IZombie: Comic Book "turned" TV Series

iZombie Ad featuring Rose McIver as Liv Moore

IZombie, a new CW show, was first introduced to the public on March 17th, 2015. The show follows the life, or rather living death, of Olivia "Liv" Moore played by Rose McIver. This character is a young woman who was turned into a zombie when, at a party, was scratched by a fellow zombie. The show starts five months after the incident. Her live has been turned upside down because of this change, including her career choices, her love life and her eating habits.

Liv has gained an ability that allows her access to memories, habits and abilities of the people whose brains she consumes. Because of this, mixed with her access to the brains of murder victims through her job as a mortician assistant, she becomes the assistant to a cop that looks into these murders.


This show, created by Rob Thomas and producer Diane Ruggiero, is a loose adaptation of the comic book, iZombie, written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Michael Allred.

iZombie comic book cover page of #1

The comic book's main character is Gwendolyn Dylan, a 20-something grave-digging zombie, whose best friends are a ghost and a were-terrier. Gwen also has the ability to gain access to memories, habits and abilities of the different people through the consumption of their brains. She, just like in the show, uses this ability to help solve murder cases of the people whose brains she has consumed.

The original version consists of many introductions to supernatural characters, including zombies, ghosts, were-terriers, and vampires.



While the two versions of the story differ greatly, we can still see that the underlining idea of the original story is present across these two medias. Both of these stories are showing a young woman living life as a crime fighting zombie.

I'm normally not a fan of when new medias change much of the original story, but I do like what CW has going and I'm hoping they start to incorporate more of the original plot by adding in other supernatural beings.