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| MARVEL ZOMBIES No. 4, December 2015 |
Described by “Marvel Worldwide” as containing an Elsa
Bloodstone who is both “out of bullets and out of hope”, it’s hard, having read
this concluding instalment to the “Secret Wars” mini-series, not to also feel
that the Monster Hunter is additionally out of narrative as well. For whilst
Issue Four of “Marvel Zombies” does ultimately determine the fate of the Shield
(wall) Commander and “the child she swore to protect to salvation”, it only
does so after a laboriously long conversation between the storyline’s primary
protagonist and this Battleworld’s “different version” of her father.
Indeed for almost half the length of this twenty-page
periodical the “Dupe effect” dad does little but batter and bicker with his “quick-witted”
daughter as the “zombified version of Ulysses explains just how he has “pried”
the Bloodstones from the corpses of “every duplicate of my line.” Admittedly parts of this 'monologue' are surprisingly dramatic,
such as when Elsa matter-of-factly beheads her baleful parent for
suggesting they form a “team-up” against a fast-approaching “full horde
deployment” of “Rotters”, or her skeletal adversary bites off her hand when the soldier attempts to snatch back “the childhood you stole from me.”
But in the main Simon Spurrier’s flashback scenes depicting the various members of the “House of Bloodstone” wandering to their deaths having simply followed “this… funny feeling”, or worse, the “coiffured” killer taking his overly inquisitive wife Elise “down in the cellar” to “see what your daughter’s been learning” are sadly seemingly included to do little more than pad the comic out; “Monsters fiends oh no God he let it lay eggs in my brain… they ate my mind ohhhh help me help us help usss.”
But in the main Simon Spurrier’s flashback scenes depicting the various members of the “House of Bloodstone” wandering to their deaths having simply followed “this… funny feeling”, or worse, the “coiffured” killer taking his overly inquisitive wife Elise “down in the cellar” to “see what your daughter’s been learning” are sadly seemingly included to do little more than pad the comic out; “Monsters fiends oh no God he let it lay eggs in my brain… they ate my mind ohhhh help me help us help usss.”
Even Kev Walker’s usually bold strongly-defined artwork appears to occasionally
suffer throughout this book, as several of the British illustrator’s panels
contain some worryingly inconsistent, almost rushed sketches of the comic’s
central character and the undead, increasingly hungry Mystique. The former “2000 A.D.”
penciller’s pacing is equally as capricious at times as well, especially towards
the end of the story when suddenly almost every sheet contains just two or
three pictures for seemingly no obvious reason other than they need to be quickly filled with something…
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| Writer: Simon Spurrier, Artist: Kev Walker, and Color Artists: Guru-eFX |
I hope this series ends on a high as I'm very interested in buying the TPB when it's released. Fingers crossed, eh?
ReplyDeleteSadly Bryan, this is the final issue, which is why I deliberately tried to avoid giving away the surprise ending. I certainly think this was the weakest issue of the four by a long-way. Though House of Bloodstone fans may well get a great deal more out of the monologue section than I did apparently, so it depends upon whether you fall into that or the Marvel Zombies camp I suppose? Either way though this is still well-worth buying as a TPB imho, and I've got it for my Comixology app just so I can re-read it as a whole. Its certainly put me ion the mood for the original series, and having recently purchased that run, I hope to be posting about that soon :-)
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