Mary Gilmore, Staff Writer
This Halloween season, Marvel is releasing their first gory, TV-MA miniseries. Marvel Zombies is set to be released on Disney Plus on September 24th.
Zombies are not a new concept for Marvel. The show is based on a popular comic series, also titled Marvel Zombies. Additionally, they brought zombies to the screen in their animated series, What If…?. What If…? explores what would happen if the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe occurred differently.
In What If…?, zombies were first introduced in the episode, “What If… Zombies?!” This episode explored a change in the events of Ant-Man and the Wasp. When Hank Pym enters the Quantum Realm to save his wife, Janet van Dyne, he finds that she has been infected with a quantum virus. This virus turned both Hank and Janet into zombies. When they returned to the lab, the two began infecting those around them. The virus spread, leading to most of Earth and many beloved heroes to become zombies.
At the time of writing, Marvel Zombies appears to take place within that same timeline. However, the show is taking zombies in a slightly different direction.
While What If…? was a TV-14 rated show, Marvel Zombies will be the first, animated, TV-MA Marvel show. This rating was given to the show due to intense gore in the series. This aspect of the series can easily be seen in the trailer, with several examples like Namor splitting a person in half and Spider-Man ripping heads off several bodies.
Paul Tracy, a graphic design major and sophomore at SUNY Oneonta, commented on his thoughts on the series as a Marvel fan himself. “For the story of Marvel Zombies, [based on the trailer and What If…?] I thought they were able to adapt the comic storyline into the TV version pretty well, being able to add characters that the audience knows into this new scene and seeing how they fair up against the virus, while introducing some characters that people have been wanting to see for a very long time.”
“As an art major I feel that Marvel Zombies’, and by extension Marvel’s What if…? animation helps it stand out from Marvel’s other animated shows as that specific style of animation is able to have more realistic, I would say, expressions and movements,” continued Tracy. “Also, that specific animation style is able to help the viewer connect these stories to the main Marvel Cinematic Universe as they are technically canon to the story.”
A major concern among fans, including Tracy, is the pacing of the episodes. The show was originally meant to be like any other Marvel animated series, but it turned into a miniseries as episodes continued to get cut. The show will now only contain four episodes, which are estimated to be about 40 minutes in length.
In Tracy’s words, “My only criticism I have with this new show was that it was first announced to have 6 or 7 episodes, but then closer to release they then revealed there would only be 4 episodes so I’m worried about the pacing. Other than that, I’m just excited to see how this story unfolds and to see if the characters do win.”
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