For those of you who haven’t been reading I Zombie, you really ought to.

“Oh, but zombies are so overexposed.  Everybody’s doing zombies these days,” you say.

Not like this. See, this zombie, our heroine Gwendolyn, is newly dead and rapidly losing her own memories and humanity, and in order for her to not turn into a shambling monster, she has to eat the brains of the newly dead, at which point she absorbs their memories and then takes on helping them take care of some unfinished business.

A new arc began in issue 7, “iZombie, uVampire.”

“Damn it!! The only thing more overdone these days than zombies is damn vampires!!!”

No, seriously.  Stick around. These vamps neither sparkle nor mope nor write in diaries. But they are hot young girls who hunting a pair of vampire hunters, one of whom is dating Gwen the zombie, who has no idea she is a zombie, by the way.

Oh, and there’s a teenage guy who loves comics, D&D, and lives with his overbearing grandfather. . . who is a chimpanzee named Gramps.

Yes.  A talking, cigar-smoking chimp named Gramps. That alone should be enough for you to want to pick up this book. However, let me give you three more.

1- The writing by Chris Roberson, who you may have enjoyed the work of on Fables and some spinoffs, and who recently took over on Superman.  His prose is fresh and unassuming, which is something I’ve really appreciated lately. Don’t get me wrong- I generally love the (overwritten) work of Bendis (and recently Matt Fraction too!) and enjoyed the dreariness of Kirkman and Walking Dead, but it’s all become a bit much.  Roberson is a breath of fresh air, making comics fun and new again.

2- The art by Mike Allred, who you’ve hopefully enjoyed on Madman, X-statix, or possibly even The Golden Plates (I know at least one of you has read it.  Ok, I confess– it was me).  His colors, courtesy of wife/colorist Laura Allred, are so bleakly beautiful and understated. The characterization that is completely evident on Gwen’s face as she has a sort of zombie moment, losing a portion of her humanity, and half of her face suddenly goes all Harvey Dent/Night of the Living Dead, and then looks so normal, so cute, so vulnerable in the next frame as she recomposes herself.  The art tells the story as much as the prose, and Allred’s style meshes perfectly with Roberson’s prose.

3- Some humanity put back into the tepid meme of vampires and zombies. I won’t spoil this issue, but in the last page there’s a major reveal that really makes us feel for the ordeal Gwen is going through, mixing the memories of the brain she’s recently ingested with her own memories and the two co-mingling.  Next month we get the final in this uVampire arc, so I highly recommend you go back and pick up all of the issues starting with #7 so you get the full story.  Hell, go all the way back to #1! But even more importantly, get this one added to your hold/pull.