As Marvel Comics unleash their latest Marvel Zombies series on an entirely-suspecting audience this week, it's worth pointing out that some things have changed under new series writer Fred Van Lente. Firstly, the extra-dimensional zombies have come to the regular Marvel Universe. Secondly, the star of this series is Aaron Stack, the drunken robot known to some as Machine Man. And thirdly, this time around, comic book science may have come up with a happy ending for everyone involved.Van Lente, who inherits the franchise from The Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman, is happy to point out his love for the undead genre when talking to Newsarama:
The original Night of the Living Dead is one of my all time favorite movies, and I love Peter Jackson's Dead Alive/Brain Dead. One of my best friends from college is famed zombie novelist David Wellington, who I was working with at the U.N. (of all places) when he was writing his great zombie trilogy, Monster Island, Monster Nation and Monster Planet. He would bounce ideas off me and he would tell me about how he was struggling and working with the genre. So even though [Marvel Zombies 3] is my first major work in the zombie world it felt familiar to me — like coming home. A rotting, blood-spattered, intestine-spilling home.
So much like coming home, in fact, that he may have managed to do what many before him have failed at - making sure that everyone, even brain-eating zombies, are happy at story's end:
Let's just say certain zombies have taken advantage of the advanced science of a superhero universe to solve their food shortage problem... By employing a device from one of the single most controversial Marvel story lines of all time...
A tease, sure, but thinking through Marvel's previously controversial storylines, one particular possibility stands out: Spider-Man's "Clone Saga" (wherein Peter Parker was revealed to be a clone of Peter Parker, who now called himself Ben Reilly until he was revealed to be a clone and Parker was revealed to be the real thing - All of which happened over the course of two years and somewhere in the region of 130 comics. No, seriously). Are clones the way to keep zombies happy? It makes sense, in a particularly practical-yet-ghoulish way - but you'll have to wait until Marvel Zombies 3 finishes to see if everything ends well. The series launches on Wednesday. Zombies in Florida: Fred Van Lente on Marvel Zombies III [Newsarama]