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Tag Archives: Zombies

Heroes Never Rust #17: Brains

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Zombies

Heroes Never Rust #17 by Sean Ironman

Brains

I like watching movies and reading books that make me think. I don’t like to waste my time with trivial things or works that seem to be too easy. Many people tell me how good a book or a movie is and that I should see it because “you can turn your brain off.” That doesn’t sound like a good time to me. It sounds horrifying. I know this might not be true—I hope it’s not—but all I hear when someone tells me they don’t want to think while watching a movie or reading is “My life is so sad and I am so miserable so I just need to shut down and escape for the little bit of peace I get in a week.” I don’t even want to discuss literature or movies with these people (and I’m not talking about the people who occasionally want to shut down—only those who always read or watch something to shut down). It just makes me want to talk to them about changing their career or their lifestyle.

But that doesn’t mean I only like serious work, or even intellectual work. I’ve gone on a few times about my love for the X-Men on this blog. I still enjoy fun stories and movies, but they don’t have to be stupid or require less thought in both the audience and the creators. Since this is a superhero comics blog, I’ll stick to superhero comics. One of the most fun superhero comics of recent memory has been the Marvel Zombies series (minus the second one—stay away from that one). I know the zombies fad has been played out (it wasn’t yet when the series started), but Marvel Zombies gets points because it never concerns itself for making you care about the characters. There’s no soap opera here—no comment on society. It’s just fucking craziness.

In Marvel Comics, there are a number of other universes with different versions of the superheroes. Marvel Zombies were introduced by Mark Millar in Ultimate Fantastic Four, possibly the only good thing to come from Ultimate Fantastic Four. Reed Richards is contacted by another version of himself, and after the Fantastic Four crosses over, they find out the world is filled with zombies. What I thought was clever about this is that it is a product of the endgame for zombies. If zombies conquered the world and ate everyone, what would happen to them? What would they eat? Because of all of the technology the Marvel superheroes have, the zombies have the ability to travel to other dimensions so they could continue their feeding. It’s not incredibly complex, but I found it clever.

marvel_zombies_Spider-Man wedding

The zombie Fantastic Four were beaten, but Marvel seemed to put two and two together to continue the concept.

Marvel Zombies 3rd

Robert Kirkman, who had created The Walking Dead, had done some Marvel work here and there and was assigned to write a mini-series, Marvel Zombies, dealing with the zombie universe. I’m a fan of some of Kirkman’s work, although some of it never really grabbed me. But what he does right with Marvel Zombies is give the people what they want. Zombie versions of the Marvel superheroes doing wild stuff. The end. That is basically the whole comic. This isn’t taken from the humans’ point of view. While there are some people still alive who aren’t zombies, the focus is on a group of zombies consisting of fan favorites like Spider-Man, Hulk, and Captain America, as they hunt for something new to eat.

While it’s not a serious story, it doesn’t require someone to turn their brain off. The story builds and builds, with a lot of humor, to the coming of Galactus, the devourer of worlds. And what happens to Galactus? Well, he gets eaten of course!

Marvel Zombies Tony Stark

I’ve always liked Galactus because I like to think of him as just a guy looking for lunch except he’s really damn big so he eats planets instead of tacos. Any story with the big guy is instantly made better by his appearance. Here in Marvel Zombies, it makes the story better because it seems like anything can happen. There’s no human element holding down the fantastical elements. It’s just crazy superhero zombies trying to scrounge up the last of the food on the planet. There’s not even much of a traditional plot. It’s there—the coming of Galactus’ herald, then Galactus, and then a big battle—but it’s so focused on the fun of seeing the Marvel Zombies hanging out. I also like that Giant-Man had been keeping the Black Panther in his lab as a food source he could come back to. It’s sick. I like that.

Marvel Zombies X Men

There have been five main Marvel Zombies’ mini-series with many more spinoffs, like Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness. Each version (other than the second one. Don’t read that one.) get crazy. The third series sees the Marvel Zombie universe cross over into the regular Marvel Universe, but it still manages to stay crazy. The fourth series brings back the Midnight Sons, a group of the supernatural superheroes, and they take on the zombies. The concept succeeded because it didn’t try to be anything it wasn’t. It didn’t dumb itself down because it was always dumb fun. It didn’t squeeze in romances or heroic beats. It had Bruce Banner’s stomach explode after he ate too much as the Hulk and then stopped being mad and reverted back to human form. But it still allowed the reader to imagine, and I think that’s the key. It didn’t close off the audience. The series didn’t make the reader think about the medium or the genre or lofty thoughts, but it allowed the reader to think about the possibilities of where the concept could go. Geez, at the end of the first series, the Marvel zombies are seen with Galactus’ powers and invading other planets. It’s fun and cool and it could only be done in comics. After reading each series, I’ve had multiple conversations with friends thinking of possibilities for future comics. The series allowed us to imagine what the Marvel superheroes could do as zombies.

And I can’t end the blog without saying how Arthur Suydam’s covers, many of which were takes on classic Marvel covers, really captured, not only the idea well, but the audience’s attention. I think his covers were talked about more than the series itself. Each cover managed to reflect the original work, the zombie concept, and the fun the series was about.

___________

Sean Ironman

Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

The Curator of Schlock #1: Nightmare City

09 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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Cinema, Hugo Stiglitz, Nightmare City, The Curator of Schlock, Zombies

The Curator of Schlock #1 by Jeffrey Shuster

Nightmare City

Why should you pop Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City into you’re DVD player? It’s called Nightmare City. What makes the city a nightmare city? Zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.

Apparently, somewhere in Europe there was a radioactive spill at a nuclear plant. The movie doesn’t specify if it’s a nuclear power plant or a plant that makes nukes.  Anyway, they send this scientist named Professor Otto Haggenbach over to find out what’s going on. When the good professor is scheduled to return, the local TV station sends ace reporter Dean Miller (played by Hugo Stiglitz) to interview him at the airport. A mysterious cargo plane lands and the military police are called in to yell at it with a megaphone. I could tell they were military police because their cars say POLICE on the side in big bold letters and they carry machine guns.

The door to the plane opens and lo and behold, it’s Professor Haggenbach. He looks a little frazzled, jet lagged. The Police Chief goes up greet him only to get stabbed in the chest with a pair of scissors by the good professor. The cargo bay door opens and a colony of zombies pours out. There must be about five hundred of them in there. And they’ve got axes, pipes, and other metal implements. As the hacking commences, some of the police try shooting at them with machine guns. The guns do no good and the next moment is awesome. The zombies start picking up the machine guns and using them against the humans. If zombies can use machine guns that pretty much does it for the human race.

I know what you’re thinking. Zombies can’t use machine guns. You’re probably among the same group of geeks who says robots in science fiction must always follow Asimov’s Three Laws. Let me tell you something, Italian zombies using machine guns is inspired. Not only do they use machine guns, they also wipe their mouths after feeding on people. Given time I’m sure they’d start using napkins. There’s one scene in Nightmare City where a bunch of them are clearly enjoying some Southern Comfort right from the bottle. And while these zombies attack men head on, they tend to tear off the blouse of every woman they run into.

nightmare-city6

Typically, I’d start rooting for the zombies at this point if we weren’t presented with one of the most heroic reporters in zombie movie history. Dean Miller uses everything at his disposal. He actually sets a bunch of zombies ablaze with a television set. He beats a zombie priest to death with a golden candlestick. So kudos to Dean Miller. He may not be too easy on the eyes, but looks don’t count for much in a zombie apocalypse.

dean

Dean Miller is a man of action. That’s more than I can say for the generals who spend most of the movie held up in a bunker somewhere saying things like “It looks like the attackers will hit here, here, and here.” Or “Oh, it looks like the attackers dismantled the south power station. It will take hours to get it running again.” Or “Let’s not dramatize the situation and leak any news that might cause public disorder.” Hmmmm. You know what I think would lead to public disorder? An army of machine-gun-wielding undead cannibals attacking everything in sight!

I don’t want to spoil the twist ending for you.

___________

Jeffrey Shuster

Jeffrey Shuster is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Central Florida.

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