Marvel Zombies Halloween #1

[flint_marko]

I know it's after Halloween, but I wanted to post seven pages from this issue so I had to wait a little bit before posting it. 

This is from Marvel Zombies Halloween #1, by Fred Van Lente and Alessandro Vitti. 

The story takes place in a version of the Marvel Universe where a plague has turned people into zombies.

A woman is living in an abandoned house with her son, a boy named Peter, using a sniper rifle to fend off the zombies trying to attack the house. Peter tells his mother he hears something in the walls, which turns out to be a black kitten. Peter names the kitten Blackie.

Later Peter is looking at a calendar when he sees the word "Halloween." He asks his mother what it is, and she explains how it was a holiday people celebrated before the plague.





Peter sees Blackie outside of the house and runs after him. He loses him and goes looking through the town. All the houses are rundown, except for one that looks brand-new and has the lights on.



Peter continues looking for Blackie when he's attacked by zombie versions of Squirrel Girl, Darkhawk, Mettle, Alex Power, and Karolina Dean. They are about to eat him when his mother comes to his rescue, grabbing him and phasing through the nearby schoolbuilding. 

Inside the school, the zombies find them again. The clock ticks midnight and suddenly the old man from before appears and taunts the zombies, who try attacking him.

Comments

[cainofdreaming]

The virus affects Spirits of Vengeance and computerized personalities, so I doubt poor ol' Doug would be immune either.

...have they even tried applying some logic into how it works?

[stolisomancer]

Not really. Basically, nobody is immune. There are occasional hints that it's a sentient being that calls itself the Hunger Gospel and speaks through the people it's infected.

[cainofdreaming]

Not really. Basically, nobody is immune.

Except, of course, Aaron Stack.

[zechs80]

And DOOM. Doom kept his will up even after bit and only feasts when he damn well wants to.

[cainofdreaming]

He wasn't really immune, though. He was just, well... Doom. Machine Man, Jocasta and apparently all non-fleshies were actually immune for that one Marvel Zombies mini.

[stolisomancer]

Well, it gets a little weird. The Vision shows up as an infectee at one point in the original "Crossover" arc in UFF, but that gets retconned in MZ3 or so.

Basically MZ in general has an exceedingly shaky grasp on its own continuity and Marvel's reaction to this has been basically "Eh, whatevs." Which is probably fair.

[bruinsfan]

I recall, back when it was beginning in Ultimate Fantastic Four, that it was a superbug version of necrotizing fasciitis and the victims were still alive, just being disfigured and deranged by the infection.

But then Ultimate Victor von Doom got himself trapped on the origin world while he had a baby Great Old One in the oven. I figure if that somehow merged itself with the plague, it would explain why it changed so much and became able to infect nonhumans, gods, heralds of Galactus, and such.

[stolisomancer]

The problem is that by the time van Damme shows up, he drops right into the middle of the Galactus-eating scene from MZ #5, which is well after the initial release of the plague. Then he reappears back on Ultimate Earth with zero explanation, because Jeph Loeb.