So, Marvel Zombies is the Lifeist menace that simply will not die.

Just when the ZRC thought we would have a brief respite from Fred Van Lente et al’s crusade against the Differently Animated, another, rather thick installment in their Lifeist campaign arrived via Heavy Ink. This particular ‘Evil Evolution‘ MZ product is a one-shot crossover between the Marvel Zombies franchise and the Marvel Apes parody universe.

The horror…. the horror.

Marvel Apes, for those who are unaware, is a running Marvel parody line set in an alternate universe full of intelligent apes and monkeys, including superheroic counterparts to all the Earthly Marvel heroes. I guess someone felt it would be natural to cross over this older Marvel satire line with the hotly selling Zombieverse. (According to Wikipedia, Marvel Apes was inspired by Marvel Zombies, so this is getting a bit recursive)

I can’t believe I’m writing this, as a longtime comics fan, but I actually enjoyed the Marvel Apes portions more, if only because the Zombie parts were so offensive and demeaning to our Undead friends and neighbors. Even superheroes joking about flinging poo is more fun than yet another tired screed about the dire threat of zombiism.

Plus there are some decent characters coming from the MA side, whereas the MZ are more of the same, featuring mostly the same cast of dreadful shambling sociopaths from MZ: Dead Days and the original Marvel Zombies piece that ran in Ultimate Fantastic Four.

Since this is a compilation of writers and properties, you have some repeated material, some overlap, one small area of backstory missing that you’d have to get another issue of Marvel Apes to read, and the art varies from section to section. Ironically this is more noticeable with the apes than the human characters; I guess there’s less standardization on non-human life drawing in comics.

Evil Evolution is about what you’d expect from a parody crossover of Marvel Zombies. Lots of gore, lifeist prejudice, plus some hamfisted political sermonizing that didn’t jibe very well at all. Eww.

The ZRC roundly condemns this as yet another of Marvel’s tired exercises in Zombie-bashing, which I know will come as a shock to no one.

Tags: Comics, Review

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.