Imagine a superhero with super-hunger. Hunger strong enough you eat your loved ones. That was the moment at the birth of the original Marvel Zombies from the mid-2000s. Spider-Man is depicted in the first issue despairing, in abject horror with himself for eating Aunt May and his wife Mary Jane Watson-Parker. And the scene itself was later shown as the opening of the Marvel Zombies: Dead Days one-shot prequel, out almost two years later. The series was the black comedy of black comedies for Marvel Comics’ entire history. Out since last October, the newest incarnation of the franchise is a full reboot as a four-issue mini-series titled Marvel Zombies: Resurrection written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and drawn by Leonard Kirk and taking a somewhat more serious angle than its predecessors. This time around, Peter isn’t the member of the Parker family who’s been turned: it’s Mary Jane.
If all this sounds more appropriate for an issue of The Walking Dead, that’s only logical as they did share a writer at the beginning. Yes, just 2 years after the first issue of The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman also created the first two Marvel Zombies mini-series and the Dead Days one-shot with artist Sean Phillips. He is in fact, responsible for two of the longest-running zombie franchises in comics. Before Kirkman became the world-wide entertainment mogul we know today he was the savior of zombie comic-books.
In the most recent issue of Marvel Zombies: Resurrection, it’s revealed that Peter Parker’s long-time lover Mary Jane is not merely missing but has been turned into a zombie among the hoards waiting in the demonic dimension of Limbo. Peter has been desperately trying to protect the young members of the Fantastic Four, Franklin, and Valeria as they travel a ravaged North America of the Marvel Multi-verse. When the inevitable final confrontation begins, Peter hears, “hey Tiger,” in a creepy uneven gray-outlined word balloon from off-panel, behind him. After the page turn, she stands in all her decomposing glory. The shoe is on the other rotting foot this time.
The new moment by Johnson and Kirk references both the 2007 Kirkman and Phillips’ scene in which a zombified Spider-Man eats his family and the Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. scene that introduced Mary Jane Watson to audiences in 1966. MJ was first mentioned in Amazing Spider-Man #25 (drawn by Spider-Man co-creator and co-writer Steve Ditko) as a local girl Aunt May wants Peter to meet in 1965 and over the next year of the title, but it’s her iconic entrance on the last page of Amazing Spider-Man #42 that was so memorable as it became iconic: “Face it, Tiger… you just hit the jackpot!” The surprise blew away both Peter and the readers. Though Lee and Romita would probably have been equally surprised by how many homages the comic with spawn.
Kennedy Johnson is mining the recent and deep history of Marvel Comics for inspiration. This new iteration of the extremely dark zombie alternate universe has made a few dips back to the cheeky humor of the original series. Despite the horrifying subject matter of the Marvel Zombies franchise, its strong sense of the history of the Marvel Universe and a slim strain of black humor might be back to stay.
