iZombie Repossession by Chris Roberson

Title: iZombie Repossession
Author: Chris Roberson
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Michael Allred
Colors by Laura Allred
Guest art by J Bone and Jim Rugg.

The morons at Barnes & Noble have this listed as iZombie Repossessed. Unless they changed the name for the ebook, it's actually 'Repossession'. I try to support B&N because they're one of the few large presences capable of standing up to Amazon, but they need to get their act together or even they will be going the way of the small independent book stores (remember those?). Amazon isn't any better in this case. They have it listed exactly the same way. They're morons, too. Its right there on the cover, guys; you know, the cover you're using to illustrate the book for sale? Maybe you should buy this from your local comic book store? Of course they don't have the ebook, but if the ebook is too small to read, then what's the point?

This one rips off so many things it's almost unreal. The band Ghost Dance is taken from real life band Hawkwind, and Adam Morlock is the novelist is Michael Morcock who had close ties to the band.

Strider is really nothing more than the Silver Surfer as depicted in the Fantastic Four movie Rise of the Silver Surfer. That said, this entire series has been an homage to fifties horror movies, and to golden age comic book culture, so no harm no foul here.

This volume is the fattest of the series and it brings all the story arcs to a conclusion. Again the art work and coloring are top notch. The story just flies (not 'lifes', as my spell-checker thinks my klutzy fingers were trying to type!). Spot meets Gavin, who is Gwen's brother, and the two fall in love, but Gavin is possessed, so there are issues there. the Dead Presidents are working with the corporation, and with whole of Eugene Oregon is under martial law.

Galatea's plan starts coming to fruition on top of a hill outside of town, while Ellie and her zombie/vampire boyfriend find and free Spot who Amon was trying to sacrifice to free the world from Galatea's plan. But what about the brain in the coffee maker and the Russian zombie?

So as Amon's once-a-year liaison with his were-leopard wife is passing before he can avail himself of it, (shades of the 1985 movie Ladyhawke) monsters start appearing all over town, coming from an ever enlarging rift, and Amon teaches Gwen that though her sacrifice, the rift can be healed and everyone saved. Maybe Gwen has her own ideas about that. I thoroughly recommend this series and I also recommend the TV version, which is very different from the series and in my opinion, better.

iZombie Dead to the World by Chris Roberson

Title: iZombie Dead to the World
Author: Chris Roberson
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Michael Allred
Colors by Laura Allred.

This novel is gorgeously illustrated by Michael Allred with awesome coloring by Laura Allred. At the Comic Vine website, Laura is listed as the wife of Michael in the lead-in blurb. Michael isn't listed as the husband of Laura. Shame of comic vine for their genderism in indicating that Laura is really a chattel. I think I am going to have to quit using those guys as a link for writers and artists in graphic novels.

This is the first of four in a series that was pretty awesome. I am not typically a fan of series, but I got into reading this because I first watched the TV show, which is completely awesome. I was initially disappointed in the comic because they changed a heck of a lot for the TV show and I really liked that, but the comic grew on me as I read it and now I am a fan of this, too. Volume two dropped a bit and was not quite up to par for me, but three and four came roaring back so I recommend the whole thing.

There were some issues with it, nevertheless. For example, in this series, Gwen (who is Olivia in the TV show) is not a doctor who conveniently now works the medical examiner's office, but is working on a crew of grave diggers. She doesn't live with a room mate, but in a crypt in the graveyard, and she isn't in touch with her family or her old boyfriend. Nor does she work with a cop pretending to be a psychic to solve murders.

Everyone she knew in her old life thinks she's dead. Her grave is right there in the graveyard. For me the TV scenario was smarter. It's highly unlikely they would have four people working in a cemetery digging graves full time. Don't they have one guy with a little backhoe working part time these days? The expense of having four people would be way too high. OTOH, this is comic book fiction, so I guess we shouldn't expect too much realism.

There are two detectives (after a fashion) in this novel, though. They work for a private corporation, and are pursuing an investigation into certain mysterious events in this city (Eugene, Oregon), and at one crime scene, one of them takes Polaroid pictures. The image shows him waving the picture back and forth to "dry" it, but unless it's a really antique black and white original Polaroid, there's nothing to dry. The newer Polaroid pictures were sealed, so shaking one of those doesn't do anything except maybe risk damaging the developing picture. It certainly won't dry it, but maybe this guy spends so much time sitting on his ass that he got a bad case of Polaroids?

I noted the phrase, "To meet whom?" which is grammatically correct, but once again I have to say I think this form is antique and should be abolished. No one uses it in speech any more unless they're trying to be pretentious, or unless they're an English teacher, and even then I suspect it's rarely used. If it's not part of modern, everyday speech, which this isn't, it's time to let it go in our writing, too. Authors tend to make the mistake of not only writing it in their narrative to show how educated and accomplished they are, but they also put it into the mouths of their characters and make them unrealistic by doing so. BTW, did you know it's The Whom's 50th touring anniversary this year...?

On the good side (and purely in the context of the novel), they had this really interesting explanation for ghosts and other supernatural creatures which was rooted in Egyptian mythology. I don't know if this is true of the ancient Egyptians or not, but the narrator in the story was talking about how they believed in several different kinds of soul. They believed in what he termed an over-soul, which resided in the mind and was more rational and analytical, and an under-soul which resided in the heart, and was much more emotional.

The character said that when the over-soul is freed from the corporeal body, it becomes a ghost, but when the under-soul is so freed, it becomes a poltergeist. When the body dies, but the over-soul remains, it becomes a vampire, and when the same thing happens but the under-soul remains, it becomes a zombie. I thought that was pretty cool.

The character, Amon, goes on to explain that when the over-soul gets into someone else's body, they're deemed to be possessed. If an animal under-soul gets into your body, then you become a werewolf or were-whatever-the-animal-was. If you die but both souls remain in your body, you become a revenant, and he was telling Gwen, that this is what she is, so she's not actually a true zombie. This begs the question as to why Gwen is behaving like a zombie, craving brains, and worrying about losing her memories if she doesn't eat brains routinely.

Like I said, I recommend this novel and the following three.

The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci

Title: The Plain Janes
Author: Cecil Castellucci
Publisher: Minx
Rating: Worthy!
Illustrator: Jim Rugg
Lettering: Jared K Fletcher

The Plain Janes is not what I expected, but pleasantly so. Cecil Castellucci has created a charming story about Jane, a girl who survives what might be 9/11, but might be "just another" terrorist bombing in Metro City, and is urgently transported outside the city by her parents, who think it's safer in suburbia. I had thought that "Cecil" was a guy since you don't normally encounter that name for girls, but she's very much a girl, and I suspect that there's some autobiographical content in this novel.

Note that although the cover is in color, the novel is line drawings and gray-scale. The artwork is oddly appealing despite its initial appearance of simplicity and the rudimentary aura it gives off to begin with.

Jane is heartbroken to leave her friends and especially the John Doe patient who saved her life and now lies in a coma at the hospital. She visits him regularly and talks to him, but now she can visit no more: he's too far away. She did purloin his half-filled art sketch pad however, vowing to fill it on his behalf, which seems a bit presumptuous to me. Turning lemons into lemonade, Jane decides on a mini-make-over. She cuts her hair, dyeing it black so she can start her new school with a new perspective.

Shunning the popular girls at lunchtime, Jane sits at a table of apparent "loser" girls, who may or may not like her sitting with them, but who curiously are all named Jane. These girls are smart, talented in different fields, and poor socializers. Jane eventually gets them talking and lures them into joining her in an art project.

On am empty lot which has been set aside for a strip mall, the four girls build three quite large pyramids out of rubble one night, modeled on those a Gizeh in Egypt. They post a sign announcing that the pyramids have lasted for thousands of years, and asking how long the proposed strip mall will last. The sign is signed People Loving Art In Neighborhoods (P.L.A.I.N.), and so is born The Plain Janes.

As the PJs take on more anonymous projects, they garner for themselves a reputation, and start bonding and enjoying their lives for once. Their reputation is oddly a bad thing, seen by the school authorities as destructive and as vandalism, even though it is, er, PLAINly not. One big weakness of this novel is that Castellucci offers no reason at all as to why this should be. The PLAIN artist could be anyone or any group, yet it quickly comes down to an assumption that someone at school is doing this, and a psycho cop comes to the school and gives a lecture about this "vandalism" and vows to run down the perps. I thought that this was an unnecessary slur on the police.

There is a side story about a non-existent "romance" between Jane and a guy at school where neither side seems interested in becoming involved, and there's a weird, rather inexplicable ending, which took away from the story for me and made it rather weak in the finale, but overall this was a good story with very positive vibes and I recommend it.