These two reviews are a long time coming, and they finish out our reviews for two formerly ongoing Zombie comics series. Let’s get to it.

In Marvel Zombies 5 #5, we again return to our dimension-hopping gang as they enter what is the strangest dimension yet: one without any superpowered beings of any kind.

So, basically, our dimension.

They are here to find a very rare sort of ‘zombie’ indeed, but take their time doing so, which gives us a chance to meet the individual in question: Wendell, a sad comic fanboy who has become infected by the Peter Jackson variety of Sumatran zombification virus, here sans the rat-monkey delivery system. (for more information, see the Wikipedia article on Braindead/Dead Alive)

How did he contract the disease? Well, as it so happens, he got it from an imported comic, a ridiculously rare team-up issue featuring Machine Man and Howard the Duck from the glory days of 1985.

Yes, if you were wondering, this is a meta-comic on steroids. In fact, the issue opens with Wendell in a comic shop, discussing Marvel Zombies 5 #4, the immediately preceding issue of this very comic book series, and complaining about how the MZ franchise has supposedly declined under Fred Van Lente’s stewardship.

(Full Disclosure: Mr. Van Lente was kind enough to correspond with the ZRC on previous occasions, and even to donate two signed trades of Marvel Zombies 3 and 4 for the Lurch for the Cure auction)

Now now, Mr. Van Lente; don’t let the bitterness of comic nerds get you too down. As the ZRC has attested numerous times, you have, in fact, greatly expanded the scope and scale of Marvel’s Anti-Zombie bigotry, extending it to whole new realms of perfidy and malicious slander that Mr. Phillips and Mr. Kirkman never achieved in their glory days bashing super-powered Zombies.

I’d offer him a hug, except for fear of a restraining order.

Marvel Zombies 5 flows as an almost uninterrupted monologue by Wendell as he discovers the state of his condition and ponders his fate and how best to cope with his newly Undead status. Wendell doesn’t seem like a bad guy, and he tries his best to cope, in the absence of appropriate caregivers or counseling from those who have gone before him into Undeath. He has difficulty dealing with his newly restrictive diet, existential problems with his new not-strictly-alive nature, and questions the ultimate fate of a Zombie in the Living man’s world. Eventually, he comes to make a noble, if somewhat cliched, decision.

And then our ‘heroes’, as well as his personal ones, meet up with Wendell and do what they do best: remorseless mayhem.

Sigh.

Honestly, this particular issue, extremely self-referential though it is, seemed to be going places and addressing concerns rarely, if ever, addressed even in the best of mainstream comics featuring zombies, or even actual Zombie characters. What is the current fascination with the super-powered Undead? Why are Zombies considered villainous, whereas a man with unstable spider genes crudely grafted into his own DNA destined for heroics? What do comic book readers get out of the exercise? What does the writer bring to the table, and how does this genre-within-a-genre relate to the usual narratives of noble self-sacrifice and heroic struggle?

Then of course, it shrugs off the questions, engages in some violence, and you’re done with another Marvel Zombies series, but not before Howard the Duck gets in one last dig at the entire universe of zombie stereotyped media:

Moving on, Deadpool Merc with a Mouth came to a premature end with issue number 13, and we here at the ZRC were pretty piqued about the whole thing. Here you had the best, most sympathetic ongoing Zombie character in contemporary mainstream comics, and his series gets canceled so that he can be featured in a new crossover spectacular?

Well, ok, that’s actually not atypical, and even vaguely flattering, though it does mean moving from a starring role in a small cast to an ensemble player. If only they had found a better way to accomplish the transition!

In the last issue we reviewed here at the ZRC, Zombie Deadpool had been forced to bite his sinister yet inept AIM abductor to save the day and prevent the gang of good guys being stranded in the Marvel Zombieverse. The consequences of that act play out in this issue, as Zombie Deadpool inexplicably becomes overpowered by his ‘hunger’ again and plots to eat his friends, or at a minimum to callously betray them and escape to a dimension full of new people to eat. His abrupt and dispiriting face-heel turn then facilitates a dramatic comeuppance/time travel paradox that leads into the Prelude to Deadpool Corps event (check back soon for a ZRC review):

This shocking change of heart almost completely negates his character development up to this point, and is fairly inexplicable, although it does mirror his initial mysterious reform (which although welcome from a Zombie Rights perspective was never fully explained in Marvel Zombies 3-4).

Argh! Why must Marvel taunt us so? We here in the Zombie Rights movement had finally gotten an admirable portrayal in the most biased medium toward the Differently Animated, and it was cruelly snatched away to close up a plot loophole?

I mean, this is Deadpool! Plot holes don’t need to be closed at all, let alone in such a defamatory way.

Still, the ZRC has learned to take these things in stride. Setbacks and sniping occur often in the struggle against our noble Cause.

None of which is to say it doesn’t sting.

Tags: Comics

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 at 2:15 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.