Written by Jonathan Mayberry
Illustrated by Laurence CampbellA dreadful disease begins transformA dreadful disease begins transforming everyone –human and superhuman–into savage, nearly mindless cannibal predators. Who will protect humanity? Who will make a stand against the endless slaughter? Who will make the hard choices?
I didn’t read Jonathan Maberry’s Marvel Universe vs The Punisher miniseries, but I heard many a good thing about it. So when I saw that the first issue of the prequel mini was out this week, I figured “why not?” Normally I’m not one for these kind of “[insert franchise here] meets zombies!” sort of things, but my friends wouldn’t lie to me… right? Follow the cut and see.
Zombies are in season now. There’s no denying it. Whether they’re traditional monstrosities that have risen from the grave or victims of a bizarre supervises, traditional shamblers or the even scarier runners, the living dead had a resurgence in popularity a few years back, and are going to remain “mainstream” for a while. I’m not going to accuse anybody of being unoriginal just for using zombies, though – after all, how you tell a story is just as important as the kind of story you’re telling. Look at Robert Kirkman’s wildly successful Walking Dead, for example. Sure, there’s nothing special about Kirkman’s zombies, but taking a genre that was usually reserved for self-contained films and making a long form character driven horror drama out of it? Now that is something special. Similarly, Marvel Universe vs. Wolverine strays away from a current genre standard. It seems like most zombie stories nowadays plop the reader and the characters in the middle of a hellish setting, going from “Should I wear the black or the red tie today?” to “Dear God in heaven I just killed my wife” in 0.5 seconds. By bringing us to the beginning of his epidemic, though, Maberry demonstrates that he knows that taking things slow can be just as terrifying as going all the way on the first date.
I think what’s even more enjoyable about this comic, though, is the narrative style. With the internal monologue running throughout, there’s no mistaking this for anything but a Wolverine comic. Really, Maberry has Logan’s voice down unmistakably, without relying on telling words or phrases like the ever-popular “bub.” But even though Wolverine has seen all sorts of atrocities in his day, he hasn’t gone through anything quite like this. The superhuman hunter/vigilante doesn’t fit in the zombie story… and that’s what makes it so great. This isn’t your standard superhero-saves-the-day sort of thing; not even Weapon X can face something like this. When a nigh-invulnerable killing machine is uncomfortable and uncertain, your average flesh-and-bones reader is absolutely terrified. It’s a subtle technique that Maberry uses here, and it might go unnoticed by some, but it works quite effectively – who cares if the regular reader knows why it works, so long as it works?
Artist Laurence Campbell’s art is fitting for a zombie comic, no doubt, but it is a bit more on the nose than Maberry’s subtler writing tricks. It’s a horror comic, and it looks like a horror comic, but I can’t help but feel like it might have been more effective if it looked like a superhero comic – at least, at first. That’s fine, though. Campbell’s style is quite neat when it’s on. He has a “loose” look that really enhances the grimy horror feel that tends to go hand in hand with zombie stories, and boy does it look good when his figures are precise. The problem with this sort of style, though, is that when the artist lapses just the slightest bit in the precision department, it just looks sloppy. Campbell is spot on in more than a few pages, but it seems like more often than not his style gets in the way. Still, it’s a unique look compared to the many superhero artists that look almost identical, so he still gets a couple of points from me.
As I said, I’m not the biggest zombie fan. Still, this is a neat little read that you should at least give a chance. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a definite buy, regardless of whether or not you enjoy zombie stories, but if you do enjoy tales of the no longer deceased (I’m running out of things to call them, as you can see), you will certainly want to buy this. And again, even if you aren’t, you should at least flip through it in your local comic book shop. Hopefully you’ll end up walking out with it in your bag.
Final Verdict: 6.5 – Give it a try!
