Marvel Zombies 4 #1-4

The Midnight Sons vs. the Night Shift. Wow. That’s got to be a pretty small target audience for Fred Van Lente, huh? He still pulls it off, it’s great seeing all these spooky characters interact. The problem is this series is too much a product of its specific time. The zombie craze intersecting with the Dark Reign phase makes for a book that feels like it is well forgotten at this point. I mean, these are B (or C) listers anyway, but tying them to dated stories just makes the book feel more trivial.

That said, I’m pretty happy to see Black Talon used again. Zombie Deadpool head is one of my least favorite characters of the past few years, but Van Lente does a nice job with his dialogue. Has Van Lente done much with the real Deadpool? He’d certainly be a good fit, he’s got the crazy banter down. In the end, this is yet another in the long string of Marvel Zombie books, the biggest advantage here is that we spend a little more time with ARMOR, the inter-dimensional defense force that featured in Marvel Zombies 3. So there is some continuity. But really, the market was so flooded with this stuff that I don’t know if the story continued, or if “Headpool” just ended up doing silly things in Rob Liefeld’s Deadpool Corps.

I’ll probably never find out!

Kev Walker is an interesting choice for artist in this. His monsters are all top notch, but his faces still tend to be oddly angular and puffy. He’s definitely not a “girly” artist so there are some wasted opportunities with Jennifer Kale, but I loved his Son of Satan. When will Daimon Hellstrom bring back his sweet collared cape???

Fair