Review: Robert Kirkman: Marvel Zombies: New York: Marvel: 2008. I don’t know why I never particularly liked Marvel Comics, apart from the X-Men, particularly the Dark Phoenix storyline. Unfortunately, they brought her back from the dead, which DC Comics have also done in their Crisis saga insofar as the Flash (II) goes.

That is, until I discovered a little gem called Marvel Zombies.Why is Marvel Zombies a cut above the rest? One of the reasons is uber-zombie comics author Rob Kirkman, who produces a fabulous series called The Walking Dead for Image comics.  What George Romero is to zombie movies, and Max Brooks and David Wellington are to zombie fiction, Kirkman is to the zombie graphic novel. 

Okay. Here’s the premise. An infected metahuman, The Sentry, plummets through the atmosphere of Earth 2149 in Marvel’s Multiverse. He infects every metahuman and mutant on that world. Unfortunately for non-dead humanity, these predators still have sentience. As MZ opens, the ravenous snaggle-toothed, white eyed ex-superheroes have had them over for dinner, all six billion or so of them. It’s hilarious watching the formerly  sanctimonious likes of Colonel America obsess about where the next meal is coming from. As for Spiderman, some things never change. Yes, Peter Parker is still having existential crises, after devouring his wife Mary Jane and his Aunt May. The others grow increasingly sarcastic about this, as he never shuts up about it, particularly after he’s had a meal.

Fortunately, there are about thirteen surviving humans and metahumans left, on the former mutant supervillain Magneto’s Asteroid M. Magneto himself was the main course at a grand guignol feast for one group of metahuman zombies, but some of his proteges survive. So does African Prince T’Challa (Black Panther), even if ghastly Dr Henry Pym (Giantman) is lopping off bits of him for snack times. Speaking of which, Pym’s estranged wife, Janet (Wasp) Van Dyne finds out, after which he bites her head off…literally. They always had a dysfunctional relationship, but this is ridiculous!

 However, because these metazombie brains need to be comprehensively destroyed to get rid of them (barring outright disintegration), Black Panther makes off with her still-sentient head, which makes entreaties to give her a bite. The surviving humans encounter T’Challa and get him back up to Asteroid M. Meanwhile, the zombies have had two run-ins with the Silver Surfer and Galactus, two cosmic godling types, and after fighting off freeloading supervillains, Iron Man, Giantman, Spiderman, Luke Cage/Power Man, the Hulk and Wolverine get charged up and realise that they can ravage the rest of the universe.

In the final scene, the ravenous quintet of hypermetazombies descend on a remote alien world, intent on carnage and variety in their diet.I loved it. It thoroughly trashes the tottering Marvel Universe and should get an award for pitch black comedy. The apocalypse was never so funny.