I read comics. There. Now that I've got that alcoholic like admission out of the way, I'm going to blather on about my pick for best comic of last week. I'm probably going to do this for my possibly one reader each week based on the comics I buy. Last week, I bought a whole 2 books, which considering I usually buy trade and hard covers, is a HUGE comic week for me.Anyways, I was too intrigued by iZombie not to buy the first issue last month. The $1 cover price certainly helped. I love zombies, and I love the zombie genre. I tend to hate zombie comics. There's too god damned many of them! Marvel has a zombie-vers, DC had a bunch of zombie heroes come back as lanterns or some shit in the never read by anyone "Final Darkest Brightest Night Crises Day"... forget about all the independent publishers pumping out between 1 and a 1000 books a month. It's too much zombies!
So dear reader, you may be wondering "Gee mister, why'd you buy the zombie book then?" It's because I like Michael Allreds work. "MADMAN" comics (up until the yet unread IMAGE books from last year) was brilliant, RED ROCKET 7 was great, his Book Of Mormon was pretty to look at and ignore... I wanted to see what he did with the zombie books. It's also published by Vertigo, the DC imprint that is actually unafraid to deal with supernatural subjects in a non-retarded way. So it's all a recipe for success!
Except it isn't a total success. The art is fantastic as Allred tends to be. It's written by Chris Roberson, a writer I'm unfamiliar with. Issue one was a pretty good first issue in that it introduced a shit load of characters in an interesting way. The problem in issue 2 is that there's too much going on in too few pages so none of it really ads up to much. It's too cut up and this seems to be (as far as one can tell in one issue) a story that needs to breath a bit. It's not so bad that I'm dropping the book. It's more a case of being intrigued enough in the subject to want more then I got. Instead of quick glimpses of the characters, I want to see more of the characters which is impossible with about 4 plots that have yet to fully converge into a linear story. If this was a limited series, I wouldn't be as concerned. This is being billed as an ongoing though, so I fear that it will become a convoluted, rambling mess.
So there it is, "iZOMBIE" has been thoroughly judged before getting a chance to come in to it's own thing! If you're a zombie fan, I'm sure you'll enjoy this since it really is a different take on the whole zombie genre, and an interesting one. Just hold your thumbs that it doesn't all fall apart.
3.5/5
I think that World War Z (read it if you haven't) has also been make into a graphic novel, which could be pretty interesting. I'm sure I'll give it a go at some point though.
ReplyDeleteZombies do seem to have gotten a bit too prolific of late though. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was really pretty lame, and yet seems to have produced a dirth of classics with zombies added (as well as Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters, and Mr Darcy, Vampyre). It's all a bit much.
Still on zombies but changing medium, have you seen Zombieland yet? That film was awesome.
And finally, on graphic novels, I've come very late to the Fables party, but am really enjoying them, so if you've not given them a go, I recommend you do.
I couldn't be bothered to read Pride and Zombies. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter though was pretty a pretty clever metabio. I think they call them Metabiographies. Who knows. Zombieland was damned awesome, and refreshing after a bunch of lame ones like the remade DAY OF THE DEAD and SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD which only proved that it's time for Romero to just stop.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Fables yet, but I've heard nothing but good things about it and it's companion "Jack Of Fables". I plan to get tot them in the future. Next up for me on the GN front are the Sandman Reprints by Gaiman. I've only ever read the first half of the series before, so I look forward to finishing it. :)