iZOMBIE is a comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 series created by writer Chris Roberson

Chris Roberson

Christopher William Roberson is a Major League Baseball outfielder, currently playing for the Sultanes de Monterrey in the Mexican League....

 and Michael Allred, published by DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

's Vertigo imprint beginning in 2010. The series deals with Gwen Dylan, a revenant

Revenant

The term Revenant may refer to:*Revenant , a creature brought back to life to fulfill a special goal*Revenant , a folkloric corpse that returns from the grave*The Revenant , a 2009 horror comedy...

 gravedigger in Eugene, Oregon

Eugene, Oregon

Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...

 and her friends Ellie, a 1960s ghost, and Scott, a wereterrier.

Gwen can pass for a regular girl, but she needs to eat a brain once a month to keep from losing her memories. As a gravedigger she has plenty of access to recently deceased people; when she consumes their brains she "inherits" part of the deceased's thoughts.

The "monsters" in iZOMBIE are explained via the concepts of over- and undersoul. The oversoul (as in Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

's The Oversoul

Over-soul

“The Oversoul” is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, first published in 1841. The broad subject of the essay, considered one of Emerson's best, is the human soul...

) is "seated in the brain, contains the thoughts, memories, and and personality", while the undersoul (as in Michael McClure

Michael McClure

Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...

's poem Dark Brown) is "seated in the heart, contains the appetites, emotions and fears". Ghosts are thus bodiless oversouls; poltergeists, bodiless undersouls; vampires bodies without undersouls (thirsting for emotions); and zombies, bodies without oversouls. Revenants, like Gwen, are unique in that they possess both oversouls and undersouls. Souls can also "infect" the living, which accounts for the possessed and werewolves and the like.

Characters

• Gwen Dylan: the main protagonist, a revenant.
• Ellie: a ghost. She died in the 1960s and had never left Oregon.
• Scott ("Spot"): a were-terrier, very much in love with Gwen.
• Vincent: friend and co-worker of Scott
• Ashok: friend and co-worker of Scott and Vincent

Trade paperbacks

#	Title	ISBN	Release date	Collected material
1	Dead to the World	ISBN 1401229654	March 22, 2011	iZOMBIE #1–5, a story from House of Mystery Halloween Annual #1 and about 11 additional sketches and covers
2	uVampire	ISBN 1401232965	September 7, 2011	iZOMBIE #6–12 and a story from House of Mystery Halloween Annual #2
3	Six Feet Under & Rising	ISBN 1401233708	February, 2012	iZOMBIE #13–17