I can't help it; I know that zombies are/were the big thing, but there's something about the current trend for undead superheroics that leaves me more than a little bored. I've got nothing against genres mixing and matching, but the original Marvel Zombies - with its horror movie logic and sense of humor, and its lack of need to have to deal with regular continuity allowing it to actually act as a complete story as opposed to something that pretty much needs to reset to the status quo by its conclusion - aside, there's something disappointing about this particular take on the walking (and flying, and running at superspeed) dead. Namely...

None Of Them Are Real Zombies
Again, Marvel Zombies excepted, the reanimated in Blackest Night and Necrosha aren't really zombies, exactly (Something that Blackest Night's creators, to their credit, keep saying in interviews. Even so, calling them Black Lanterns feels like a dodge, because they're dead characters come back to life as undead monsters - They're so clearly zombie-influenced that the actual name doesn't matter). They're magically animated by the power of death itself, or by a psychic vampire (Don't ask), or whatever, and they don't conform to what we'd consider zombie rules: They're not slow, they don't eat brains, they're intelligent - and, in fact, generally have the personalities of their living selves - and they're all under the command of some central intelligence or leader with a specific mission. What kind of zombies are that organized, you might ask yourself? Which brings us to...

We've Seen This All Before
The dead being brought back as pawns to use against our brave heroes? Old hat for superhero comics - In fact, Marvel even has multiple characters based around this concept (the Grim Reaper, the Black Talon... You could even argue that Brother - now Doctor - Voodoo would have some familiarity on the subject). The only thing that's new about this latest wave is the overwhelming scale of the risings... which is one of the few things legitimately taken from zombie culture. Which reminds me.

Enough With The Magic Cures Already
Zombies should be pretty easy to beat. If Simon Pegg and Nick Frost can take care of some, after all, how hard can it be? But not these superhero zombies; no, they're not only gifted with magical regenerative powers that somehow don't take them to a fully regenerated state, but they also have very specific ways to be defeated, apparently: Blowing their heads off? Not going to work, it seems. Setting fire to them? Well, it keeps them busy for awhile, but otherwise... Nah. But keep calm and show no signs of emotion and they shut down (All of that from Blackest Night, which, in its defense is not only a fun superhero story but, in Blackest Night: Superman and Blackest Night: Batman has some really great examples of superhero comics ripping off some well-known horror movie cliches - If you've not seen Martha Kent be chased through a cornfield at night by an undead Lois Lane, or Commissioner Gordon use a double-barreled shotgun against an army of the undead while carrying his crippled daughter over his shoulder, you've missed out on some wonderfully enjoyable over-the-top moments of recent comics). Seriously, comic creators: what's that all about?

Death Is Never The End In Superhero Comics, Anyway
Ultimately, the problem with superheroic zombies is that the rules of death don't work the same way in superhero comics as they do in almost every other fiction. We're used to resurrection in superhero comics, and that works against the story from the very beginning; Blackest Night, for example, has to not only make the reader believe that the dead rising is not only a horrific thing, but also an unusual one - Which, considering that Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, Hawkman and Robin have all "died" and been resurrected at some point in their careers, is a pretty tricky thing to do; Necrosha takes place in the X-Men series of titles, which has become so full of resurrected characters that characters within the story joke about the pearly gates having been replaced by a revolving door. Without the belief that death is the end - that it means that the person or character is gone and will never be seen again - the very idea of an army of the undead is weakened, because the possibility of a return is always there, and in many cases, expected to happen.

Mixing zombies with superheroes doesn't automatically mean failure - Despite all my "I know you've said they're not zombies and they're not acting like zombies, but come on, they're weird zombie-esque creatures, just admit it" problems with Blackest Night, it's full enough of melodrama, derring-do and humor to make me kind of love it - but of all the horror genres to bring superheroes into, it's one of the most problematic. I can get why comic publishers would want to jump onboard the bandwagon, but... Aren't there other horror monsters better suited to this kind of thing? I mean, Marvel: Paul Cornell gave you Dracula on the moon. That's a great gift right there...

It's a relatively solid week for new releases, with both Marvel and DC offering a raft of them. DC have Red Tornado, a new mini-series featuring one of the most defective, voyeuristic (as readers of Justice League of America know) and powerful robots in comics, and Magog, a new monthly series written by Justice League International's Keith Giffen, drawn by JLA's Howard Porter and starring a pro-active former soldier out to solve the world's socio-political problems by hitting folk. Marvel, meanwhile, have The Torch, and reviving the original (robotic) Human Torch. Plus Marvel Zombies Return is the first issue of an event that'll bring well-known zombie novelists into comics. There's an interesting bunch of collections, including a reissue of Hulk: Grey, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's look back at the early days of the the gamma-irradiated goliath, and a new hardcover collection of the very enjoyable New Avengers: The Reunion series by Jim McCann and David Lopez, bringing back everyone's favorite superhero couple, Hawkeye and Mockingbird.

Image Comics, meanwhile, launch Fall Out Toy Works - the first issue of the sci-fi series co-created by Fall-Out Boy's Pete Wentz. Dynamite offer up the collection of the underrated Dead Irons, which takes Universal's classic monster movie monsters and puts them into the Wild West with creepy and understated results. If you're looking for something a little more upbeat, IDW has the first collection of GI Joe: Origins to give you the secret origin of the little paramilitary group that could at the box office, even though you didn't believe it.
The two most interesting books of the week come from the crossover side of creatordom. DC/Vertigo's Sweet Tooth, by Jeff Lemire, brings a different take on familiar (post-apocalyptic, stranger in a strange land) themes. And Marvel's Strange Tales shows the strength of Disney's new IP farm by letting a whole bunch of awesome indie comic creators loose to cause trouble, kick some ass and take some names while they're at it.

If you're looking to pull a mini-Disney and buy some comics instead of a comic company, then kindly direct your attention to the Diamond Distributors Shipping List for the week to see what else is available, besides what's listed above, before heading out to your local comic store to find some IP to invest in. And remember: It's now that much smaller of a world, after all.

The three novelists are blog novel Monster Island writer David Wellington, Patient Zero creator Jonathan Maberry, and media sensation Seth Grahame-Smith of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies fame. Marvel Zombies Return editor Bill Rosemann told Newsarama.com how they came to be involved with the comic publisher's own zombie franchise:

A couple months ago a few of us in the office were talking about Marvel Zombies and about where we could take the story next. Our head of Sales David Gabriel brought up the fact that we hadn't seen the most famous zombies – such as Spider-Man and Wolverine and Colonel America – since the end of Marvel Zombies 2... As a major zombie fan who has been enjoying the recent resurgence of zombie fiction, I thought it would be fun to invite some of today's top zombie novelists to try their hand at our crazy comics [and a]s luck would have it, all three were interested, available, and true-blue comics fans. Better yet, they were all a pleasure to collaborate with, and all knocked their chapters right out of the park with the first swing! These three might not just be the next three great Marvel Zombies writers, but the next three great Marvel writers, period!

Mayberry is already getting settled in at the company, taking over the Black Panther series with August's issue.

Marvel Zombies Return will take the form of a five issue weekly "event" consisting of Marvel Zombies Return: Spider-Man, Marvel Zombies Return: Iron Man, Marvel Zombies Return: Wolverine, Marvel Zombies Return: Hulk and Marvel Zombies Return: Avengers; the Spider-Man and Avengers issues will be written by Marvel Zombies 3 and Marvel Zombies 4 writer Fred Van Lente, with Wellington taking on Iron Man, Mayberry writing Wolverine and Grahame-Smith coming up with Hulk's things to smash or eat. The series will appear in comic stores in September.

The Zombies - This Time, With Literate Roots [Newsarama.com]

It's an especially heavy week of multimedia tie-in books — Dark Horse has two great collections for you to pick up, Serenity: Better Days and Star Wars Omnibus: Early Victories (which includes the comic version of Splinter Of The Mind's Eye, which is awesome in so many ways). Meanwhile, IDW goes for the coffee table audience with The Art of IDW's Transformers and the brokenhearted-thanks-to-the-Wachowski-Brothers audience with the first volume of Speed Racer: The Next Generation.

If you're missing Sci Fi's greatest show — No, not Eureka, although stay tuned for that comic in December — then Dynamite has the first issue of Battlestar Galactica: Ghosts, a new series that spins away from the cast that we know and love to provide its own brand of psychodrama. With the exception of the first issue of the beautiful must-have (previewed elsewhere on the site today) Ender's Game: Battle School, the most interesting tie-in book this week is probably The Ferryman, a new series about the ultimate black-ops operative, written by Entertainment Weekly's Marc Bernardin Marc Andreyko (thanks, Alex) from an idea by Joel Silver. As far as I know, it's not in the works as a movie or TV show... yet. But keep your eyes on this one.

In terms of original comic stories, there's a lot worth paying attention to this week — there's the third series of Marvel Zombies, which we've already written about. But if that doesn't float your boat, then the hardcover collection of Warren Ellis' superhero-political-drama Black Summer or DC's collection of 1950s and '60s monkey tales, DC Comics Goes Ape, represent two ends of the spectrum available to you from this week's releases.

(Marvel's Young Avengers Presents collection and first issue of Wolverine flashback storyline X-Men Original Sin fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, both both are worth leafing through, if nothing else).

But the gold star of original material this week is easily Annihiliation Classic, a hardcover collection of various space stories that led to Marvel's new intergalactic franchise that includes an issue of 1980s weirdness Rocket Raccoon featuring very early art by Mike Mignola. Everyone must see this, trust me.

If you need more than just Hellboy's daddy drawing spacebound raccoons, you can find a complete list of this week's new comic releases here, and then the the Comic Shop Locator Service will help you find your closest local store. Remember: TV may offer you moving pictures, but only comics can offer you Beatles-influenced mammals fighting aliens.

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]

It's another of those strange, uneven, weeks for comic releases with Marvel taking it easy with the exception of a couple of collections worth noting (Marvel Zombies: Dead Days collects the second series of the "What if Marvel's heroes all became zombies and ate each other?" comedy, while What If? Civil War brings together the last few specials of alternate worlds where Iron Man isn't a dick and Spider-Man didn't sell out entirely.)

And DC is launching some particularly uninspiring series in response. I mean, sure, Batman: Death Mask will probably be several shades of awesome and I'm sure there's an audience for the Marv Wolfman nostalgiafest that is Titans (bringing together all of "The New Teen Titans" again for the first time since... Well, Devin Grayson launched a book called Titans about nine years ago), but The Number Of The Beast? Do fans really want to see Warren Ellis and Jim Lee's creative legacies beaten up so badly that they'll buy a third six-issue series about apocalypse visiting DC's Wildstorm imprint in a row?

No, the real interest of the week is in the independents aisle. The comic version of Wild Cards launches, for one thing, and Brett Ratner's future movie Harbinger revisits its comic past in the Harbinger: The Beginning hardcover collection.

If your retro taste is for something much older, then you may find yourself drawn to the classic 1950s SF pulp found in a reprint of Frank Hampson's beautifully-illustrated Classic Dan Dare: Reign of The Robots, which will make even the most cynical young ones amongst you marvel at just how gorgeous old British comics were, back in the day.

The pick of the week, however, is Aqua Leung, a new graphic novel by Amazing Joy Buzzards creator Mark Andrew Smith with artist Paul Maybury that tells the story of Aqua, an asshole kid who discovers that he's actually the only surviving member of the royal family of Atlantis and sets out to regain his throne, clear his family name and beat up sharks. Even though it already sounds awesome, the book itself is twice as good as you'd expect, and despite it not really being science fiction, it's easily the one thing that you should be leaving your comic store with this week.

Wondering where that comic store would be? Check here. Wondering what else is coming out this week? Check here. Just remember to check out the story about the Atlantean boy king next time you're out.