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[Retrospective]Marvel Zombies: Dead Days

Bobby DerieBobby Derie Registered User regular
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This week's "monster" retrospective tackles one of the most interesting forms of undead...and good gravy, can you believe this series is 10 years old? Probably. The Crossover event in Ultimate Fantastic Four, five series, numerous spin-offs and tie-in properties later, the Marvel Zombies seem well-ensconced in the overall Marvel Universe. And reading the first series over again, (and Dead Days, which is better if you read it first), I can see why.

First, because this is essentially like a classic What If? People tend to forget about What If?, because the more recent versions tend to be badly-written one-shots based off of recent events, but the classic What If? series was all about being completely free of the traditional narrative restraints of a popular comic book. It was, in a sense, professional fanfiction. There were no holds barred as far as timing or what you could do to characters. So not only could things get crazy, but you could tell stories that had unhappy endings, or where multiple major characters died, or your One True Pair hooked up for good and established a new status quo. This was almost unique in comics as far as being an officially-blessed creative exercise - DC's closest equivalent was Elseworlds, and that tended to recast established characters in a new setting but rarely changed the basic relationships. Even in, for example, Red Son, Superman was a hero - just a weirdly Soviet one. But What If? gave writers the opportunity to really think outside the box - no holds barred except the Comics Code Authority.

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This is technically the closest precursor to Marvel Zombies.

The second thing - and I tip my hat to writer Robert Kirkman on this one - is that Marvel Zombies is very true to the core concept. With the first series especially, it's a zombie film set in the Marvel Universe. And that means that the zombies are at once victims you sympathize with...until they turn. It grabs the disease motif and never lets it go, never lets up. The plot lurches from mini-climax to tension-filled moment to the next mini-climax.

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I think I like Dead Days better than the Ultimate Fantastic Four, because Spider-Man is a better starting-place for it. I love that it takes time to get through his system, that as he degenerates he starts to lose control. I love how there is no turning back, and I think that is one of the greatest successes of Marvel Zombies, in that while it establishes zombies in a superhero universe, it doesn't allow the "easy out" of a cure. So you get the very typical zombie-movie mentality - people barricading themselves against the growing zombie horde, or trying to flee. But where can you hide from a superzombie?

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Speedsters are not your friend.

This isn't the first time you've had zombies in Marvel. This isn't the first time you've had "super-zombies," as such...

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Although I sort of doubt you've read this one.

...but it might be the first time anyone has gone the Full Romero with superheroes and zombies. And getting back to the film zombie references, one of the great successes of Marvel Zombies is sticking to the very simple formula: it establishes the rules for zombies very early - a disease, spread largely by bite, that causes degeneration of the flesh and a hunger for flesh. The infected don't get dumber or slow down, so no shamblers, but they do face personality changes as they're consumed by the hunger. And then...Kirkman pretty much lets it go from there. The thing about zombies as a disease, it follows the narrative of a disease. Vectors of infection. So you follow Spider-Man, and as he continues on it spreads...and spreads...

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Also, Reed Richards finally makes himself useful.

There's humor to it too, of course. A black humor, echoing Ash's mad laughter as he cuts off his own corrupted hand in Evil Dead 2. And that too is appropriate. Humor is a defense mechanism. It helps us deal with the horror. This could have been a depressing slog without any light in it at all, a bleak-as-hell end-of-the-world story that ended with the extinction of the human race; a dead planet where even the undead eventually degenerate beyond repair. But, of course, this isn't quite the case. Because it's still a comic-book universe, isn't it? So while we could have a serious end-of-it-all setting, what Kirkman does instead is do the typical superhero one-upmanship.

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I should take a moment to talk about the art. I love the artistic direction, which went with a good mix of classic costumes and the sort rapid corpsification of the heroes. But the only decent artist any of the series ever had was Robert Suydam, who did the covers:

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They are lovely covers. I wish they had gone the full Alex Ross.

That small quibble aside though - I think Marvel Zombies is one of the boldest and most interesting creative decisions that Marvel has made in the last decade. And I think that's apparent in the way that the Zombieverse keeps coming back, not just in new series, but in different break-throughs in the regular 'verse, like the silly Headpool.

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Hell, best part of Battleworld so far.

It's really a testament to how well-done your creation is that other creators want to use it in their own series, and for that alone Kirkman should be proud.

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Of course, JMS had to ruin it, because he cannot write a comic book that isn't a black hole sucking all joy and promise from a character or premise.

There is one small elephant in the room we need to talk about, though.

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Marvel Zombies, with it's four-color undead superheroes in bloody spandex, only exists because of Kirkman's other zombie comic, The Walking Dead. In many ways, they're flip sides of the coin. They're both serious looks at a zombie epidemic, and they both have a very similar aesthetic treatment in trying to avoid the focus on the initial source of the infection in favor of focusing on sort of "living with it." The difference is not just the fantastic element; superpowers, magic, and superscience make for a very different dynamic than normal people trying to survive, but I would posit the major difference in approach is that The Walking Dead is an ongoing series, with a much more measured pace, and that allows for a much longer, bleaker, drawn-out drama quality to the narrative. Super zombies, by contrast, are limited largely to miniseries. Kirkman chewed through Marvel's superheroes and villains pretty damn quick, and the breakneck pace of the thing is part of the "fun." You don't have time to get bored, or to think too hard about the Punisher versus the Zombie Power Pack or whatever.

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And, let's be honest, Kirkman always gets his laughs in.

I like Marvel Zombies as sort of the silly shadow of The Walking Dead; I think it was a good excuse for Kirkman to let his metaphorical hair down. And it could be worse. Marvel Crossed, anyone?

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Posts

  • SorceSorce Not ThereRegistered User regular
    I liked the initial mini-series, with how the Zombie-ism was handled, and especially the ending with
    Galactus being dinner.

    I haven't read the stuff that came after that, because I figured the end of that mini is pretty much the end of the line for that particular comic/universe.

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  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    edited October 2015
    I actually really liked the sequel to the UFF storyline, "Frightful", which is more of a Dr. Doom story than anything else. I was really disappointed when they never really followed it up or explained what happened after...
    Ultimate Doom, who thankfully was sans goat legs and more of a straight up 616 Doom, left heroically into the Zombie universe after saving the UFF. Later Ultimate writers just brought back Ultimate Doom with no explanation as to what happened, and made him a straight up goat legged villain again.
    But yeah, after the Kirkman series and sequel, the quality went way down as they started to scrape the barrel in terms of C and D-list zombies. I enjoyed Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness by Layman though

    Zavian on
  • Bobby DerieBobby Derie Registered User regular
    Ultimate Doom was interesting, but like a lot of Ultimate ideas, it was dropped or failed to develop.

    The Unpublishable - Original fiction blog, updates Fridays
    Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
  • Golden YakGolden Yak Burnished Bovine The sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered User regular
    One thing I always wished they'd done with Ultimate Doom, which they never did but could have for that zombie storyline (where it would have been perfect), was have a moment where Doom's armor is removed or blasted off somehow, revealing... an ordinary man underneath. No metal skin or goat-limbs, because Doom has discovered a way to reverse the N-Zone mutations that afflicted everyone. Doom knows how to turn Ben back into a human in other words, something that Reed has always failed to do. And Doom deliberately withholds this information from Reed before he dies/places himself beyond Reed's reach as a final means to torment him.

    Reed - Victor! How did you do it?! You have to tell me how you did it!!
    Victory - You will never know.

    As for the zombies, its something of a love/hate thing for me. They've been used in some interesting ways and some good stories I must admit, but I really don't like seeing my favorite heroes so utterly ruined - these are the guys and gals who always save the day, and not only have they failed completely to save the day they've become unspeakably vile cannibal-murderers who murder-cannibalize all the good guys who aren't zombies yet. And there have been some stories where they're just gratuitous and gross gorefests that I don't enjoy. It's why I generally don't like the 'origin of zombie' stories since it shows a lot of that - I'm fine with them as villains invading from another universe though, I can just imagine that they're effed-up dark mirror counterparts, like the Thanos Imperative Avengers or the Injustice League.

    I think they've been used to great effect in the Siege and Marvel Zombies book for Secret Wars - I love how they've been made into a part of Battleworld, a big Game of Thrones tribute. Especially how Battleworld can have multiple versions of different characters, and so the Deadlands contain potentially thousands of the same character as a zombie, which are categorized almost like video game enemies with different preying behaviors and abilities - Saurons are called 'Weeping Sores,' while Carnages are called 'Clottages'. Thought that was a clever element.

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