Marvel Zombies #1 Review

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If you don’t know by now we’re endeavouring to bring you a review of every Secret Wars comic that features Spider-Man in some way. What?! That’s crazy, there’s too many. You’re right disembodied voice, there are more Secret Wars tie-ins then there are zombies in this issue but we have to try dammit! So we move swiftly on to Marvel Zombies #1.

First of all the front cover is awesome and contains the added bonus of being Spider-Man related! We see a badass looking Elsa Bloodstone (A character that admittedly I didn’t know existed until Secret Wars) struggling to get away from a horde of the undead. The cool thing is that three of these zombies appear to be Spider-Man villains Kingpin, Electro and Venom.

Marvel Zombies #1 1
Marvel Zombies #1 1 /

We’re introduced to what I assume is the title’s titular character Elsa Bloodstone drinking a cup of tea and blasting a zombie in the face wth her gun in such a badass pose. And that essentially tells you everything you need to know about her, which is awesome.

Elsa is a hardass, tough-loving section commander of the Shield, a wall separating most of Battleworld from bad things, she’s tasked with stopping the legions of undead from breaching the wall. Although we immediately see she has a softer side as she mercifully dispatches one of her own men that had been bitten.

We then see an awesome series of panels and spreads that depict the leader of the horde ‘The Red Terror’ (a zombiefied version of Azazel?) Bamf-ing around the Shield only to get taken out by Elsa. However the zombie manages to teleport her off of the wall and into the zombie territory below.

Elsa’s character development comes from showing us flashbacks of her as a child and how her father Ulysses Bloodstone treated her, with very much the same tough-love she showed her own soldier at the beginning. However we immediately see the differences between the two Bloodstones, Elsa has a softer side that her father does not as he leaves her with a knife to deal with a group of Piranha Gibbon. This culminates at the end of the comic with Elsa actively choosing not to be her father.

We then get treated to one of the excellent examples of artwork on display in this comic, especially if you’re a Spider-Man fan. A zombiefied Doctor Octopus crawling towards a prone Elsa lisping the word ‘Superior’ it’s a great little nod to the Superior Spider-Man series and it’s also a quite frankly horrorfying sight that fully justifies Elsa blowing it’s head off.

Marvel Zombies #1 2
Marvel Zombies #1 2 /

The comic also hits a great run of dialogue when Elsa comes across an amnesiac urchin boy who she names Shuttup, the boys identity and origin is a complete mystery that will no doubt be revealed later on in the series so all we can do as readers for now is enjoy the dialogue between the two which is brilliant! My personal highlight is when Elsa tells Shuttup to shut-up before immediately asking him a question.

What’s great about Marvel Zombies is that you can get four-five pages of witty fast-paced dialogue that truly captures Elsa’s put-on hard as nails badass act inspired by her father and then you see different elements of her personality momentarily eeking through it’s subtle but it works. And  you also get images of pure horror like an absolutely monstrous zombiefied Juggernaut that wants to tenderise and scramble flesh like eggs and then immediately after that you get hilarious lines like “G-gun! Extremely important! Get gun for shootiness”. Basically it finds an excellent contract thanks to Simon Spurrier’s script.

And its for that reason that this may be my favourite Secret Wars comic so far! (Sorry Spider-Man)

Next: Click here for all of our Spidey Secret Wars coverage so far