Marvel Zombies Red Band #2: Not a Fright in Sight

Marvel Zombies Red Band #2 picks up an undisclosed amount of time only described as “after the fall” following the first issue from back in September. And while this is used as a way to push the story forward in order to keep pace with the series’ limited five-issue runtime, it ultimately weakens the story by immediately cutting away any sort of fleshed-out world-building that could have been done in just a few pages. But pages are something that the second issue of Marvel Zombies Red Band desperately wants, as at only 32 pages, the story has to move at a pace just too fast for its characters to keep up with to get to its dramatic ending, which primarily serves as bait for the next issue. As for this month’s issue, it picks up with a character we missed last month, Jean Gray. And while Jean is characterized rather well in the second issue (among a handful of other characters), we get four pages of an origin story for her that is ultimately pointless and does nothing other than exclude the other X-Men from this event as well as explain Jean’s absence from the first issue.

So far not just the story, but the world has left me wanting. When Marvel Zombies Red Band was announced back in August, it was initially described as a series that would “push gore, blood, and violence to the max.” Unfortunately, like many other Red Band stories that have come out in recent times, Marvel exaggerated just how intense this year’s Marvel Zombies would truly get. As for how the horror actually comes out, the artwork by Jane Bazaldua (Star Wars) does manage to capture the grime of a world overrun by a zombie apocalypse rather well, but there isn’t any horror to it beyond just a simple grossness factor, like reheated meatloaf instead of decaying zombie flesh and guts, which many might have expected. On the world-building or lack thereof, the rules for zombies are also incredibly hand wavy; some are intelligent, while others simply aren’t for no conceivable reason. It’s almost as if someone in the writing room said, “The heroes turned into zombie villains need to be able to talk, but no speaking lines for the nameless grunts, please.”

The colors by Erick Arciniega (Giant-Size Amazing Spider-Man 2025) do elevate the artwork and world slightly, with well-textured spiderwebs and colorful telekinesis, but there is only so much color can do for all other departments of comic design and production. Travis Lanham (Ultimates) does bring fantastic letters to this month’s issue that avoid cluttering the page despite a significant amount of dialogue from the first page to the last.

By the end of it, Marvel Zombies Red Band #2, despite being marketed as a horror series for mature audiences, failed to deliver on both its genre and any notable character arcs or to bring out any of the treasure trove of thematic elements that a zombie apocalypse could provide for these already iconic characters. Even with enjoyable action, however cluttered and inconsequential it was, I was disappointed by this month’s issue of the Marvel “horror” limited series.