Marvel Zombies #1, by Simon Spurrier (writer), Kev Walker
(artist), Frank D’Armata (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) – Is Elsa
grabbing the scalp of Zombie Volstagg? Volstagg is a zombie? Noooooo! Next
you’ll be telling me he ate his kids or something. Don’t tell me he ate his
kids.
Here, the Shield is a giant wall staffed with people who
keep the ravenous zombie hordes in their little piece of land. Why the hell did
Doom include a piece of Marvel Zombies Earth in his planet? Poor planning,
Victor. Elsa Bloodstone is a commander there, and after killing one of her new
recruits after he got bitten – because I guess Kev Walker was disappointed he
didn’t get to draw Striker dying in agony in the pages of Avengers Arena? –
Elsa gets teleported way the hell out into Zombie Wasteland by Zombie
Nightcrawler’s Dad, I think. Where she wakes up to find some bald, amnesiac,
non-zombie kid, and they try to make the trek back to safe territory. The kid
spends a lot of time telling her he thinks they should go the other way, and
Elsa spends a lot of time being verbally abusive, because that’s how her father
raised her. I have to admit, as much time as the kid spends sniveling and
crying, I’d probably tell him to shut up a lot, too. Anyway, after narrowly
surviving Zombie Juggernaut thanks to some unexpected reaction from the
Bloodstone amulet, Elsa sees just how many zombies are between her and home,
and decides to go with the kid’s idea, while some creature, probably Zombie
Nightcrawler’s Pop, watches them from a distance and plots to use her own knife
on her.
I bought this for the promise of Kev Walker drawing Elsa
bloodstone killing lots of monsters, and I’m getting just that so far.
Spurrier’s taken the backstory Ellis gave Elsa in NextWave, about her father
putting her through all this crazy training as a baby, and approached it from a
more serious direction. That would be traumatic for a kid, it would certainly
affect how she relates to other people she regards as soft, or unprepared, and
would give her a mindset very focused on doing her job. It works, though I’m
not sure that backstory was ever meant to be taken seriously. Also, I had
figured Ellis was the only writer Marvel let use “toerag” in his books
(considering Pete Wisdom couldn’t go 5 pages without saying it during Ellis’
Excalibur), but Spurrier gets to as well.
I don’t know if it means anything that most of the people on
the Shield with Elsa had glowing red eyes. That seems like an ominous sign.
Also have no idea what the kid’s deal is. No memory, vague sense of wanting to
go south, no apparent skills, but somehow still alive in a land where anything
alive is food for everything undead. Actually an android? An attempt at a
Trojan Horse, zombies eat him, he infects them with some virus that kills them
once and for all, but they can sense it and avoid him? Juggernaut went right
for Elsa, even though she had the gun, instead of the kid. Paid the kid no mind
whatsoever.
Particularly liked the panels Walker did of one of
the zombies with rats crawling around inside its flesh while it lay dormant.
Reinforces the idea the zombie is dead, rotting meat, also adds the idea they
can remain still and silent for a long time, until something catches their
interest. I also like how the panel borders get thicker and more ragged, the
panels themselves slight tilted or angled, during tense moments, like the
Juggernaut fight. Then the borders gradually smooth out, and the panels revert
to a nice, even, rectangular shape. It helps zoom in on the action when that’s
what needs the focus, and after is when you can pull back and get the sense of
how desolate and alone the place they occupy appears to be.
Mrs. Deadpool and the Howling Commandos #1, by Gerry Duggan
(writer), Salva Espin (artist), Val Staples (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) –
I don’t feel like those guys really qualify as commandos, but it’s been several
years since the last time Marvel used that to describe a team of monster
creatures, so what the hell, right?
So there was the Deadpool: Dracula’s Gauntlet mini-series,
where Wade fought and defeated Dracula, and then married Shiklah, to much
rejoicing. In this version, Wade lost, because Dracula cheated, so Shiklah is
still married to Drac. And it’s the crappy, “updated”, Final Fantasy villain
Dracula, instead of cool, dark cape and beard, Gene Colan and Marv Wolfman
Dracula. The Howling Commandos work for him, and Shiklah can’t stand them any more than she can Drac. But as the last living member of her family, she’s kind
of up the creek. Until she finds part of the Scepter of the Manticore on one of
her brothers’ corpses, and the other has a map leading to the other part. So
she comes up with some excuse about ferrying their remains to Hell personally,
and sets off in her best Lara Croft/Indiana Jones outfit. But Drac insists the
Commandos accompany her, and tells Werewolf by Night to make sure she doesn’t
survive the trip. Deadpool’s only present as a ghost narrator, telling people
to get over making jokes about Man-Thing, then promptly making a Man-Thing joke
a few pages later. Also, he grouses about dying in books in back-to-back
months. I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s going to team-up with Thanos
this fall, so he’ll probably be dying every page when that happens.
It says the one Commando is Marcus the Minotaur (also
combined with a symbiont), but he looks more like a centaur to me. He has four
horse legs, plus arms. Maybe Dracula’s just trying to confuse his foes, unless
“minotaur” is the name for centaurs with diabetes, since Marcus has that. I
also don’t know why one of Shiklah’s brothers is wearing an outfit that’s a
cross between one of Jamie Madrox’ shirts and Rachel Summers’ old Hound outfit
(the red one with spikes all over it), while the other stole that horrible
outfit Frank Castle wore when he was Captain America for 5 seconds. Remember
that, after Civil War, Fraction had him fight Hate-Monger and Frank decided he
needed to stand up like Cap would have, and he wore some incredibly stupid
garb? I do not appreciate this series making me remember that happened.
It’s nothing spectacular, pretty much an exposition issue,
but I’ll trust the creative team to make it work. They used a Die Hard quote,
that buys them some leeway, and I’m curious whether Shiklah will turn all these
guys around to her side of things, or kill a few first to make a point.
Espin's art seems well suited for this. He draws monsters well, but since the book is far from serious in tone, the art needs to be able to do silly or comical, and he's up to the task. It's all kind of bright and exaggerrated. When the Commandos are temporarily turned to stone, it's done in one quick panel showing them looking surprised. No drawn out thing where they tried to flee, or close-ups on their terror. It's essentially so Shiklah can later tell Drac when he asks what she did, 'I made them hard.' Jokes, but with monsters.
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