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Warning: The above film contains Zombie Violence. Someone’s gone and made a Marvel Zombies fan-film–and it’s pretty good.

Zombies are all the rage and Marvel has been riding that wave with their insanely popular series Marvel Zombies. The first series went through several printings. It was followed by a Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness series and Marvel Zombies 2 is currently running. They even released a collected edition of all of the covers from the series.

The fan film was bound to happen and at least it’s really well done. I would actually like to see more. There are rumors circulating that Marvel is going to do a Direct-to-DVD Marvel Zombies animated film. I’d definitely check that out.

As much as I hate to say it. The original series (and the sequel) have both been fun. The Army of Darkness crossover was a little forced, but the two series by Robert Kirkman have been fun, skewed looks into a twisted version of the Marvel Universe. Kirkman has managed to keep the series fresh, which doesn’t seem surprising, since he’s the mastermind behind the amazingly good Zombie series “The Walking Dead” from Image comics.

One of the few series that I’ve collected in trades (they’re up to 7 volumes now). It’s a fresh and fleshed out (no pun intended) look at the zombie genre that not only explores an reality the George Romero dreamed up, but what would happen to the few humans that survived and what they would be willing to do to stay safe. Definitely worth picking up all 7 volumes.

  1. The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye
  2. The Walking Dead Vol. 2: Miles Behind Us
  3. The Walking Dead Vol. 3: Safety Behind Bars
  4. The Walking Dead Vol. 4: The Heart’s Desire
  5. The Walking Dead Vol. 5: The Best Defense
  6. The Walking Dead, Vol. 6: This Sorrowful Life
  7. The Walking Dead, Vol. 7: The Calm Before

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Edward Norton as Bruce Banner

Found that image over at ENewsInternational the other day and I thought that it looked awful familiar. I dug out my The Incredible Hulk TV Series DVDs and looked through the intro real quick and turned up these two images.

Hulk TV Banner in the Chair Hulk TV Close Up

Kudos go out to Occasional Superheroine for beating me to the punch on posting the relation to the old TV show. I guess they’re really playing the movie as an homage to the TV show, especially since they’re including the “Walking Man” theme. Now, if they’d only include the Disco Version of the Hulk Walking Man theme, there would be no reason not to see the movie.

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Testing the Iron Man Armor

Nice, new photo of Tony Stark (Robery Downey Jr.) building/testing the later version of the Iron Man armor.

With any superhero flick, the beginnings of its success is based on the visuals. Great story has to be there, but if the visuals (or look) is all wrong, fans won’t show up to check the story out.

Every look at Iron Man seems to be visually 100%.

Speaking of Iron Man, you should definitely check out the Iron Man Fan Film by David Guivant that’s currently over on ScreenRant. Featuring a few Iron Man supporting characters and Avengers teammates, it’s amazingly well done and makes me wish there were a real show like that being developed.

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hulk_loves_betty

Evidently there’s an amazing showing happening in Los Angeles at Gallery 1988. Running through February 1st, “Under the Influence: A Tribute to Stan Lee” features artwork inspired by the Marvel Comics creations of Stan Lee. Check out Collider.com for a nice set of photos from the show.

If you like what you see, it might be worth keeping your eyes on the Gallery 1988 store and the G1988 Crazy4Cult site, as they’ve got tons of great art for sale and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the Marvel stuff eventually shows up there.

UPDATED:Here’s a blog that has great, large, and clear photos of most of the work that’s in the exhibit. Stan Lee Tribute Artwork.

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Double Page Spread from the One More Day storyline

The big news currently floating around the comic blogs is the recent resolution to the Spider-Man “One More Day” storyline where Spider-Man (Peter Parker) attempts to save a dying Aunt May.

Proceed no further if you don’t want the story spoiled.

To set things up, Aunt May was hit by a sniper’s bullet–originally meant for Spider-Man/Peter Parker. Early in 2007, Peter Parker revealed to the world that he was Spider-Man. After leaving the protection of the Avengers, his immediate family (Aunt May and Mary Jane) were placed in danger. That leads us to Aunt May taking a bullet from the sniper and being in critical condition in the hospital.

It’s a commonly know fact that current Editor-in-Chief at Marvel Comics (Joe Quesada) did not like a married Spider-Man. For those that don’t know, Spider-Man married Mary Jane Watson in 1987. It was a media event back then and received a lot of news/press coverage. Joe Q. stated many times that he wanted to erase the marriage, but didn’t want to divorce the couple.

So. . . To make this long story short, Peter and MJ essentially make a deal with the devil (the Marvel Universe version is referred to as Mephisto) who “takes” their marriage away stating that he will feed off of the pain it will cause the couple. At the end of the story, Pete wakes up to find Aunt May alive and well downstairs cooking him wheat-cakes for breakfast and later goes to a party where it’s revealed that his long-dead friend Harry Osbourne is now alive and well again (Mephisto’s idea of a joke or a bonus?).

The two problems with the story are so evident that even Jill pointed them out when I described the story to her (bear in mind, she has only seen the Spider-Man movies) and she pointed out the following two reasons she didn’t like it (which mirror my own):

  1. Aunt May would not have wanted Peter to make any kind of deal with anyone to save her. It it was her time to go, she would have accepted it and expected Peter to do the same.
  2. The Devil. Seriously. Does anyone think that Peter Parker would make a deal with the devil (or a devil)? Really. Divorce is too bad for kids to read about (Joe Q.’s reasoning) but it’s ok for Pete to make a deal with the devil?

Finally, ComicBookResources is running a 5-part interview with Joe Quesada about the entire story and I found this little nugget in part 3.

The truth of the matter is that if the fans truly want a married Peter and MJ with kids, then we have an incredible book called “Spider-Girl.” If this is truly what fandom wants, to see Peter go through the natural progressions of life, then I expect orders on “Spider-Girl” to go through the roof in the next month.

That’s marketing talk right there. If fans really wanted to read the adventures of an unmarried Peter Parker, then they could have been (and like have been) reading the 110+ issues of Ultimate Spider-Man that Marvel also publishes. That series has been the only consistently good Spider-Man book for many years.

Joe Q. wanted an unmarried, adult-aged Spider-Man, and being the EIC, he gets what he wants.

Even with all of this griping and disagreement with the method, I’ll have to admit I’m intrigued by the creative teams they have lined up to produce the “Amazing Spider-Man” comic 3 times a month. Names like Dan Slott, Steve McNiven and John Romita Jr. could get me to read “Amazing Spider-Man” again and enjoy the stories.

At the end of the day, I don’t have to like the method, but maybe, just maybe, the results will be good.