Comic: "Marvel Zombies 3 #1"
Published by: Marvel Comics
Written by: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Kev Walker

Reviewer: Protoclown
Posted: 10/13/2008

Plot: The Marvel Zombie virus has crossed over into the regular Marvel Universe, but has so far been contained to a small area in Forida. A secret organization known as A.R.M.O.R. sends Machine Man and Jocasta to that universe to get a blood sample from which to make a vaccine.

Review: I have to admit, given the entirely new creative team whose work I am unfamiliar with, I had completely expected the first issue of Marvel Zombies 3 to suck. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the story was going into new territory that I did not expect. Rather than follow the group of zombies from the first two stories, we're in the normal 616 Marvel Universe, invaded by a couple zombies we hadn't seen previously (Zombie Deadpool!), which takes the story into an entirely new direction, which is good, because I was getting tired of the other one.

That's not to say that the Galactus-empowered zombies from the first two installments won't show up at some point, but there's been no sign of them so far. And given that this crossover of universes seems to happen at an earlier point in the timeline, there's the possibility that we'll see some more Zombies we never spent any time on in the other stories because they didn't last long enough.

Writer Fred Van Lente wins points for choosing fan favorite Machine Man as the apparent protagonist of this new series. He's just the right character to keep me interested, seeing that he's a total snarky bastard. His inclusion in the story makes perfect sense as well, since it's only logical to send a non-organic agent across dimensions on a quest like this. The art by Kev Walker is also vastly different from Sean Phillips, but his style seems up to the task to draw all the gore required by a story like this.

One thing that's kind of disappointing though is the covers--they're no longer tributes to previous Marvel comics, and they're no longer done by Arthur Suydam. Instead, they seem to be tributes to movie posters, the first one being a tribute to Army of Darkness. That's not a bad idea, and while Greg Land is a fine artist whose work seems better suited to covers than interiors, it's hard to match it to the charm of Suydam's wonderfully painted work. I have to give them credit for changing the covers too since this ain't your daddy's Marvel Zombies, but it's a change I'm not sure I like yet.

The story has a lot of potential at this point given the characters involved, but as we haven't yet seen the foray into the original zombie universe, there are a lot of different ways this could go from here, some good, many bad. I'm looking forward to seeing what Van Lente has in mind though, and that's something I never thought I'd be able to say about this series after the lackluster and frankly boring part Two.

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)