyn going to have a satisfactory conclusion to her story when she will probably only get a handful of pages in those final two issues?  The answer is that she probably won’t have a satisfactory conclusion and it just smacks of this series being cancelled before it’s time. It’s a shame because there is such potential here.  Gwyn is a great character has to yield time to interesting characters like: Ellie the Ghost, the hot vampire grad students, Amon, the Dead Presidents, Diogenes and Spot and his chimpanzee grandfather.  True, there are a few characters who are less interesting (this phantom gunman, for example), but for the most part the characters are really cool.  But, both this issue and this series suffered from the problem that more isn’t necessarily better.  This series probably would have been better if Roberson had only used half of these characters and saved the rest for a future project.

The Unwritten #37 – Review

By: Mike Carey & Peter Gross (creators), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (covers), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: How are people reacting to Tommy Taylor down under?

Review (with minor SPOILERS): If you were looking for The Unwritten to return to the regularly scheduled story with a BANG, you might be disappointed with this issue.  That was probably an unrealistic expectation for a methodical and thought provoking book like The Unwritten anyway, but coming off the War of the Words story arc where events happened in rapid-fire (at least rapid-fire for this series), it was a little jarring to go back into slow mode.

There are those who take issues like this one as evidence that The Unwritten “reads better in trade”.  And….it might be more satisfying in some ways.  But, even with the slowness of the story, something is lost when you consume 5 issues in one sitting.  The Unwritten is still a good story to carry in your mind from month-to-month.  What do stories really mean?

The story choice here is interesting.  For one thing, Tom Taylor doesn’t make an appearance.  Except for the “special issues” of The Unwritten, I’m not sure if Tom has ever failed to appear.  But, the other thing is that we bounce the story all the way to Australia where we see the Australian police investigating a cult that is causing people to disappear.  The cult is a pretty interesting place too.  Their leader (who I’m 99% sure has been appearing in the series since early on as a bit character) is upset over the fact that stories are ending.  That concept of the “end of stories” was the big take away from last month’s issue #36 featuring our favorite, foul-mouthed bunny rabbit.

The Unwritten #36 – Review

By: Mike Carey (story/writer), Peter Gross (story/pencils), Rufus Dayglo (finishes), Chris Chuckry (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Yuko Shimizu (cover), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: Tinker and Pauly Bruckner get ringside seats for the end of the world.

Review: This is a tricky issue.  We’ve previously met Brooklyn tough-guy Pauly Bruckner who is trapped in a Velveteen Rabbit-esque body in the ‘land of stories’ in issues #12 and #24.  Both of those issues were Grade A material as we met Pauly and learned that real world people can be ported into “storyland”  (in #12)  and then watched Pauly trying to escape from storyland via a winding staircase (#24).  Even though these issues aren’t the main focus of The Unwritten, they’ve come to add deeper meaning to that concept that stories are alive and an alternate universe that has limited interplay with our world.  The connection seems to be a man like Wilson Taylor who either (a) has some special gift as a storyteller or (b) just understands the relationship of the two worlds.

There was natural desire for this to be another Grade A work, but it just isn’t.  It’s not “bad” in any way, but it suffers by being compared to the first two issues.  The first problem encountered is that for the first time with these storyland issues, one wonders WHEN this issue takes place.  The first two issues have been timeless, but this one, not so much.  Toward the end of the issue, we see a serious threat to the fabric of storyland.  Is this due to the events of the War of the Words story arc?  The implication seems to be “yes”, but it’s hard to see what that really means.  If storyland dies, does that mean that the real world can’t have stories anymore?   Do the people of the Earth forget classics like Cinderella or The Bible?  And if that’s true, how exactly does that happen?  Or if stories must be created by humans first, are humans somehow (HOW?) losing the ability to create new stories to populate storyland?

IZombie #24 – Review

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

The Story: A background for Agent Kennedy of the Dead Presidents.

Review: This is an issue that suffers a little bit because of the news that the series is ending at issue #28.  We have a lot of plot threads that need to be resolved and (honestly) the background of Agent Kennedy wasn’t in the top 10.  Issues like this that focus heavily on the background of one particular character work very nicely in long running series.  We saw a lot of these issues over the 72 issues of DMZ and they added richness to the various characters, but I’m not sure this was the story that I Zombie needs here at the finish line.  It would be like Scalped having an issue that focused on Office Falls Down’s childhood in the middle of this final story arc: Nice, but not necessary.  Moves like this make one wonder if the series is naturally ending or if someone just decided to pull the plug?  It doesn’t seem like this is the issue the creators would have put out there if they always intended for the series to end so soon.

IZombie #22 – Review

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

The Story: The big threat is beginning to show itself.  What impact will this have on our main characters?

Five Things: 

1. Interesting plot development for Gwyn. – Even though I Zombie has an ensemble cast, Gwyn is the main character.  I was a eager to see Gwyn get taken back to Dead President headquarters (because surely that place held some answers about what is going on with all these monsters), but it’s still interesting to see her and Horatio on the run.  This will probably lead to some answers too, just not the ones we thought we were going to get.

2. Love, love, LOVE Laura Allred’s colors. – Honestly, good colorists don’t get enough credit.  Laura Allred’s colors are the glue that holds this series together.  Of course, some of the power in her colors comes from things like the way Gwyn’s RED dress pops off an otherwise grey page.  But, she’s got some other clever tricks too.  Love the white/grey hair color for Gwyn and the slightly purplish hue to her skin; no normal humans are these colors and it helps to set her apart.  I also love the vampire chick’s combination of green sweatshirt + red hair.  Again…the red hair (with a little orange) is a color that you’d never see on a living human.  You can’t look at these characters and think they are normal.  Another thing that catches my eye about Ms. Allred’s coloring is that she doesn’t add highlights (which I HATE), she adds shadow.  It sounds simple, but I surely don’t see other colorists working this way and it is very effective.

3. Great cover. – It seems like the only place to get decent covers anymore is on creator-owned books.  I LOVE the way your eye is drawn to the object of interest (Gwyn) on this cover.

IZombie #21 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), J. Bone (guest artist), Laura Allred (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: Gwyn the zombie gets hooked up with the Dead Presidents and Galatea’s plans start to make more sense.

Four Things: 

1. Nifty guest art by J. Bone. – Whoah! Wasn’t expecting this…  Guest art is a fact of life in comics and it’s nothing new either (go back and read those old X-Men comics and you’ll find lots of guest artists).  What’s neat about this J. Bone appearance is that it isn’t on a done-in-one issue that explains some back-story item even though that seems to be the popular way to use guest artists.  Nope….this guest art happens smack in the middle of a story arc.  A couple of things are cool about this…..  For one thing, J. Bone’s art is a lot of fun.  He’s much more of a cartoonist than Michael Allred is and that means that his storytelling is crisp and clear because he can do all the exaggerated body language stuff.  But he has that same economy of line that Allred has, so the even though the shape of the characters is a little different….it’s still a similar overall look.  You could probably convince me that Allred drew this when someone dared him to draw like Bruce Timm or something.  The other thing this shows is what a wonderful job the Allreds did of designing the characters.  Between their colors and their identifying features, it’s never a problem recognizing our favorite characters even with a very different art style.

2. Consistent coloring is so important. – This issue really makes you appreciate how important coloring and consistent coloring is in comics.  Even though the line-art duties have changed for this issue, by keeping Laura Allred on the colors, this book looks and feels like I Zombie.  Obviously coloring is important (duh!), but a big part of identifying some of these characters lies in the color.  For Gwyn it’s all about her hair and skin tone.  For Galatea’s vampire helper, it’s all in the red hair and the GREEN Oregon Ducks sweatshirt (LOVE that red/green combo).  I doubt this would have worked as well if they’d brought in a new colorist for this issue and just given them the color palate that Mrs. Allred uses.

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.

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.

IZombie #18 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), Jay Stephens (guest artist), Laura Allred (colors), Michael Allred (inks on a few pages), Todd Klein (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: The back-story of Diogenes, the monster hunter from the Fossor Corporation.

What’s Good: This is a very clean and streamlined story.  IZombie is an enjoyable series, but its Achilles Heel is that it has a lot going on in a typical issue with the action bopping around to visit a large cast of characters in every issue.  Not a problem here.  This issue is really smooth.  The main story thread of I Zombie has introduced us to the characters of Diogenese and Horatio who are monster hunters for the Fossor Corporation.  Diogenes is the old, grizzled vet and this issue gives us our first glimpse into his backstory as we see him when he was a fresh, new agent and he’s teamed with the Fossor’s top agent and sent to Brazil to clear out some vampires.

As you’d expect, the situation is bigger than they anticipated and they get into all kinds of hairy situations.  One of the fun things about this series is that, even though it is very much set in the present-day “real world”, there are these constant vampire infestations, zombie outbreaks, etc. and the Fossor Corporation is there to mop things up.  It kinda has feel like the Men in Black movies where the aliens were everywhere, yet the civilians were so buried in their daily life that they didn’t even notice.  Substitute zombies/vampires/mummies/were-creatures for aliens and you get the idea.

This issue also has some of its trademark fun as exhibited when Diogenes and his mentor track down the vampire nest and meet the “vampire queen”.  What’s awesome is that she isn’t some immortal being who has been a source of myth and legend among the native peoples for centuries. Nope, her origin is more like the vampires in Eugene, Oregon in the main story arc who are just a bunch of University of Oregon graduate students who got bit by vampires and decided to open a paintball facility.  It’s really fun to see a writer just have fun and not be a slave to Bram Stoker.

I Zombie #16 – Review

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

The Story: Many plot points crash into one another as the zombie outbreak afflicting Eugene, Oregon comes to a climax.

What’s Good: Honestly, the best thing about this comic (and series) is the artwork.  I’ve heard podcasters and bloggers toss rocks at Mike Allred because he always draws the same way, which is true, but if I drew this attractively I’m not sure I’d be in a huge hurry to change things up.  His softer style is the perfect fit for this title where the lead character is a female zombie because he makes Gwyn look soft and feminine (as compared to the statuesque superheroines with the bulletproof bossoms and shiny butts we see in other comics).  Even the guys in this comic are soft and kinda emo.  I’m not sure if that’s just how they appear with Allred’s art or if Robertson tailored the characters to Allred’s strengths, but it gives this comic series a very unique feel compared to anything else on the shelf.

Kudos also to Laura Allred for her wonderful, mostly flat colors.  She has many touches throughout this series, but one of my favorite is the way she colors Gwyn.  Since she’s a zombie, you’d expect her to be kinda grey, right?  Well Allred colors her lavender!  Ordinarily, you’d think, “Why would a zombie be pinkish/lavender?  That makes no sense because they shouldn’t have blood flowing around!” but it works well because it shows that Gwyn isn’t human without making a hideous monster.  I guess Allred could have made her greenish too, but then she wouldn’t be attractive and Gwyn’s ability to be pretty is an important part of this series.

From a story standpoint, a lot of threads come crashing together in this issue.  One of my complaints about the series is that way too many things are going on for a 20-page comic, but at least most of those stories are starting to interweave.  In this issue, Gwyn, Horatio & Spot get out of the sewers and run into those freaky/cool Dead Presidents who we’ve seen in the back-up stories for the last few months.  So, that is two stories pulled in.  Then Diogenes (Horatio’s monster hunter boss) shows up to address a dangling plot point about how Horatio is dating Gwyn (who is a zombie).  And Spot’s grandaddy (who is trapped in a chimpanzee body) shows up with Spot’s geeky friends.  It is all coming together and next issue should be even better.

I Zombie #15 – Review

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

The Story: A cute zombie & her monster-hunter boyfriend take on a hoard of shambling zombies.

What’s Good: This is a pretty standard issue of I Zombie.  If you’re invested in and enjoy the story material (which is kinda upbeat slice-of-life meets creature movie), this will be a fun issue for you.

Even though I’ve enjoyed this series quite a bit, one of my constant complaints has been that there are too many plot lines for a 20-page comic.  In this issue, Roberson smartly reduces most of the story elements to a page or two.  So, even though we check in with the chimpanzee grandfather and Galatea, the main story of Horatio and Gwen trying to deal with a hoard of zombies occupies more than 50% of the issue.  This makes the comic feel more like it is about something and has a story than merely watching a lot of goings-on among a group of loosely connected characters.

It also looks like a lot of these plots are starting to swirl together such that you could almost see all these strange characters in one place in an issue or two.  And, that includes the Dead Presidents back-up story characters that have been a cool addition to this series.  Some neat things could happen if these folks all intersect and I’m looking forward to that.

IZombie #13 – Review

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

The Story: After spending the first dozen issues mostly sorting out who these freaky characters are, it seems that we are embarking on our first mission-based story arc having to do with the evil Galatea and an outbreak of zombies.

What’s Good: This is another very strong month for this title visually.  After taking a break last month, Michael Allred is back on art duties; and when you combine his clean, efficient and organic style with Laura Allred’s soft and tasteful colors with Todd Klein’s artful lettering, you get a pretty product again.  If you read comics largely for the graphical storytelling (as I do), just the combinator of these 3 masters at work accomplishes 80% of the battle of having a good comic.  What I love so much about Michael Allred’s work is seeing how varied and organic his lines look.  Just look at any panel in the comic and see how many varied thicknesses of line he shows.  You can almost start to guess what kinds of implements he is using.  One thing that makes the final product really distinctive are the partially shaded aspects you get with what looks like a gray marker.  It isn’t clear if Michael is going that (with a marker) of if Laura adds the effect while coloring, but it allows for subtle shading while maintaining an almost flat coloring style for most objects.  Flat colors just kick all kinds of ass and if you don’t believe that, take two comics, one that has flat colors and one with this highly rendered stuff and put them across the room and see which one POPS out at you.

The story itself settles a lot in this issue.  IZombie has been very enjoyable, but its biggest fault is that there is just too much good stuff going on.  You had the main characters, the vampire ladies, the chimpanzee grandfather, Amon the dude with all the secrets, Galatea and her vampire underling and the monster hunters.  Often times, it was just too much to keep track of, but in this issue, it seems to be streamlining into two stories (that’ll probably connect).  The stories seem to promise some answers to what Galatea is up to and also threaten the gang with some Romero-style zombies.  The zombies might even have some impact for our main character, Gwyn – The Friendly and Attractive Zombie who is trying not to become a shambling, “BRRAAAIINNSSSSS!” zombie.

What’s Not So Good: Even with what I’ve said above, there is still a little too much going on in this issue.  The part that bugged me is that the vampire girls show up for a couple of pages and while I really like the vampire girls, it isn’t clear what they have to do with the story right now.  It kinda seems like they could go back on the shelf for a few issues until we have more resolution on what appear to be the main story lines.  Then, we get a back-up story, that has all kinds of cool/awesome wackiness like a Soviet zombie/special-forces soldier, a talking brain in a Mr. Coffee pot and a team of super agents consisting of an lucid zombie, a funky ghost and a were/she-male.  And, that part is awesome! But as I’ve said, this series has already got a lot of things going on at once and now we’ve got ALL this new stuff too.  It’s almost too much awesome at once.

Conclusion: Great, great issue (and series) from a visual standpoint.  The story is enjoyable too, but I really don’t think it would hurt to streamline some more.  It’s a shame because all of the story elements are really cool, but it is kinda like drinking out of a fire hose.

Grade: B

-Dean Stell

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New York Five #3 – Review

By: Brian Wood (writer), Ryan Kelly (art), Jared K. Fletcher (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)

The Story: A few of our freshmen co-eds at NYU have life-changing experiences.

What’s Good: Again this month, New York Five is really a showcase for Ryan Kelly’s art.  The story is good too, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but the art is so good that it overshadows the script.

Kelly is just a beast drawing architecture.  NYC comes alive under his pencil and pen and that is vitally important because The City is as much a character in this story as any of the young ladies.  I would love to know more about his process and if he is using some sort of photo-assist.  I wouldn’t hold it against him if he was because the end-result is incredible, but the only other option is that he doesn’t sleep because I can’t imagine how this could be a monthly book with this level of detail.  Or….it was all “in the can” before they solicited it?

The other great thing about Kelly’s artwork is that he can get his characters to act and emote without resorting to a cartoony art style.  Cartoony would never work with his buildings and architecture, but most artists who go for a more realistic style get more wooden characters and also have the stray panel where someone just looks funny.  This never happens with Kelly’s characters and he nails their faces and bodies from just about every angle possible.  Just amazing!

This reviewer is such an art whore that the story almost becomes an afterthought, but Wood is doing good work here too.  I’m a sucker for these young-women-coming-of-age, and if you like those types of stories, you’re going to love these characters.  They are all so lifelike and will all remind you in some way of people you’ve known in your life as these girls struggle with the transition from childhood to being an adult while also adjusting to life in the city.

I, Zombie #11 – Review

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

The Story: Kinda a wrapping up story as many loose ends are secured.

What’s Good: Roberson and Allred have done a yeoman’s job of world building over the first eleven issues of I, Zombie.  It hasn’t always been smooth, but I do feel like with this issue, they finally have all of their game pieces out on the board such that they can play with them.  That may seem a little strange: “How can it take 11 issues just to get organized?”  Well, this world is complex.  You have zombies, were-beings, vampires, ghosts, possessed beings and a few others.  On top of that there is a secret society of monster hunters that features prominently.  And….none of these creature types is exactly what you’ve grown used to from other fictional works.

Of course, Gwyn, the cute and coherent zombie (who merely needs to eat one brain per month to remain cute and coherent) is one great example of the novel spin on the undead archetypes.  But there are many others…  For example, we learn in this issue that the vampire chicks who were running the paintball club (and sucking just a little blood on the side) were until very recently a bunch of graduate students at the University of Oregon.  As readers, we’re so used to vampires all being world-weary, 800 year old Viking kings and the story being about how they are people-out-of-time, that this is a very fresh take.  These young ladies have been vampires for a couple of months and are just getting the hang of it

And, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have art duties from the Allreds with letters by Todd Klein.  I think if you’d put worse artists on this series, I may have dropped it a few times when the story got too complex, but the Allreds’ soft and lively art helps me just skate on through.  I’ve made my positive feelings for the Allreds’ art know in multiple places on this site, so let’s spend a moment talking about Mr. Klein’s lettering.  Lettering is really becoming a lost art form today.  You get to see great hand lettered works sometimes (anything John Workman works on), but a LOT of lettering these days is nothing special: boring fonts, word balloons that are WAY oversized, etc.  I’m 99% sure that Klein does computer lettering, but his work just shows that someone approached the lettering with the same care that was used on the art or the scripts.  It is hard to describe, but the lettering almost has a softness that echoes the art.