In “Ultimate Fantastic Four” #21, Ultimate Reed Richards (via Mark Millar and Greg Land) found himself duped into opening up a portal to an alternate dimension in which a zombie plague had run rampant and consumed/destroyed the rest of the universe. It took him a few issues to come home, but he brought the zombified Fantastic Four (aka the Ultimate Frightful Four) with him, who would cause more trouble later in the ‘Frightful’ arc of the series.
From there, the Marvel Zombies franchise had a life of its own, with five volumes worth of story. The first three stories were written by Robert Kirkman with illustration by Sean Philips, and the subsequent three were written by Fred Van Lente with art by Kev Walker and Kano. On top of that, the Zombies have seen a few crossovers (from “Exiles” to “Army of Darkness”) and a series of one-shots.
Suffice it to say, there have been a lot of Marvel Zombies. Now it is apparently going to be all stuffed into a single 1200 page zomnibus this September. What exactly is going into it is unknown at the moment, as the first five volumes and prequel (“Dead Days”) equate to about 900 pages and Mark Millar’s “Ultimate Fantastic Four” with Greg Land equate to about 300 pages, there’s still “Marvel Zombies Supreme,” “Marvel Zombies Return,” “Marvel Zombies vs Army of Darkness,” “the Zombie Christmas Carol” and the upcoming “Marvel Zombies Destroy!” to fit in there.
But hey, at 1200 pages, one thing is for sure: the book will make a great weapon against real life zombies when the zompocalypse comes.
