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By Jason Bourgeois
Or, I Was a Teenage Flesh-Eating Monster.
This story all starts with my least favourite corner of the Marvel multiverse, the Ultimate lines of comics. Not too long ago, word leaked that Mark Milar, one of my least favourite Marvel writers, would be taking over the writing chores on Ultimate Fantastic Four. Now why, one may ask, would someone who dislikes the line, and writer so much actually care what happens over there? Well, his first story was going to be called Crossover, and the solicit and hints dropped by Millar and the higher ups at Marvel itself, led everyone to believe that this would be the long-awaited and often feared crossover between the Ultimate line and mainstream Marvel. They went out of their way to hint at it, without actually saying it.
Now, knowing Millar the way I do, I wasn't fooled. He's used this tactic before, quite often, in fact, and every time, he pulls the old bait and switch. Now, this isn't an entirely bad tactic, but it's pretty much Mark Millar's only tactic. And it's a dangerous line to walk. A writer is better off being vague, with leaving many possibilities open, rather than driving everything to just one, and then not delivering.
So, I never bought the company line, and neither did several of my friends. And sure enough, the issue goes along, hinting all the while, and then on the last page, there's the man who would be mainstream Marvel's Reed Richards (Whoa, awesome alliteration!), who turns out to be not that at all, and instead is a zombified Reed , who turns straight to the reader and says, "Ever have the feeling that you've been had?"
Now, some readers enjoy being insulted by Millar. I rather prefer to not be insulted by writers for giving them money, so I choose to not buy the vast majority of this man's work.
But I digress, back to the zombies.
All of this, which I hate, eventually led to Marvel spinning off a title, set on this new Marvel Earth filled with nothing but zombies, and handed it over to Robert Kirkman, a good writer who never quite got his due at Marvel, and had written several books which had yet to make it big. He had written a few zombie books of his own, under independent publishers, so he was Marvel's best bet, and thus Marvel Zombies, capitalizing on the long-standing name for the hardcore Marvel fans, came about.
Little did Marvel realize just what they had let loose.
The first issue disappeared faster from shelves than the Flash in need of a cheeseburger. Marvel has had a lot of sell-outs these days, and many of them have been accused of being manufactured by Marvel not making many copies, but as the months went by, this book continued to sell out, many times over on every issue, and sales just kept going up, a rarity these days. Each issue went into reprints, and even reprints sold out, over and over again. The premiere issue just recently released it's fourth printing.
This series is the first bonafide hit that hasn't had sales of single issues bolstered by the annoying variant cover gimmick. Yes, each reprint has had different covers from previous versions, but the first printings still had very good sales, without those being factored in. And as a special bonus, each cover is a creepy 'zombified' version of various famous Marvel covers from their history.
Most importantly, and most surprisingly, the series is actually rather good. The zombies aren't your typical shambling, mindless drones, since the series could be rather bland otherwise, what with them being the stars of the book, and very few real humans remain alive, and are mostly nowhere to be found in the book, outside of a few pages, or as a source of food. The characters, the heroes at least, are conflicted over what they have become, forced to eat their loved ones, and everyone they know, just to survive, lamenting what monsters they've become from this plague.
As with any good zombie book, this title is quite violent. The zombified heroes chow down on anything nearby, have bones and rotting flesh all over their bodies, get seriously injured - Captain America gets the top of his head sliced off, and spends the rest of the series with his brain exposed - and all kinds of injuries abound, with a healthy dose of some of the blackest humour to rear its head in a mainstream comic.
The book comes with more than a few surprises, as the food sources are growing dangerously low as the zombie plague has infected most everyone, and some of the zombies have taken to keeping some familiar friends as private food sources, rationing out bits and pieces of them to feast on and remain focused. And it's no easy task to calmly hack up one of your friends.
And then the Silver Surfer shows up.
Who's has the greatest hunger? The Marvel zombies, or Galactus? You'll have to read the book yourself, to find out.
Zombies, Silver Surfer, and Galactus. This book, plainly put, is just insane. And that's what comics can really excel at, pure crazy, insane action, and this book so delivers on all front. This is a very unique book that is nothing but fun from start to finish, as long as you don't take it too seriously. When you have a rotting Spider-Man attacking a silvery guy flying on a surfboard, how can you?
So, something that instilled great dislike out of me, came to create one of my favourite books so far this year. Reprints of all issues are readily available, and a trade paperback is on the way, and is definitely worth a look by any Marvel, or zombie fan. I doubt you'll be disappointed.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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