Years after Marvel ran the whole "Marvel Zombies" concept into the ground, they brought this out as one of the "Battleworlds" mini-series published during Secret Wars. Set on the world Doom cobbled together from the bits and pieces of different universes he was able to save during Hickman's Avengers run.
Here, Elsa Bloodstone was one of the people who defends Doom's realms from the hordes of the undead, but she got dropped from the shield wall into the zombies' turf. Where she found an odd child, who led her to a coastline, where they encounter a version of Elsa's dad from a different reality. He's a zombie, but able to maintain a sense of self from all the bloodstones he collected from other realities' versions of himself or his kids. There's only one piece left and this Elsa's (who has been gradually realizing what an asshole her dad was) got it.
Elsa tries lopping his head off, but it doesn't take. She's ready to destroy her stone, but it turns out the "child" is actually the manifestation of her stone's power. Somehow it took a form that could convince Elsa to come to this place, something the bloodstones can do, apparently. Elsa tries for the big hero play, and gets her arm bitten off, causing her to start turning into a zombie. She also has the flashback at the top, which is the aftermath of her being too slow to kill some monster, and her father ordering her to leave its toxic blood on her head, staining her hair permanently red. When her mother objects, Ulysses shows her the monster in the basement, driving her mad, so he can have her locked away as the abusive parent.
Mystique and Bruce Wayne are impressed with that level of shitty parenting.
Elsa makes a speech that distracts Ulysses long enough for the little kid-thing to grab her gun and shoot him in the chest. It wouldn't kill him, but it does knock a big chunk of the stones loose, which Elsa gobbles like Jughead diving on a plate of cheeseburgers.
While all this has been going on, a group of zombies led by Mystique have been watching. They'd been pissed at Elsa because she killed their endless source of brains - Deadpool - the issue before. Also, they knew the child didn't turn when they bit it, so they wanted more of that. Now, with their minds falling apart rapidly from lack of brain food, they call up some big mutant with a cannon strapped to his back and take a shot. Elsa, now with a hand made of bloodstone, just blasts them to dust. Worried about having too much power, Elsa uses most of it to revert both herself and this version of Ulysses back to living humans, leaving her with just one piece of stone in her palm.
She tells Ulysses she'll accept his judgment might have been skewed by both the bloodstone and his mullet, and she's giving him a second chance. Which she will rescind by beating him to death with his own face if he screws up. Does she mean just the skin, or like she'll break off the facial portion of his skull as well?
The two of them head towards the wall, ending on Elsa suggesting 'Let's go exploring.' Which would be the strangest Calvin and Hobbes reference I've ever seen.
[7th longbox, 31st comic. Marvel Zombies (2015) #4, by Simon Spurrier (writer), Kev Walker (artist), Guru-eFX (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)]
2 comments:
Not that I'm complaining, because the nextwave version of Elsa is the more interesting one, but I suppose Marvel wants us to quietly forget the original, the one that wasn't English and didn't have red hair?
Far as I can tell, that is correct. This is maybe the closest we get to acknowledging that version, in that this Elsa was a blonde until the demon venom or whatever got in her hair and stained it. Otherwise, Ellis and Immonen's version seems like she's here to stay.
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