Stacey Abbott on iZombie

The rise of the sympathetic monster has been a unifying theme of OGOM’s research. Of all the monsters to feature in paranormal romance and similar narratives that humanise the undead and the monstrous, the zombie is surely one of the most difficult to handle convincingly. Daniel Waters’s Generation Dead (which gave us the phrase ‘Open Graves, Open Minds’) was one of the first to do this successfully. Here, Stacey Abbott, who has made valuable contributions to OGOM from the beginning, analyses the TV programme iZombie against this background of the changing character of the zombie in this on-line essay, ‘iZombie: The New Voice of the Zombie Apocalypse‘. It’s a perceptive and detailed essay that also reveals the broader issues and political/economic context involved. I haven’t seen this series, but Stacey’s exploration of it really arouses my interest.