Marvel Zombies 2
MARVEL ZOMBIES 2 picks up where the wildly popular MARVEL ZOMBIES left off: The undead versions of Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Phoenix and others — having just eaten Galactus, the eater of worlds (a fanboy joke if there ever was one) — have headed to space because they’ve consumed their way through Earth.
However, there are far fewer humans in space than our planet, so they head back to Earth again. See, if they can only find Mr. Fantastic’s interdimensional transporter, they can enter other worlds and chomp on infinite amounts of human flesh.
On Earth, a young boy finds the disembodied, talking head of Hawkeye and takes it back to his grandfather, the uninfected Black Panther, who leads a small village of also-very-much-alive people. This fact drastically changes when the Marvel Zombies touchdown.
Eventually, there’s a bit of a faction split that pits Avenger against Avenger. The reasons are a bit murky, but I’m all for it, because it finally injected some action back into a fairly dull narrative. Ant-Man loses half his head, Spidey gets ripped nearly in half, yet both keep on tickin’.
If there’s such thing as too much story, MARVEL ZOMBIES 2 is the victim of it. The joy of the original was how little it deviated from the concept of its title: These are Marvel heroes, but now they eat flesh; the end. Although the creative team of writer Robert Kirkman and artist Sean Phillips returns, it’s as if a need was felt to overplot, in an attempt to deliver something bigger and better.
All is not lost; Kirkman occasionally cracks a good joke and tosses in a surprise here and there, and Phillips’ art remains colorfully gory. Yet something called MARVEL ZOMBIES 2 shouldn’t aspire to be any more highbrow than its older brother, should it?
The final page of the story doesn’t so much hint at a MARVEL ZOMBIES 3 as it does simply cutting the story off without proper resolution. Hopefully, Kirkman can get it back on track. Once again, Arthur Suydam’s covers comprise half the fun. —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• MARVEL ZOMBIES by Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips
• MARVEL ZOMBIES VS. ARMY OF DARKNESS by John Layman and Fabiano Neves
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF ROBERT KIRKMAN:
• THE IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN VOL. 1: LOW-LIFE by Robert Kirkman
• THE IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN VOL. 2: SMALL-MINDED by Robert Kirkman
• TECH JACKET VOL. 1: THE BOY FROM EARTH by Robert Kirkman and E.J. Su
You got to admit, zombies are taking over the horror scene. Sorry vampires and whatnot. Although Matheson’s original I AM LEGEND — that I just finished reading for the first time — had the baddies as vampires, unlike the impression from the recent movie.