Gwen Dylan isn't your normal gal. She works as a grave-digger at an all-natural cemetery, for one, which automatically brands her as 'one of the guys.' She's recently cut ties with her past, so she only has a few people that she can truly call her friends.
Oh, and she's a zombie.
In iZombie Volume 1: Dead to the World, Gwen isn't exactly your standard shambling undead. As long as she maintains a steady diet of a brain a month, she keeps her focus and her memory. And so, being the moral sort, she's found herself employment that lets her be around plenty of brains that no one is using anymore.
Honestly, her life is actually pretty normal for being a living dead girl. She lives in a crypt in the cemetery she works at, and has a slightly 'airheaded' ghost for a roommate. Her other friend, Scotty, is a 'thrope' of the terrier variety.
But she still has a couple problems. When she eats a brain, which is by far the most disgusting thing she's ever had to choke down, she is flooded with the fragmented memories of that person's life. Sometimes it includes a bit of unfinished business that the decedent has left behind. Often it includes his final moments, and whether he died under...mysterious circumstances.
It turns out, Gwen isn't the only undead in town either. A pack of vampires has taken up residence at a local paintball course, and while their leader is bright enough not to leave a trail of bodies behind, not all of them are.
And there might be another, less ethical zombie in town as well.
Chris Robertson does a good job setting up a world full of creatures of the night, while still giving us some rules to go by. The characters each have their own personality quirks already, with plenty of room to go. Gwen even has a love interest, of a sort.
It's amazing how full a life a gal can have, even when she's dead.
Highs: Gwen's friends are hilarious, and their antics are sometimes even more fun than the main story.
Lows: The artwork isn't quite what I expect from a Vertigo title, and there's a lot of backstory still missing.
Verdict: iZombie Volume 1: Dead to the World is a fun, quick read with lots of potential for future volumes.
Further Reading: iZombie Volume 2: uVampire, V Wars, World War Z, Soulless: The Manga, The Unwritten
"Just a story? Tell that to the Greeks who fought at Troy...Tell the women burned as witches. The Rosenbergs. Sacco and Vanzetti. Tell the martyrs of all the religions and the millions who fell in all the wars since time began. Stories are the only thing worth dying for."
That speech, made by a man consumed by a story, eloquently sums up the beginning of an amazing new series from Vertigo, The Unwritten Volume 1 by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross.
Tom Taylor can't help who his father was. Wilson Taylor created the world-wide phenomenon of the Timmy Taylor book series. He completed 13 books centered around this character before his mysterious disappearance, leaving his own son Tommy behind.
Fast-forward a decade or so, and Tom hasn't done all that much with his life. Really, besides money from his father's estate, he mostly just trolls the convention circuit signing his father's books and doing Q&A sessions for fans who have a dubious grasp of reality.
His whole life begins to unravel at London Tommy Con. As Lizzie Hexan brings light to the inconsistencies in Tommy's childhood, more and more of his life stops making sense. Finally, after he survives a kidnapping by a fan (with a little bit of help from Lizzie) he's hailed as a messiah, begged to lay hands on the sick and heal the crippled. And as he continues to track down figures from his childhood, it looks like there are outside forces determined to keep the past firmly in the past.
With a debut including Sandman and Hellblazer, Vertigo has been known from the beginning for bringing high-quality, innovative series to the comic store. With a current lineup including the hit 'Fables' along with this title, Vertigo is continuing this trend today. While this title could go in many different directions, history has shown that it won't lack for quality storytelling.
Highs: The 'torture porn' version of Tommy Taylor make me giggle out loud.
Lows: The the switch to the past in the last chapter was a bit jarring.
Verdict: An extremely promising opening to the series, with some of the best lines about the importance of stories I've ever read.
Further Reading: Fables, Y - The Last Man
