(2025 Update: I’m using the banner from the Marvel Zombies series review that was written later down the road for the sake of convenience.)
“It started with a flash in the sky and a ripple in the clouds. The hunger is what brought it here – and feed it did, until the Marvel Heroes were no more. They were replaced with soulless monsters, driven only with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. This is no world of Marvel Heroes. This is the world of Marvel Zombies!”
And with that begins a miniseries that spun off from a Ultimate Fantastic Four storyline called Crossover, which teased the crossover between the Ultimate universe and the Marvel universe but gave us a world of zombies instead. One has to wonder why no such Earth existed in DC’s own Multiverse (before the whole Crisis thing came about… uh, forget it), but after one whiff of this, it’s pretty easy to see why.
In this world of Marvel Zombies, the zombified heroes have pretty much ate up most (if not all) of the human population, leaving behind only the super-powered zombies who either search for food or contemplate their means. Unlike the traditional idiot zombies of the past who scream “braaaaaaaaains”, these zombies maintain their intelligence, though their virtues have been replaced with a hunger for flesh.
Unfortunately, this potentially exciting set of consequences and series of events is marred by a fairly slow pace. The first issue opened up with a living Magneto holding his own against the zombies in a fairly good fight before becoming food, but from there, the series slows to a crawl as heroes contemplate how to cure or kill themselves, or where to find more food. Nothing particularly exciting, but the Silver Surfer showing up and the zombies about to go after would have led to a decent fight to open up the next issue. Instead, we get more of the same inactivity that plagued the second half of the first issue. Somewhere, this seems more than fine to some people, but this isn’t doing much for me. Yeah, the subtle lightness added (if you want to call it that) helps a bit, but not by much.
The book is visually adequate; the choice of dark tones and colors, as well as the grotesque appearances of the undead heroes really suit the subject matter at; much more so than those depicted in UFF. The amount of gore presented in this issue is plentiful despite the T+ rating the book’s been slapped with. You’d often wonder how much of this stuff got published, but really, stuff like this has happened before. Some people might be turned off by it, but considering I sat through the first two issues without so much a squeal, I’m sure there are those who find the gore tolerable or even hilarious.
Marvel Zombies, as a whole, is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s differs from all the other zombie-centric stuff in that the undead aren’t mindless, stupid creatures craving brains and so it offers something different. On the other hand, the undead are just intelligent, super-powered creatures craving brains and yet doesn’t make the storyline any different enough from your typical zombie storyline. If you’re a fan of horror stories or zombie stories in particular, then this is a good addition to your collection. If the Ultimate Fantastic Four: Crossover storyarc had somehow piqued your interest enough to see where the zombie angle goes from there, you can’t really go wrong. But for anyone else looking for something different or for an engaging storyline, you won’t find it here.
dtm666 