The memories are shown as individual panels in the comic, but are printed in an exaggerated halftone. One particularly impressive spread in the middle of the book shows Gwen walking through the memories of another character. The art, done by the inimitable Michael Allred, is gorgeous, full of thick black lines and his signature Madman style. Naturally, there are also monster hunters thrown into the mix, one of whom becomes a possible love interest for Gwen, which will surely lead to further complications down the line. They live in a version of Eugene, Oregon overflowing with supernatural beings the paintball place down the road is run by a coven of vampires that look like former sorority girls, and a mysteriously menacing man wrapped in bandages may be an ancient Egyptian mummy.

Gwen’s only friends are Ellie, a ghost-girl who died forty years ago and dresses like one of Austin Powers’ backup dancers, and Scott (aka ‘Spot’), who turns into a “were-terrier” during the full moon, which mostly just means he becomes embarrassingly hirsute. When the story opens, she eats the brains of a man who may have been murdered, and sets out to solve the mystery. One unfortunate side effect of brain-eating is that the memories of the deceased come along for the ride, and she finds herself compelled to finish their unfinished business. She doesn’t enjoy the taste at all, describing them as worse than “a cross between motor oil and someone else’s vomit”, but eating them keeps her sane and relatively normal, so she digs up the freshest grave once a month and does what she feels is necessary. IZombie tells the story of Gwen Dylan, an undead gravedigger who has to eat brains once a month to keep from becoming a full-on shambling zombie horror. iZombie, an ongoing series from Vertigo by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred, isn’t the savior of the genre, but it does at least have a few original twists on some tired old archetypes. Pop culture has been in zombie/vampire/werewolf overdrive the past few years, and it’s pretty rare to find a story that has a unique twist on the mythos.

IZombie, Vol. 1 by Chris Roberson