My first foray into Marvel Zombies

A week or so ago I was contacted by Marvel editorial: The writer for their new Zombie limited series, “Marvel Zombies Destroy!” had run into some health issues and they needed someone to step in and write the last three issues. Having not read the solicits, I said, “What’s the premise?”

“World War II Marvel Nazi zombies.”

I gave it not a moment’s hesitation. “Sold.”

Because really: How can you possibly turn down World War II Marvel Nazi zombies?

I wrote my first issue (#3 of the series) and candidly really got a kick out of it. And I’ve got incredibly twisted things in mind for #4 and #5. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I am writing it.

PAD

69 comments on “My first foray into Marvel Zombies

  1. Ummm… Me. Seriously – zombies? Haven’t they been about as over-done as the bleepin’ vampires?

    We need *NEW* monsters – not vampires, werewolfs, zombies, or frankenstein’s monsters. Can’t we do something new and fun with ghosts, maybe?

    1. Umm, ghosts have been around a lot longer than zombies — hardly new.

      As for something “new and fun,” that depends on what the creator brings to the creature, not just the creature. After all, there’s a world of difference between THE WALKING DEAD, SHAUN OF THE DEAD and PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, even though they all involve zombies. I look forward to what PAD does with zombies *and* the Marvel Universe *and* WW2!

    2. Uhm… Tara…

      You seem like a nice person. But…

      “Seriously – zombies? Haven’t they been about as over-done as the bleepin’ vampires?”

      You have severe and extreme mental issues. Seek professional help now.

      :p

      1. No, really. Vampires – Buffy, Twilight, Anne Rice, Underworld etc. Werewolves – Teen Wolf, Buffy (again), Twilight (again), Underworld (again). Zombies – Just that you can name *THAT* many off the back of your hand kinda proves my point – and you’re not even including that silly TV show they’re running right now. Plus the Zombie Apocalypse meme that I can’t seem to load a webpage without seeing some reference to – for crying out loud, the CDC put out instructions for handling one!!! If anything, I have to say that Zombies are currently *THE* most over-done schtick right now.

        Ghosts? We’ve got Ghosthunters – two dozen different teams of ghost hunters, but… ghost hunters. Meanwhile, “A Girl And Her Fed” is actually doing something really cool with ghosts – and has little more than the usual share of webcomic attention. There’s a really neat article from the October 1980 issue of Analog Magazine detailing a possible physical mechanism behind ghosts, *AND* how to test it! (The tests have been done – and anomalous effects found. Really – needs more study!)

        Please, if you’ve gotta do zombies… well, it really doesn’t matter that much, as I’m more a fan of your work on Photon than I am of comic books these days.

      2. Ghosts aren’t very scary. They just sort of hang around and occasionally tip things over. I have 5 cats. The ghost would have to be the worst parts of Poltergeist and Insidious to even get noticed.

      3. Ghosts are simply a different kind of scary. There are bits of stories involving ghosts by guys like Henry James and German poet Rainer Rilke that I find deeply disturbing. Not to mention deeply scary movies like THE SHINING.
        .
        IMO, the horror from ghosts comes from the easy way they can become enmeshed in everyday life, and make your otherwise very normal, very proper world suddenly turn into a mix of the Twilight Zone and a movie from David Lynch.
        .
        It’s the very opposite of zombies, that are the most, punch-in-the-face, direct kind of scary ever.
        .
        But that’s when ghosts are done right. When they’re done wrong, well… it’s so easy to go the helping-the-poor-ghosts-find-the-way-to-the-afterlife rote, that can be fine when done properly, I suppose, but drains all the scary the story could possibly have.

      4. “We need *NEW* monsters – not vampires, werewolfs, zombies, or frankenstein’s monsters. Can’t we do something new and fun with ghosts, maybe?”

        So, you haven’t seen “Being Human”, then? On BBC Three (and BBC America): “Comedy-drama series about three twenty-something housemates trying to live normal lives, despite struggling with unusual afflictions – one is a werewolf, one is a vampire and the other is a ghost.”

      5. Plus add in that no one else sees Bill’s cats, ever, they’re pretty terrifying. Not as bad as the rabbit, but still…

      6. Even at their scariest Ghosts can only be so scary. I mean, if there are ghosts there must be an afterlife so there’s something to look forward to. Zombies, you die and turn into a bag of reanimated meat that walks around moaning and falling apart.

        The reaction people have to ghosts is usually scarier than the ghosts. a guy sees Casper and his eyes pop 7 inches out of his head, he runs away but his skeleton stays behind (defying the laws of physics which says that his body should fall to the ground as a floppy mass of skin and muscle and then his bones run off as well. That’s at least 12,000 times as scary as Casper. I’ll take the ghost of what I’m guessing was a deformed fetus over the dangling-eyed jellyfish man and his reanimated skeleton any day of the week.

      7. You can do some things with ghosts that can make them scary.

        1) They are hard to escape.

        2) The can be visible or invisible.

        3) Tangible or intangible

        4) They can use objects in your house and even your own body or the bodies of your friends against you.

        5) When visible can make themselves look scary.

        6) Have different shapes and sizes.

        7) Psychologically disturbed. You need to figure out what hey want.

        8) Can make visual and audio illusions.

        9) Are from a different time period with different attitudes and behavior.

        10) Might be personally connected to their victims.

      8. PAD wrote: “Ghosts can only be so scary? Did nobody see “Poltergeist?” Has no one heard of the Specter?”

        I’d like to add another source of scary ghosts: SUPERNATURAL. They show up a lot (not sure if they or demons are the most-encountered monsters), they’re usually noticed after leaving victims, and their very appearance is both scary (no Caspers there!) and usually a sign you’re about to die — painfully.

      9. You can make a ghost scary but you usually have to turn them into a demon to do it.

        And the rules are too wonky even for me. A guy hangs himself in a room and becomes a ghost because of his violent death…meanwhile, you can walk around the Gettysburg battlefield unmolested. That place should be screaming ghost central, right? I’d like to see them blindfold a “psychic’ and take them to Auschwitz or somewhere and see what they come up with. Probably claim someone died “suddenly” (always true; you’re alive and then you aren’t).

      10. I will admit that the vampire thing bothers me a bit right now and I’m a bigger fan of that genre than of the zombie genre. But the reason it’s bothering me has nothing to do with how much of it we’re seeing and is instead based on what we’re seeing.

        Somewhere along the way the idea that Dracula was a “romantic” character grew way out of proportion and what got lost in that was that this was a creature who would either feast on you until you die, turn you into a mindless slave thing that feasted on humans or turned you into a dámņëd creature like itself.

        The vampire slowly turned more tragic and romantic over time and became almost more sympathetic than scary. Then Buffy and Anita came along and made the vampire either the “bad boy” that the girls had a crush on or the impossible love that tear at their hearts. A decade later we get the completely sad sack, pathetic and totally Takei creatures we see in Twilight and the like.

        30 Days of Night wasn’t even a good tap into what the vampire was insofar as its modern take in horror because the killing machine on display in that film had more in common with a zombie/werewolf hybrid concept than the vampire myths in our culture (although it did share some aspects of bits and pieces from other “vampire” myths from around the world.)

        But zombies? The interesting thing about zombies is that they’re the monster, but they’re not the story. They’re the terror in the background and occasionally the terror in your face, but the people in the story and observing their reactions to being in a pressure cooker is what actually drives the story. So long as a story is strong and entertaining, the zombies are not overdone or tired. The Walking Dead television show and to a much greater degree the comic are proof of this.

        Ghosts are also close to being “overdone” by your definition by the way. The last ten years have seen a small army of ghost/haunting/demonic haunting stories and films. Some have been big budget and theatrical while others went direct to DVD. Some have been excellent (Lake Mungo) while others much less so (just about anything cashing in on Paranormal Activity.)

        We’ve seen The Ring 1&2, The Grudge 1&2, Dark Water, The Eye, The Amityville Horror, The Amityville Haunting, Paranormal Activity, An American Haunting, The Haunting of Molly Hartley, The Haunting of Sorority Row, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Awakening, The Woman in Black, Pulse, Insidious, Exorcist: The Beginning, The Ward, Silent Hill, The Uninvited, Mirrors, The Gravedancers, Lake Mungo, Stir of Echoes and The Others.

        And, yeah, that’s off the top of my head. Although, to be fair, I think the last two were in 1998 and 1999. There have been more ghosts and hauntings in theaters and on television in the last decade than there have been zombies and very likely even vampires. Even if you add in all of the direct to DVD stuff in the last ten years that don’t make it to the television screen on Syfy and other cable channels, you would probably still come up with more ghost movies and television shows than vampire ones and maybe even zombie ones (but that might be a dámņëd close contest since ghosts and zombies are the two easiest low budget horror films to make outside of a slasher according to most indie filmmakers I’ve met or read interviews by.)

        So, are you really claiming that you think that they (zombies) are the most overdone thing out there right now or are you really saying that they’re just not your cuppa and that you have no interest in seeing more of them?

      11. Dracula is a complete monster in the original novel, because he represents what Victorian morality is morbidly afraid of: unrestrained sexuality.
        .
        You jump ahead to the 1970s, and Anne Rice wisely taps into more contemporary views of sexuality. Now unrestrained sexuality is attractive. Lestat is the guy everybody desires.
        .
        And now there is Twilight, making vampires safe, hygienic, monogamous, against pre-marital sex. I suppose you could say there is an universal principle involved. First you demonize the revolution, then you embrace the revolution, and finally you turn the revolution into a safe product for consumers.

    3. There’s a joke in here somewhere about presidential candidates and the people who discuss them as the new monsters.

  2. Marvel Zombies Destroy! #1 and #2 are in the March Diamond catalog for May-shipping products. I would imagine #3 and possibly #4 will be in the April catalog for June.

  3. Tara brings up an interesting point about new monsters. I think there are really only a small group of monster categories and we mix and match them:

    1- The Cannibal, the creature of unnatural appetites, blood drinkers, flesh eaters. This one goes way back.

    2- The dinosaur, the monster of the past come to tear down our fragile wall of civilization. Godzilla, Creature from the Black lagoon, an escaped tiger. probably our first monster, when we gathered around the fire and heard roars in the night.

    3- the ghost, the dead that won’t stay dead

    4- the demon, monsters from the dreamworld, monsters that exist outside of reality, creatures unbound by the rules of nature

    5- The alien

    6- the machine–the monster of our own construction– robots, the smog monster

    7- the werewolf–a man who turns into a beast. Jeckyl/hyde, slashers, the wolfman (obviously)

    That’s all I can come up with. Most great monsters combine a few. Frankenstein’s monster is a little ghost, a little machine. Dracula–ghost, cannibal, demon. Freddy Kruger- Ghost, demon. Zombies–Ghost, cannibal, a smidgeon of werewolf and dinosaur.

    So ghosts are an element of most of the cool monsters but they need a bit more to make them scary. Interesting that so many of our monsters are based on the premise that death is not the end.

    1. Nice analysis! Maybe a writer can use it to come up with something new and different! After all, I wouldn’t feel quite as insulted by Twilight if she just hadn’t called them *vampires*. Maybe blood golums would be better – since they have that sparkley thing, and the granite hard skin…

      1. Now, was that supposed to be “blood GOLEMS”, or “blood GOLLUMS”?

        Because either one is interesting…

        (“It’s warm, isn’t it, my preciouss? Warm and tasssty…”)

      2. Interestingly, science fiction allows us more opportunities at this point to create “new” monsters than any of the traditional horror narratives. The Doctor Who two parter The Rebel Flesh and the Almost People gave us a really freaky “new” monster (even if it was at heart the idea of an evil, scientifically created clone mixed with the Body Snatchers.)

        Still to this day, my third favorite ghost story and favorite science fiction and horror mashup is Quatermass and the Pit. It starts you out on a story about a crashed alien ship, veers into ghost territory for a bit, slides neatly into almost demonic possession before returning everything back to science fiction and alien causes while still retaining the horror element. It wasn’t a ghost story, a demonic possession story or an alien invasion story in the normal sense while actually being all three at the same time.

        And it gave us the best Professor Quatermass that we got to see out of the three film versions.

    2. You forgot the scariest of all…

      Human. Nothing scarier than an ordinary person who goes off on a killing spree. Worst kind of monster there is, and more frightening because it’s REAL.

      Wait… Oh god… You’re all human, too! (backs away slowly) Stay calm… Stay calm… YOINK! (bolts)

      1. I think the killing spree monster is a kind of werewolf–the idea that inside a seemingly normal person is a mindless beast.

        The zombie works because you can integrate virtually all of the categories. A flesh eating, dead person, created by science, weird looking, infectious, can turn you into one of them, destroys civilization, you’ve got elements of cannibal, ghost, werewolf, dinosaur, machine. You could probably make a good argument for demon as well n the Fulci films and alien in the way the Romero films postulate the evolution of a new zombie society.

        Basically, zombie films and comics are like the joke The Aristocrats. We pretty much no the setup and punchline, it’s what you do in between that shows off the creativity.

      2. Now imagine an ordinary person that unknowingly makes monsters out of other people. Imagine being that person.

    3. Bill, did you ever read DANSE MACABRE, by Stephen King?
      .
      In it, King breaks down monsters into 3 archetypes: vampire, werewolf, and the thing without a name, with ghosts as a possible fourth archetype.
      .
      And then he sort of narrows it all down to a single archetype: the mutant. He concludes that the horror genre is at heart a conservative’s cautionary tale to watch for the mutant.
      .
      But overall I like your scheme better.

      1. I must have read it–there was a time when I would read ANYTHING by king. I don’t know when I stopped, at some point it was obvious I wasn’t going to get a new THE STAND and the stories seemed increasingly as though they were done to fulfill contractual obligations.

        I’ve had this spinning in my head as a possible con panel presentation.

      2. I think I was saw Poppy Z. Brite discuss “left bank” and “right bank” horror on the show “politically incorrect” (if I recall correctly it was the same one where a certain guest talked about having been a witch, and then much later that guest went into politics.) The idea (which I think she said was Caitlin R. Kiernan’s) is that in “right bank” horror the “other” is the threat, (Dracula, The Mummy, maybe Frankenstein) and that in left bank horror it is the so called “normal” or “sympathetic” non-others that are the real monsters (Frankenstein, the mass of humanity that turns the monster evil, and/or Victor, for creating, spurning, and abandoning the creature in the first place.) You can see some of the later in “The Twilight Zone” (how often are humans the real monsters in that one) elements of the Hulk, (not too surprising, give that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were no strangers to monster comics), some E.C. comics, hëll, parts of the whole X-men mythos owe to that. or Edward Scissorhands, etc…

      3. I’d put Hannibal Lecter into the horror category. Werewolf archetype for monster insinde a man? maybe, but more of an “alien” for having an alien set of ethics as a sociopath than anything else.

        .

        Then again, it’s easy to collapse any set of monsters into “the other”

        .

        One category though might fit outside the one ones Bill mentioned above: the haunted “place.” yeah, a haunted house can be a machine, but still, how many horror or close to horror stories have the monster as “the woods” “the clearing” “the campsite” “the mines” or “that spooky place no one goes.” Where it more of a feeling of dread and disorientation than anything else. Sf has haunted/anomolous planets/environments, on in the original Twilight Zone, a plane that vanished through an anomlay into time, or a space capsule ending up on an alternative earths, or various “time warp” episodes.

  4. Haven’t read the series for several years, but will pick it up for sure now.

    It’s got Howard the Duck right?

  5. Regarding ghosts, back in 1981 there was a movie called Ghost Story, based on a novel by Peter Straub. I first saw it on TV when I was in college, and because it was on network TV, certain segments had been cut out.
    .
    I subsequently saw it uncut on video. In many ways, the edited for television version was the better version, because it was scarier.
    .
    Why?
    .
    There’s a point in the movie (the part not shown on TV for obvious reasons) where the hero becomes romantically involved with the woman (Alice Krige) whom the viewer knows to be the ghost. The viewer had previously witnessed the nasty fate of the hero’s brother at the ghost’s hands, so when she invites him to come up to her apartment, the implication is that he’s going to suffer a similar fate. At one point her back is to him, and my friends and I (and probably everyone else who saw the film) expected her to turn around, revealing a horrible visage. Which is what happened with the brother.
    .
    Didn’t happen. In the uncut version of the film, they made love, and there followed 20 or 30 minutes of scenes of the two of them making out and/or of Alice Krige in various states of undress. Alice Krige was gorgeous in those days, but gorgeous, nude, female ghosts aren’t scary.
    .
    As those scenes continued any feeling of nervous tension the audience might have felt when the guy headed up to her apartment soon dissipated like, well, a ghost.
    .
    Later sections of the film were scary (like when she’s coming down the stairs, and he can’t move because of his broken leg), but those lovemaking segments felt like a cheat to me. Maybe if the earlier scene with the brother, where he received a gruesome surprise (and death) rather than the sex he’d expected, hadn’t set the audience up to expect the same to happen to this guy it would have been a different matter.
    .
    JamesLynch is right that ghosts in Supernatural are often scary. That they can physically hurt you plays a big role in that.
    .
    Scary or not, ghosts also have rights. Including the right to set their own hours for hauntings, and to be able to enjoy their “off hours” without being hassled by some flesh-bound fool. At least that’s what the late Archibald Hansen feels in my short story, “The Spirit of the Law.” You can read it in issue #1 of the Mysterious Traveler E-Zine:
    .
    http://www.threeinvestigatorsbooks.com/MysteriousTravelerE-zine.html
    .
    As to zombies, while I’m not a fan in general, they do have their good points. Certainly, “Romeo and Juliet”, as seen in the original Zombie, is unsurpassed.
    .
    Rick

    1. Rick, I believe Ghost Story was a theatrical release. I first saw it when it first ran on The Movie Channel (back in the day when you actually had to pay for it and there was only one of them VS fifty of them.)

      You need to go back and watch it again. The reason the scene unfolds how you described it is because, for whatever reason, the ghost didn’t seem to know who or what she was when she homed in on the lead character. It was their playful moment in the bathtub where he dunks her under the water that snaps her mind into beginning to realize what she is and what she came back for. I think that was set up in part that way to add a level of guilt to the main character because he essentially was the thing that unleashed the ghost on its killing spree.

      It always seemed a little odd to me (although I love the movie) because it seemed like it was playing with reincarnation first and switched to the vengeful ghost.

      1. Jerry,
        .
        Yes, it was a theatrical release. But I saw it on TV, and later on videotape (both some years after the film came out).
        .
        If the ghost didn’t know who she was, then how do you explain the scene with the older brother character near the beginning of the film? Come to think of it, it may have been a pre-credits sequence. She was in full seduction mode, then wham! The older brother took a fall. Literally.
        .
        If the older brother scene hadn’t been there, then your theory about the ghost might carry more weight.
        .
        Also, didn’t at least one of the old men get killed before the ghost met Our Hero?
        .
        Rick

      2. Ah… Ghost Story. Fred Astaire’s last acting part, along with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Melvyn Douglas, and of course, Sir John Houseman.

        I met Alice Krige once, at the height of her Borg Queen fame, and amidst the Trekkers told her that she scared the bejeezus out of me in that movie.

        She loved it.

        One of my favorite ghost movies.

        TAC

      3. I’ll have to go back and rewatch the film as it’s been a while since I saw it (ten-plus years.) If I remember right, the younger brother is telling the others a “ghost story” detailing how he and the woman first met. There’s even a bit in the telling where he’s talking to his older brother on the phone about the girl his brother just met, he realizes who that girl might be and asks/warns his brother about her.

        I may be remembering wrong here, but I don’t think so in this particular case.

      4. Yeah, I don’t need to dig it out now. Once I started thinking about it the bits and pieces came back into place. We see the relationship between him and the ghost as he’s telling the older gentleman the story. Everything we see in that is a flashback that transpires before any of the other events we’re made aware of other than the story of her death back in the day. And, yeah, a part of the flashback is him warning his brother about her on the phone.

      5. (I hope this goes under Jerry’s “Yeah, I don’t need to dig it out now.” reply)
        .
        I just took a quick look at my videotape of Ghost Story. It opens with a meeting of the Chowder Society (the four old men), cuts to the older brother (“David Wanderley”, according to IMDb) getting killed by the ghost, and then we meet the younger brother, Don. He tells his father that he knew the woman David was going to marry, and later tells the Chowder Society his “ghost story.” So yeah, the portion of the film dealing with his relationship with the ghost is flashback.
        .
        Still, I think the scene with David creates an expectation in the viewer that when Don goes up to the ghost’s apartment he’s going to get a scare, at the very least. He doesn’t. Not for quite some time.
        .
        As for the ghost (Eva/Alma) not remembering who or what she was, I don’t think that’s the case, either. I think she was involved in “the long con”, intending not only to strike at the Chowder Society members– one of whom was Don and David’s father (the Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. character)– but also, in this family’s case at least, at the sons. Here’s why. The setting is New England. Eva died there. But Don meets her in her guise as “Alma” at a college he’s teaching at near Orlando, Florida. Why would an amnesiac ghost from New England be in Florida, and how likely is it that she’d “just happen” to interact with the son of one of her (accidental) killers? Seems a bit of stretch that she’d be so far from her regular haunts, but maybe she was vacationing at Disney World. Fine, but ghost or not, her just happening to run into Don way down in Florida seems far-fetched.
        .
        No, she knew what she was doing from the get-go. I think she originally planned to take more time with Don, but his playful dunking of her in the tub pìššëd her off, and she accelerated her time table. I could be wrong about that. I didn’t re-watch the whole movie, just a few scenes.
        .
        Rick

      6. I’m not sure about the long con idea. Maybe there’s an answer for it in the book or maybe not if the filmmakers took great liberties with the source material. But fast forward to the part where the two of them are both in a bathtub together. She goes under the water and stays there long enough that Don gets worried before she comes up screaming. The next few scenes of them together are of her getting more and more spacey acting, at times like someone only half awake and still stuck in a dream, before she finally disappears on him. It plays out for all the world like she was without the memories of the event of her death decades earlier until being under the water in the tub.

        Yes, I dug out my DVD anyhow because chatting about it make me want to watch it again.

        The only thing I can figure as to why that was supposed to make sense would be that Don was meant to feel guilty for the events that followed that moment in the tub (as he basically set everything into motion in the present day) and that it was supposed to be an extra twist of the knife in the later meeting between Don and dead girl. It could have been a long con and mind screw on her part, but the way it plays out in the film doesn’t feel right to be that (at least for me.)

  6. The trouble with the Marvel Zombies thing is that I have an easier time believing Kurt Wagner (yes. the blue-skinned teleporter) lives in my building in real life than I do a virus that can do all that one would have to to turn EVERYBODY into zombies including aliens and deities.

    Bill M. – As for ghosts not being scary, try the Japanese film THE DISCARNATES or the 2004 Thai film SHUTTER. These may change your mind.

    1. And let’s not forget “The Sixth Sense.” (And while it’s trendy to bash it now, I think that “The Blair Witch Project” deserves to be remembered, maybe even as a classic one day.)

  7. I collect all the Marvel Zombies series. I just love them because it’s just awesome camp and a great action story. I always trade wait them. So I was planning on picking up the trade for Marve Zombies Destroy anyway. Now I have extra encentive to get it. I read somewhere that Howard the Duck is supposed to show up in this. PAD writing Howard? THIS I MUST READ!

    GO PAD!

  8. I’m not really a zombie fan myself. I’m okay with the old-school Vodou type zombies from the old horror movies and comics (like Simon Garth). However, I don’t really care for the modern zombie. Mainly, it seems that they need an apocalyptic event and very high numbers in order to work. Have there ever been a movie that had only one zombie and was still scary?

    Also, I have this little thing about gore . . . I’m both a monster fan and a wimp, it’s a hard thing to juggle.

    I’m more old-school Hollywood with a little bit of Victorian literature mixed in regarding my monsters. My favorite movie monster in the Wolf Man. My favorite monster taking various aspects into account is Frankenstein’s monster. Possibly because I had to read that book numerous times in college. It really works its way under your skin.

    1. For a long time, I wasn’t interested in Zombies. My friends were into Romero and told me about the social criticism in his films, but it didn’t sound like my thing. I don’t mind gore if it serves a plot or point, rather than just being gratuitous, but generally when I saw that there would be a lot of gore in a film, I’d avoid it.

      .

      Then I read World War Z and saw how it wasn’t just a good zombie novel, but a good novel, period. Later on I read an essay by the author Max Brooks (it’s available online somoewhere) where he took a look at the zombie’s history, asking why it was so popular now, and pointing out the highlights and changes along the way. In early 1920’s films onward, it was usually a solitary zombie that was the threat, and it was Romero that changed things. Since then I’ve seen the original Night of the Living dead, Shaun of the Dead, and read The Walking Dead, and Dead Eyes Open, all of which I’d reccomend. Still not a huge zombie fan, but there is good, unique stuff out there that would even appeal to a non-fan.

  9. Responding to something Bill said in an earlier post.
    .
    I don’t find zombies stories all that scary, generally. I love zombie stories, but I would describe them as more “fun” than “scary”.
    .
    People are scared by different things. In my case, it’s not necessarily gore that does it, but the carefully oppressive atmosphere of movies like THE SHINING, THE EXORCIST, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, and ROSEMARY’S BABY.
    .
    They’re all about ghosts and/or demons, and they’re much scarier to me than THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (even though that was scary too).
    .
    The use of spooky sound and imagery, enclosed spaces, anticipation/dreading, the what’s-behind-that-closed-door feeling, they’re all much scarier to me than seeing some zombies rending somebody to pieces.
    .
    The scene in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD where the zombies eat the young couple, the first cannibalism scene, it is shocking and daring in a “man-did-they-really-do-that?” way, but it is not scary to me in the same way as the slow build-up of ROSEMARY’S BABY and the way Polanski doesn’t even show us the baby, just Rosemary’s reaction to it, THAT is terrifying to me, what you can conjure in your imagination is always much scarier.
    .
    Zombies eating somebody? It’s so over-the-top that somehow there isn’t anything left to be scared off, everything is already on screen. I’m not saying zombies aren’t inherently scary. In real life, it would be terrifying to see somebody being eaten by a zombie. In cinema, not so much, except if they properly build up to it. THE EXORCIST had plenty of gory, gross stuff, but was still scary as hëll, because they build a hëll of an atmosphere.

    1. I agree, zombies aren’t scary. I don’t even think Night of the Living Dead is scary. Zombies are really only good as a dramatic tool, either for building character development for the humans (like in The Walking Dead… the comic, not so much the TV show), or creating satire (Romero’s “Dead” series).

      Of course, I’m rarely scared by movies. When I am, it’s usually by something nightmarishly surreal and unexpected: the first sighting of Bob in Twin Peaks: FWWM; the final shot of Paranormal Activity; a couple of moments in The Shining and The Innocents. Actually, the most terrified I’ve ever been was in the last 20 or so minutes of Seven, which are scary for the opposite reason: because they’re so bizarrely ordinary, just a drive out to the country with a guy who just killed five people in the most sadistic ways imaginable. I was so nervous that I almost left the theater. I did not want to know what was in that box! And that’s so unlike me, because usually I’m pretty much unfazed by movies like that.

      1. Well, there are different levels of scary. Zombies, IMO, are mostly the “exciting” kind of scary. They can add a lot of suspense to a story, but it’s not the same level of scary that I felt in THE EXORCIST or THE SHINING, when I felt a real sense of dread watching it, and several times was tempted to leave the room.
        .
        In the Stephen King book I mentioned earlier, he talks of 3 levels of scary: terror, horror, and revulsion. In descending order from finest to most base. Zombies mostly fall on “revulsion”.
        .
        As for SEVEN (or is that SE7EN?), I know what you mean. I saw that movie in the threater when it was released, and the final minutes are gut-wrenching. I am not sure I was scared, as I would be in a potent horror movie like THE EXORCIST, but it was very disturbing, yes. The whole movie was very disturbing the first time I saw it.
        .
        I still like SEVEN a lot, though it lost a bit of its bite in the intervening years. The mastermind self-confident sadistic villain became too much of a cliche of the thriller genre, I suppose. But that’s not the fault of SEVEN. It’s still a great movie.

  10. I’m torn. On the one hand- I’m huge PAD fan. On the other hand- I have yet to read a story with anything more than a cameo by Howard the Duck written by anyone other than Steve Gerber that I actually liked.

  11. zombies are not scary. Another 3.99 out of my pocket each month scares me. I stopped collecting marvel zombies after the 3rd series and now I might have to pick up this new version? Sigh. I guess it it time to give some other series the boot.

  12. I’ve posted a couple of times already, but I haven’t gotten a response yet. Basically Spiderman 2099 was the first comic I bought. I loved it & kept up with the title through its entire run. If at all possible I’d like to send you some copies to sign for me and my kids, or I’d like to buy a signed copy from you. If that’s not possible, sorry to have wasted your time, but thank you for letting me know.

    Also could you please tell me what if anything you had planned for Aaron Delgado. I read every issue hoping to see him return.

  13. For the record, you are all wrong. Zombies, vampires, werewolfs and such are not scary. No, there is another creature, more horrible then all those combined, that feeds on humanity. A creature so horrible that nobody should even type it’s name. They are called…. L a w y e r s. (End silly mood)

      1. I imagine zombies can be lawyers, but the deliberations never get far. There’s only so much you can do with arguments like “Mooooaaan” or “Brains!”

        Still scarier than lawyers in my book: politicians. Dentists are up there too.

  14. Yes, you can absolutely send me copies to sign. You can mail them, along with a self addressed stamped envelope, to me at PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.

    As for Aaron…no, he was dead.

    PAD

  15. Peter:
    By any chance have you seen a Norwegian movie called Dead Snow? While set in the present it does in fact involve Nazi zombies. I’ll read your story after it comes out; it’ll be interesting to compare your take to the film’s.

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