By: Chris Roberson (writer), Michael Allred (art), Laura Allred (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Shelly Bond (editor)
The Story: A cute zombie & her monster-hunter boyfriend take on a hoard of shambling zombies.
What’s Good: This is a pretty standard issue of I Zombie. If you’re invested in and enjoy the story material (which is kinda upbeat slice-of-life meets creature movie), this will be a fun issue for you.
Even though I’ve enjoyed this series quite a bit, one of my constant complaints has been that there are too many plot lines for a 20-page comic. In this issue, Roberson smartly reduces most of the story elements to a page or two. So, even though we check in with the chimpanzee grandfather and Galatea, the main story of Horatio and Gwen trying to deal with a hoard of zombies occupies more than 50% of the issue. This makes the comic feel more like it is about something and has a story than merely watching a lot of goings-on among a group of loosely connected characters.
It also looks like a lot of these plots are starting to swirl together such that you could almost see all these strange characters in one place in an issue or two. And, that includes the Dead Presidents back-up story characters that have been a cool addition to this series. Some neat things could happen if these folks all intersect and I’m looking forward to that.
The Allreds again to a bang-up job on the art. One of the hard things about writing online reviews is feeling like you need to come up with something unique to say about creators who produce great work every month. Everything in this comic is a real treat to look at. Love the character designs. Love the soft feeling that the women have. Really love the tasteful and mostly flat colors.
What’s Not So Good: Even with aforementioned streamlining of the story, there is still a LOT going on in the comic. Back in the first story arc, it felt like things got really complicated with all the undersoul and oversoul stuff before getting a nice pay off. But, even though I think this comic will probably pay off these story lines, I do wonder if we could have gotten a similar impact without a plotline or two. That would allow us to spend more time with the characters that are more enjoyable. Just as an example: I don’t really care about Spot the Were-Terrier, his grandpa the chimpanzee or Spot’s nerdy friends. They’ve all had their moments, but I really am interested in Gwen, Ellie the ghost, Horatio and the paintball vampire-girls. And Spot and company are stealing their panels…
Conclusion: Lots of good stuff. Still a little too busy, but this crazy comic about all sorts of creatures is coming close to a pay off. Great art (again)!
Grade: B-
-Dean Stell
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