Zombies, Monkey’s, and Robert Mitchum’s impersonators. These are the three ‘elseworld’ like universes Marvel has milked to it’s last drop. Zombies are the first idea that Marvel whored out for the entire company: 2 main mini-series, a bunch of spin-offs, and homage covers up the ass; there were zombies everywhere! So it’s no surprise 99% of the audience got sick of this genre and wanted Marvel to move on. What did we get instead?….A 3rd installment!

Now I admit I was hesitant to read this at all, cause I just didnt really care about zombies anymore. It’s amazing how Marvel made me a George Romero lover into now a shell of a fan of the genre. But once I flipped to the first sequence in this book where a bunch of Z-list heroes get utterly destroyed by a Deadpool zombie…I was really shocked on how good this was. This comic is miles better then anything Robert Kirkman did during his time on the series. Marvel Zombies 3 feels like what a zombie comic should be: Full or intense moments, shit load of gore, and some action packed moments. Not just some ‘hey look we turned Captain America into a zombie, how cute!’ type of storytelling. Who would’ve thought Van Lente could make Machine Man and Jocesta into badasses?

What also makes this comic work is the gorgeous pencils by Kev Walker. He does not led up on the violence here people….It get’s really brutal, especially a certain splash page that happens in Kingpin’s lair. Ugh too gross for words. But there is beauty in those pages and the attention to detail Walker provides makes up for the disgusting bits. I was more terrified flipping threw this book then the previous two installments.

It’s madness to think Fred Van Lente, by all accounts a B-level writer could out best a A-writer in Robert Kirkman. But Lente puts much more imagintion, and more importantly more horror aspects to this series then Kirkman ever did. There is more fun to be had in this comic then the 3-4 full years of Marvel whoring out this genre. Did we need a 3rd (and now 4th) installment of this franchise? Not really…but as long as Lente gives us the entertainment and more brains…I can dig more installments.