iZombie #1 Review

I, Zombie just as a name sounds as if it's trying to catch on the wave of Zombie comics brought back by Kirkman's Walking Dead some six years ago now. It's not. At face value this is setting itself up to be more Buffy than that. 

Gwen is a grave-digger by day, working as a sole woman amongst men, but she's treated as one of the guys, joking and joshing with the best of them. When the day shift ends, instead of going for a drink with the boys, she hangs around Green Pastures cemetery to meet her "stuck in the sixties" friend Ellie. In this case stuck quite literally as monochrome dressed, beehive hairdo wearing Ellie is a ghost. The there's Scott, who carries the nickname "Spot" even though he's Were-Terrier rather than Were-dalmatian.

And thus we come to the crux of my issue this first issue, I have no story to describe or elaborate on as such because the issue is so introductory. There's no straight into the action, no straight into the flesh and bones of the issues at hands. We've got what feels like the first half of a double length TV Pilot, but the network has scheduled it across two weeks. Something that maybe would have been better off had it excused itself with a "#0" on the front cover rather than a "#1". 

Don't get me wrong the characters seem interesting enough to see what can be done with them and the last page does set-up future issues, but this is seasoned trade writing rather than issue writing.

Michael Allred's art (yes he's normally known as Mike, but he is credited as Michael in this issue) in partnership with his wife Laura on colors bring out their usual clean and not over-busy style to make the artwork really shine but the whole package is not enough to make me buy next issue.

I wish we had had a $2.99 - $3.99 40 page issue for issue #1 rather than a $1.00 32 pager because with a bit more I may have been pulled in, and been given that "Must read more moment". As I close the back cover, I'm left unsatiated.