Sunday, May 31, 2015

iZombie on the Small Screen: When There's No Room Left in Comics ...

I’ve written about iZombie before, and did so prior to the CW show.  Basically, I am a fan of the comic’s story and Mike Allred’s fantastic art.  I was saddened when it ended, but was not all that surprised when I heard it had been picked up for television.

I’ve watched the show.

I like it.

It’s not the comic.
What strikes me as odd is the direction in which the show went.  At first I thought the show was going to slowly introduce the comic’s aspects in order to ease the audience into this weird world that had been created.  As each episode passed, however, it was clear that the show was going in its own almost cookie-cutter direction.  It is, for all intents and purposes, a mystery show with a psychic.  Something, I might add, that has been done before, though not with a zombie.  I imagine the show’s creators didn’t want to mess with the formula that has been tried and true.

A fan of the show who picks the back issues or trade paperbacks is going to be very surprised, especially if he or she really loves the show.  The comic is nothing like it.  My guess is that if they are driven to pick up the source material it is because that fan loves the show’s premise that much and if that is the case I can’t help but think that fan is going to be disappointed by what he or she reads. 


There are moments in the show that lead me to believe it could be really slowly delving into the comic’s storyline (and I’ve yet to see the last two episodes as of this writing), but at this rate it will be about ten seasons before it even gets close to the insanity of the source series.  Perhaps that is the plan, but I doubt it.  The show, as good as it is, has played it far too safe so far to make me think it has the rotting guts to do anything else.  That’s a shame, too, as iZombie was at its best when it took readers out of the norm.  The show seems content to be by-the-numbers, and that is fairly disrespectful to the comic’s creators … and the audience.