I Think, Therefore ‘I, Zombie’

It isn't iZombie, a handy new Mac app designed to streamline your brain-consumption needs. No, instead it is Vertigo's new book "I, Zombie," and judging by its newly unveiled covers, it promises to be a very different sort of zombie tale, and a very different Vertigo book.

In what is a huge leap from traditional Vertigo covers, retro deco-inflected artist Darwyn Cooke lays brush to the variant here, and in so doing brings promise of a book that will buck conventional horror tropes. This is no decomposing corpse seeking to make a messy meal of your gray matter; it's a vivacious looking lady who seems to have cultivated a palate for cured cerebellums. A mind, as the tagline suggests, is a terrible thing to taste.

Written by Vertigo newcomer Chris Roberson, with art by longtime industry standout Mike Allred, "I, Zombie" seems poised to bring a very different voice to the publishing line.

Check out the Mike Allred cover and learn more about the new Vertigo book, after the jump.I, Zombie is described by the Vertigo blog as "[A] detective series with a mix of urban fantasy and romantic dramedy. Gwendolyn "Gwen" Dylan is a 20-something gravedigger in an eco-friendly cemetery. Once a month she must eat a human brain to keep from losing her memories, but in the process she becomes consumed with the thoughts and personality of the dead person until she eats the next one. She sets out to fulfill the dead person's last request, solve a crime, or right a wrong."

While Cooke's variant is a sure outlier among Vertigo covers, Mike Allred is almost as unlikely an artist to tend to chores on a zombie book. Best known for his work on his creator-owned superhero, Madman, Allred shows his artistic range with this cover, mixing the beauty of Gwen with the gruesome implications of the living undead.