Marvel Zombies Return

Marvel Zombies (Collected Editions) #4.5

by Fred Van Lente, David Wellington, Jonathan Maberry

They're back! What happened to Spider-Man, Colonel America, Power Man, Giant-Man, and Wolverine at the end of Marvel Zombies 2? Where were they transported to... and, more importantly, when? A frightening five-part event shambles to life here, penned by resident (evil) Marvel Zombies 3 and 4 scribe Fred Van Lente and three of today's hottest novelists of zombie fiction! Collecting Marvel Zombies Return #1-5.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Zombies, Marvel, Horror, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics

120 pages, Hardcover

First published January 20, 2010

About the author

Fred Van Lente is the New York Times-bestselling author of comics as varied as Archer & Armstrong (Harvey Award nominee, Best Series), Taskmaster, MODOK's 11, Amazing Spider-Man, Conan the Avenger, Weird Detective, and Cowboys & Aliens (upon which the 2011 movie was based), as well as the novels Ten Dead Comedians and The Con Artist.

Van Lente also specializes in entertaining readers with offbeat histories with the help of his incredibly talented artists. He has written the multiple-award winning Action Philosophers!, The Comic Book History of Comics, Action Presidents! (all drawn by Ryan Dunlavey), and The Comic Book Story of Basketball with Joe Cooper (Ten Speed September 2020).

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Crystal Skillman, and some mostly ungrateful cats.

Reviews

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Marvel Zombies Return" is one of the better---if not the best---of the series, mainly attributable to the fact that writer Fred Van Lente (He wrote "MZ4 & 5") returns and brings with him best-selling horror authors David Wellington, Jonathon Maberry, and Seth Grahame-Smith.

At the end of the first "MZ", Zombie Ant-man discovers the interdimensional portal created by Reed Richards and disappears into it... and readers of the series never knew what happened. Until now.

The usual humor, action, and ridiculous amount of zombie gore abound. Enjoy!

[Cujo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally, the zombie outbreak amongst the Marvel Heroes is explained. Or is it? ...I love the retro art work in the Spider man section as it looks like it's really a comics from the early 70's. The overall ending on this is kinda hohum, but other then that I love the way the sections overlap

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Supposedly picks up right where Marvel Zombies 2 ends, but Van Lente doesn't seem to care one iota about anything that's happened before. There's some decent stuff in here, but mostly this is just a bland, boring superhero story with minimal zombie-specific themes. It's basically "What if the Marvel superheroes were zombies?" instead of "What would happen to the Marvel Universe if all the superheroes turned into zombies?" That may not sound like much of a difference, but it's a noticeable one. It puts everything on a much smaller scale, leaving the world with lower stakes. There are huge jumps in time with little explanation of what happened between chapters. A very disjointed story, and a huge letdown given its prequels.

[Terry Mcginnis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tons of gory fun!

[Jerome · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I still enjoyed the storyline(s), I thought this was the weakest of the three graphic novels compilations. It appears obvious to me that there was a different writer for this series than the preceding two. I think the ending was very poorly (and lazily) done, simply with the intent to just wrap things up, and I don't think it even did that very convincingly. It just confused me a bit, and didn't seem to be in line with the rest of the story.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

First issue was absolutely tremendous. After that it slowly goes downhill and just sort of peters out, still pretty fun though even if I'd lost interest by the end

[Riccardo Caputi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story is probably the best one: a postmodern take on classic Spider-man stories. Nothing really deep, but still enjoyable (especially because of Dragotta's gory art). The stories in the middle are mostly forgettable. The last story feels like a kind of definitive ending to the saga. It closes the circle, even if in a very rushed way.

Marvel Zombies 3 and 4 weren't my cup of tea, but I kind of enjoyed Van Lente's work here, even if I still prefer Kirkman's stories.

P. S. Where the hell did the new Colonel America go?

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now, I loved the first two original Marvel Zombies runs written by Robert Kirkman but was let down by where Fred Van Lente went with the series once he took over. He had his own ambitions and abandoned the group of characters Kirkman's story revolved around for a new story chronologically nestled between chapters of the original issues. But his new ideas couldn't replace the surprising depth that Kirkman was able to bring to these undead superheroes through his writing, saving this zombie gimmick from becoming another forgettable, obvious zombie story.
I was very curious though when I found that Van Lente did decide to revive the original group of superhero zombies with this Marvel Zombies Return storyline to finally give their story an immediate sequel. Here we have the new writer directly pick up the characters established by the old writer. While I'm happy to see these characters again, I knew the vibe was gonna be different.

To be fair, this run did start pretty decently with some snappier character writing and all. But the story, being even more episodic than usual throughout issues, did lose me eventually as the major gimmick is about those zombie superheroes ending up in other timelines of previously existing stories of their normal self. Decent concept, but in the end it does bring back the whole thing to slightly more predictable living-vs-undead storyline which is not that interesting.
I had a decent time, probably to a degree even more so than with Van Lente's regular creations for the Marvel Zombies series, but as expected, this too does not reach the greats of Kirkman's original.

[Timothy Pitkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

We see what happened to the Marvel Zombies who were teleported away in Marvel Zombies 2 and it is pretty messed up with that dark humor like Zomibe Spiderman no longer able to shoot webs but instead shoots out arteries which is disgusting but still has a hint of humor to it. We see that the Zombies were teleported to another Earth and we see that they basically restart another zombie apocalypse but their is almost a civil war as Spider Man does create a cure for the Zombie Plague. Nice gross and twisted humor.

[Javier Lárraga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tuvo un par de números muy buenos y otros que se sentian entrecortados e inconexosdurante el desarrollo de sus historias pero en general me agradó por fin saber el origen de la plaga zombie y como se terminó el conflicto de una vez por todas con esta plaga devoradora de universos.

Le doy 3 estrellas porque me divirtió aunque sin lugar a dudas el volumen 1 estuvo mejor exceptuando por el numero dedicado al Spider Man Zombie que brilla por si solo...

[Julian Darius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice that this at least attempts to follow up on Marvel Zombies 2 and wrap up the original set of stories (before Van Lente went a different direction with Marvel Zombies 3). The opening Spider-Man chapter is a high note, but five issues by five different teams is bound to be inconsistent. The nods to then-recent but forgettable events don't help, and in the end, it's a bit meh. But again, it's nice that it wraps up the original story and its characters.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps it’s because I read them all in one week, t by the time we get to this book the zombie storyline has already gone in every direction it possibly could and this feels like a retread. It is the book with the infamous Sandman killing Spider-Man by forcing himself inside Spidey’s body and bursting out from the inside so, that was fun. It’s too bad Sandman wasn’t around when Thanos showed up.

[Ivan V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

El capítulo final (de la serie principal) definitivamente retoma el humor y las escenas grotescas de sus anteriores. Sería genial de no haber contado con ese final extraño. Sin embargo deja un buen sabor de boca.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just when MZ was getting a little too out there, they bring this. A great collection of the MZ terrorizing and turning an early Marvel universe into a zombie hoard.
Great ending wrapping it all back up and into continuity.

[GooglyEye Superman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think surprisingly this is way better the Kirkman's first 2. And I just love love a closed loop, and time travel shenenigans. I love zombies in famous Marvel's storylines and how they all come together.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly good continuation of the first 2 Marvel Zombies stories.

[Alejandro Fion · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good

[Ryk Stanton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure what to say about these anymore.

And how did Phoenix suddenly show up? She wasn’t there before.

[Joseph Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love it. Here for it.

[Pialfr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This comic it's very bloody

[Guillermo García Rojas C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Palomera la historia.

[Thad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gore, gore, a bit more, and then some gore after that. Also, some story and jokes. All in all a decent book.

[Matthew Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always a bit of fun

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good concept, liked the multiverse travel but thought the final issue wasn't as good as the rest.

[Kyle Fuglestad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing artwork! Subject matter just a little rough for me. Probably 3 1/2 stars for me but wanted to do 4 for the artwork alone.

[Vitor Renato · Rating 4 out of 5]

o lopping pega ein

[Tehnehn Kaijaah Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this comic series. It was cook seeing some of my faves as flesh eating zombies. As a zombie fan, Marvel fan and horror fan this hit the spot.

[PMoslice · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'll just say he tried. As one other commenter said, the law of diminishing returns really hit this one. This like the first set by Kirkman just misses the mark for me.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

The artwork, a key part of a graphic novel, was good and (as expected in a zombie story) very gory . But as far as the story line goes it was not very good. As others noted it was a weak carry over from the last series (Marvel Zombies and Marvel Zombies 2), and as 5 one-shot story lines focusing on different heroes the overall story line didn't flow well. Giant-Man and others want to find the key to travel to other dimensions to find new things to eat, while Spider-Man and others try to stop them. This arc barely holds together another zombie chomp fest with super heroes that were transported to Earth Z.

[Cuchi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

Pequeños spoilers:

antes no sentian dolor, ahora spiderman siente dolor cuando tira "su telaraña de arterias"
Hay personajes como capitan america y avispa zombie que no aparecen, vuelven a tener hambre otra vez por mas que en el 2 aprendieron a controlarse, algunas cosas no se aclaran, el final es medio inconcluso. etc

Lo unico rescatable era la imagen que parodiaba a la conocida escena donde peter deja su traje en el tacho de basura, pues aca deja su piel arrancada. "jaja xd humor grotesco"

PD: Ver a spiderman escupir todos sus huesos por la boca a causa de la arena que le metio el hombre de arena me cago la infancia (? Pero, si siempre pudo hacer eso el villano ¿Por qué no lo hizo antes? digo, no es como si los villanos se preocupen por la vida de spiderman o de otra persona.