includes: iZombie # 1-5
the premise: Gravedigger Gwen Dylan is actually a zombie - and in order to retain her wits, she has to eat at least one brain per month. And she's not the only weird thing lurking in Eugene, Oregon.
the lowdown: I recently started reading Fables again after a three-year hiatus. I had stopped after the big war against The Adversary, and picked the series back up again after the digital releases on comixology caught up to where I'd been. Longtime readers know that I was a HUGE Fables fan awhile back - for a good while it was my favorite series being published. Returning to it after all this time - it's still pretty good but it no longer "wows" me like it did around the third and fourth trades. There's something about its voice that's a little grating now, I think - still a good book but no longer a great one.
And why do I mention that in a review of another Vertigo series, you ask? It's because this series reminds me a whole lot of Fables, in the good and the bad ways. It's a horror comic that's not actually a horror comic, a series that blends the monster sub-genres much the same way Fables blends fantasy sub-genres. The star of the story is the aforementioned Gwen Dylan, who is a zombie but only a few people know that, because she's careful to eat one brain a month in order to maintain compos mentis. Whenever she eats a brain, though, she's flooded with the person's memories - and in this first arc she becomes aware that her "victim" was murdered - coincidentally by someone who has some important information for Gwen.
And also: Gwen's best friend is a ghost, and her other friend is a werewolf - sorry, "were-terrier." And there are vampires running around too. And also also: monster hunters. And all of this stuff is connected by an overarching mythology.
Exactly. It's not exactly a simple premise. There's a LOT that has to be explained, and Roberson chooses to do so in a huge exposition dump during the fourth chapter of the story. Very little actually resolves at the end of the arc; for the most part it's just an introduction to the somewhat large and varied cast and concepts. This one took me two reads to really appreciate - the first time through I kind of drowned in the exposition, I think. The second time through it worked a lot better, to the point where I think it "hooked" me the way it is supposed to. I enjoy Roberson's voice, though occasionally he falls into the same trap as Fables' Willingham - he gets a little too clever for his own good, and his wit actually pulls the reader out of the story.
So why give it a second look at all? Lots of other books to read, after all. Frankly, Allred's art is worth giving the series another look. It's tremendous, even in the heavily-expository scenes. He turns those into big two-page spreads that look excellent. As always, Allred's able to do violence, quiet scenes, sexy scenes, whatever the script calls for, and make it look great. Here he gets to draw lots of monsters, as well as human-looking characters, and it's really a tour-de-force. Perhaps Gwen owes a little something to Dead Girl, but hey.. Dead Girl was cool, right?
the verdict: The second read definitely was the charm for me on this one. This reminds me, as I say, a lot of Fables, and it's possible it will eventually grow stale. But so far I think it's channeling early Fables - I'm curious to see where it goes now that the infodump is out of the way.
0 comments:
Post a Comment