Comic Report Card: Marvel Zombies Dead Days

One more day ‘till Halloween, Halloween, one more day ‘till Halloween, Silver Shamrock!

Yes that’s right; it’s one more day ‘till the greatest day of the year…and 2 more days for the Halloween fun to end (The cruel irony). But before we wrap up tomorrow with the top 25 horror film, 13-1, we’ve got one last bit of Comic fun for you. Yet another Comic Report Card on Marvel Zombies: Dead Days. There’s no doubt that Dead Days was very much highly anticipated by the Zombies fanbase, for one, it was the return of Kirkman and Phillips, and a lot of people weren’t happy with the other Prequel, Marvel Zombies vs. Evil Dead.

We’re going to take a quick look and grade the Dead Days one shot that both enlightened, and disappointed Marvel Zombie fans everywhere.

Written: Robert Kirkman

Art: Sean Phillips

Story Comments: The story is fairly simple, picking up From MZ Vs. ED part 2, Spider-man is rushing home to protect MJ and Aunt May. As one would figure, this goes horribly wrong and in true Marvel Zombies fashion, Peter eats the 2 people he loves most in the world.

The opening is actually pretty good and it captures the spirit of the Marvel Zombies franchise, but following this, we soon start to tread water. Everything we where told in Ultimate Fantastic Four as well as Marvel Zombies is repeated here, just in the form of moments between characters. These moments reveal absolutely nothing new or slightly interesting and only do the bare basics of what they set out to do.

To put it best, Marvel Zombies Dead Days is everything we already know, but with pretty and horrific images. It’s nothing new, it’s nothing refreshing, and it’s a giant waste of your time.

Granted, if you want to get into the Marvel Zombies but don’t want to start with the first series, for some odd reason, then pick up the Dead Days one shot (or Hardcover, which we’ll spotlight one day) and you’ll enjoy it. For the rest of us though, it’s reading everything we knew about and saw already.

Really, the only prequel here is the Evil Dead crossover. That was much better in terms of telling the story before the story.

Though I have to admit, there are some nice moments here like seeing Scarlet Spider quickly or the chilling final panel of a close up on Reed Richards but really none of it feels worth the time and effort put into this. We also don’t get an explanation as to what it is about Zombie Sentry that made him a zombie in the first place, and if I recall, we never saw what happened to him. This would have been a great opportunity to show where he went, maybe the zombie heroes killed him or something. I guess we’ll never know.

Art Comments: Sean Phillips is not without error here, but for the most part, his work here is solid. He still has the blotch moments and odd character features, but it’s nowhere near as bad as in the first series. That plus this is where we first saw the jagged shark teethed zombies. Very well done there.

Final Comments: Marvel Zombies Dead Days is a fine read with good art, but unless you’re unfamiliar with the Zombies, it’s a complete waste of time and paper. I suggest you read Marvel Zombies vs. Dead Days as it had much more interesting moments and better character interactions than Dead Days could even hope for.

Score: 5 out of 10

Grade: D

The horror is nearly over. As mentioned earlier, check back tomorrow for the 2^nd and final part to the top 25 horror films of all time. I’m not sure when I’ll be posting it, to be honest; with tomorrow being Halloween it’s kind of a busy day for me. I was also hoping to try and get down to the LCS and pick up the Ultimate Spider-man Annual, so I’ll post the top 25 horror as soon as I can before I start tricking and treating.