Marvel Zombies 3

Fresh meat. Meaning a new writer (Fred Van Lente) and artist (Kev Walker). And I was looking forward to a change in the storyline, since (as I’ve previously noted) I wasn’t that thrilled by Robert Kirkman’s first two volumes. I found Walker’s art nearly indistinguishable from that of Sean Phillips so didn’t register any change on that account.

And . . . Van Lente really came through. The story here is tight, not at all like Kirkman’s sprawling and confused cosmic zombie epic. If you want you could see some continuity with the previous books, but basically this is a standalone. There’s a zombie universe in play, meaning one that has been taken over by zombies. Unfortunately, since the zombies have finished eating everything they’re now looking for new worlds to colonize/devour, or whole new universes where they can spread what they’ve taken to calling the “Hunger Gospel.” Which would be the zombie virus. Same thing.

Zombie Kingpin is top dog in this zombie dimension, but he has lots of flunkies. Among them is zombie Doctor Strange, who can cast a portal to other locations in the multiverse. This, in turn, lets zombie Morbius and zombie Deadpool infiltrate a secret inter-dimensional facility that exists in our world.

To what end? Well, the zombies have a wicked plan cooked up whereby they will pretend to inoculate all of our superheroes against the zombie virus while really infecting them with the same, which will then make us easier to take over. Man, that’s what I call dirty pool. Not to mention a storyline that feeds into every anti-vaxxer’s favourite conspiracy theory.

Trying to stop them are Machine Man and Jocasta, who have to visit the zombie universe and then make it back. To be honest, if Jocasta did anything on this mission I’m not sure what it was. But Machine Man really kicks ass. He’s a one-man zombie Armageddon. But will that be enough?

As things got started I was wondering if I was going to be able to get into it. Once again, things are very dark. Dark in a way that deadens the wisecracking and attempts at humour. I get the gore, and the fact that zombies do eat people. But Van Lente continues with Kirkman’s thing for heroes being tied up and then cannibalized, which reminds me of the people kept in the basement of the house in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Here they even have a clone farm in the zombie universe to keep the hungry dead fed on vat-grown meat. And even heroes who aren’t as good to eat are also kept vaguely alive, if you can call Morbius or Vision alive, just so that they can be tortured. To be honest, I wasn’t sure why else Morbius and Vision were being kept around, except to add to the whole theatre-of-cruelty effect that’s going on.

If you can handle all that, the story itself is pretty compelling and I read the whole book in a rush. It really helps that things are more streamlined than in Kirkman’s comics, as the action is a lot easier to follow. Given how fast things move, this was a big plus. Throw in some fun stuff like zombie Captain Mexica (a Mexican Captain America preserved from an alternate timeline where the Aztec empire never fell), a bonus section of the usual parody covers (not just of famous comics but of movie posters too), and a relatively happy ending, and I ended up having a good time. In my opinion it was the best Marvel Zombies book yet, and had me finally looking forward to what’s next on the menu.

Graphicalex