Marvel Zombies #1 (of 5)

Writer: Robert Kirkman
Art: Sean Phillips
Colors: June Chung
Letters: Randy Gentile

Spinning off from a recent Ultimate Fantastic Four story, Magneto (the Ultimate version) finds himself trapped in an alternate Marvel universe where a terrible plague has turned all the superheroes into flesh craving zombies. Magneto tries to escape from the horrific “heroes” but with nowhere to run can even the world’s most powerful mutant survive? What do you think?

After reviewing two other Marvel books this week and being massively underwhelmed by both I was really counting on Marvel Zombies to save the day. It’s written by Robert Kirkman, writer of one of the best zombie comics ever, The Walking Dead from Image Comics. It’s drawn by one of my favorite artists, the lovely and talented Sean Phillips. And it’s got superhero zombies! What could possibly go wrong? Not that much actually.

Yeah, I enjoyed it. Actually, let me say that I came around to enjoying it. On my first pass I really didn’t like it at all. First off, all of the zombies talk! What? Zombies aren’t supposed to talk. But here they are, carrying out lengthy conversations about the nature of being a zombie. Okay. Plus, it really feels like I stepped into the middle of something here. Like I missed an issue somewhere. Sure, this story spins out of another one, but being that it’s a separate mini-series (not even branded as an Ultimate book) I really feel like Kirkman could have done a better job explaining the situation. And lord, it’s cheesy.

But then I realized, of course it’s cheesy. Barring the talking zombies, it’s everything a good zombie story should be. It’s cheesy, darkly humorous and really, really gross. Man, is it gross. The physics of the Hulk eating an entire human leg and the reverting back to Bruce Banner, only to have his stomach burst from too much undigested meat, that alone was enough to make me turn my own shade of green. But I loved it all the same.

I’ll definitely be picking up the rest of this amazingly grotesque superhero gore-fest. Thank you, Marvel Zombies. Thank you for indeed saving the day.
 

Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance preview books for review purposes.

Comic Review Index