By: Chris Roberson (writer), Gilbert Hernandez (art), Laura Allred (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)
The Review: Anyone who has followed my reviews of this series knows that I’m a serious fan of Mike Allred’s art, so when I first flipped this issue open, I said, “Hey! This isn’t Mike Allred art! Oh…wait a minute….this looks like one of the Hernandez brothers! Hot dog!” A glance at the credits shows that, in fact, our guest artist on this issue is Gilbert Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame (among other things). Vertigo just does a TREMENDOUS job of bringing in guest artists who are incredibly talented and pretty consistent with the look and feel of the series.
Since I’m already talking about Mr. Hernandez, let’s stick with his art. He is a great example of knowing what lines are important and the fact that sometimes you don’t have to noodle with your art and make everything hyper-detailed to get across the impression that the artist is trying to convey. Just as a random example, there is a page in this issue with a ghostly cowboy. He is pot-bellied, but Hernandez is able to communicate this fat belly with a mere rounding of the contour of the character on one side and three short lines above the belly (showing where the shift folds to envelope the belly). That’s it. And then to top this off, colorist Laura Allred just colors the shirt flat blue. What a relief when you see image after image in Marvel/DC superhero comics where there would be a lot more linework and some heavily rendered coloring showing off the glistening highlights of the dude’s fat belly. This is a great issue from an art standpoint.
The story is up to the task too. My biggest complaint with I Zombie is that there is too much stuff going on in most of these issues. This issue is very streamlined as it amounts to a simply back-story on Ellie the Ghost. Long time readers of the series know that Ellie is main-character, Gwyn’s best friend, but we haven’t really known much about her: How she died? Why she hangs out in the graveyard? How did she met Gwyn? All are answered here.
I usually don’t comment on lettering, but Todd Klein does a great job on this issue. He uses about 5 different fonts for various parts of the story as appropriate for what the story is doing at the time. On one hand, you could say, “Big woop! Who cares about fonts?” But it is just so nice to see a comic where the letterer gave a crap and clearly put more thought into the lettering than mere balloon placement and treated their part of the process like an art of its own. I think buying any comic with Mr. Klein on letters makes sense since it is an indication that some creator or editor wants their product to be really professional.
As for what’s not so good… Well, it’s a step back from the main story to have this somewhat stand alone issue. My biggest complaint with the series is that there are 5-6 plots going on at a time. The only way to resolve that complexity is to push through and I think that process (and story) will be very rewarding, so I was a bit disappointed to step back. And, I also have concerns for how much of the main plot I’ll remember now that we’ve essentially taken a month off from the main story.
But, such things happen. It won’t matter a bit once this story is collected and artists DO need a month off from time to time and I think it makes more sense for the creator/editor to keep shipping the title, maintain the reader’s monthly habit and just do a standalone issue.
Conclusion: A good stand alone with wonderful guest art by the awesome Gilbert Hernandez.
Grade: B+
-Dean Stell
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