Jack Kirby's Spirit World (1970-71; collected 2012)

Spirit World: written by Jack Kirby, Mark Evanier, and Steve Sherman; illustrated by Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, and Neal Adams (1970-71; collected 2012): An oddity caused in part by DC's inability to commit to new projects in the 1970's, Spirit World was supposed to be part of DC's foray into the world of black-and-white comics magazines. And it sort of was.

But DC hedged its bets by creating a whole other shell company to have its name on the covers, constantly downgraded what the book would contain, and ultimately dumped it on the market in such a way that the first issue may have never reached most newsstands.

Jack Kirby and friends put together this magazine, along with In the Days of the Mob, which had a similarly truncated existence. Kirby's Boswell, Mark Evanier, lays out the odd circumstances surrounding the creation of Spirit World. DC comes across as even more bumbling than usual for the time period.

The stories here are a lot of fun, both from the first issue and the never-published second issue. Along with a fumetti and a prose piece, we get some horror pieces that lean on parapsychology rather than the overt supernatural. One of the ghosts is a cousin to the composite ghost-monster of Robert Bloch's classic story "The Hungry House," and Kirby's visualization of such a thing is one of the kicks of the volume. Recommended.

Brain Candy: Not So Dandy

iZombie Volume 1: Dead to the World: written by Chris Roberson; illustrated by Mike Allred (2009-2010; collected 2010): Breezy, fun DC Vertigo series about the adventures of Gwen Dylan, reluctant zombie, and her natural and supernatural friends.

Gwen looks relatively normal most of the time, but she needs to eat human brains once a month to avoid turning into a more standard shambling, drooling zombie. As she doesn't like the taste of brains, this is something of a drag. At least her job as a gravedigger gives her easy access to the gray matter she needs but doesn't crave.

And at least she has friends, most notably Ellie, a young woman/ghost who died some time in the early 1960's, and Scott, a were-terrier. Gwen gets stuck trying to figure out who killed the owner of the brains she eats near the beginning of this collection -- the memories of the deceased transfer to her, though understanding them can be something of a chore. And there will be other supernatural problems to face as well, including mummies and vampires and monster-hunters.

Roberson keeps things light without getting glib, and Allred's art is, as always, a clean-lined pleasure. It's funny that more straightforward, 'traditional' comic-book art continues to thrive in the Vertigo line while the 'mainstream' DC line gets ever murkier and ever more over-rendered and buried in a slop of full-process colour. So it goes. Recommended.