iZombie began with two simple ideas. The first had to do with zombies themselves. Unlike their other monster brethren, zombies had become a bit limited in scope in recent decades, it seemed to me. We’ve seen vampire stories set in different historical epochs, werewolf stories set in the modern day, Frankenstein’s monster stories set in the future, and on and on. But unlike other monsters, who could be easily used in any historical or cultural setting, zombies had by and large been relegated to the “post-apocalyptic/societal collapse” scenario, typically in a world reduced to chaos and even savagery by the emergence of the zombies themselves. (There HAVE been zombie stories set in the past, most notably in the Old West and in Victorian England, but these always seemed to me to be the first steps to some alternate history post-apocalypse, rather than a glimpse of “our” own past.) Zombies were seldom seen lurking in the shadows of OUR world, in the modern day. Well, why not? The second thought had to do with one of the standard tropes of monster fiction: namely, that a normal person when turned into a monster becomes, well, MONSTROUS. A regular Joe or Jane Q. Public when bitten by a vampire or werewolf inevitably becomes dark and brooding, if not all out EVIL. But why? If I was bitten by a werewolf, I wouldn’t suddenly abandon my wife and child to live a dark and maudlin existence at the edges of society. I’d just lock the door once a month, and otherwise get on with business. So what if we had a zombie in the modern world, I thought, who DIDN’T immediately go all dark and depressing. What if it were a zombie who retained enough of their memories and personality to know they didn’t want to hurt anyone, but just wanted to get along. What would they be like? What would they do for fun? And more importantly, how would they get the BRAINS they needed? (As for why zombies need brains, that’s a whole OTHER story…) Gwen Dylan was the result of that line of thinking, and iZombie is her story. -Chris Roberson IZOMDW_Cvr.jpg