Marvel Zombies: Dawn of Decay is a surprisingly sad yet electrifying trip through a New York City that’s once again been taken over by zombified superheroes. Who will survive, what will be left of them, and will Groot be too traumatized to deal with the havoc to come?
Marvel Zombies: Dawn of Decay #1
Nick Bradshaw and Moreno Dinisio (Cover); Sean Galloway (Cover); Thomas Krajewski (Writer); VC’s Travis Lanham (Letters); Ron Lim & Romulo Fajardo Jr. (Cover); Matt Milla (Cover); Jason Muhr (Art and Cover); Rachelle Rosenberg (Inks); Annie Wu (Cover)
Marvel Comics
September 04, 2024
It’s been a long time since the Marvel Zombies series — which sees another story set in a post-apocalyptic scenario with Dawn of Decay — has been this lacerating. A lot of that nauseating tension stems from the fact that our point of view character is the innocent Groot, from whom the infection spreads and who accidentally makes a messy human tossed salad of his world.
Groot and Rocket Raccoon are trapped in The Raft, an intergalactic prison, after sneaking into a lab. Rocket had been looking for something useful to steal, but only found prison time. Fortunately, the Avengers turn up to spring them. In the process of this, Groot sneezes on Captain America, but what presents in Groot as a common cold quickly mutates into a terrible, vegetative, zombielike illness in human beings, gods, and mutants. The only ones to survive the eventual crash are Groot and Bruce Banner. Groot learns he’s immune to the virus as patient zero, and Banner thinks he can engineer a solution to the illness – but that will require getting across town to Avengers Tower. Hulk and Groot will have to smash through many obstacles to get there, and may have to smash through their friends.
Somehow, Dawn of Decay is both the funniest incarnation of Marvel Zombies and its most dire. Poor Groot and his distress is horrible to follow, and the progression of the disease is more violent. It’s also a fascinating twist that no one has actually died, though many have been zombified. There’s early hope for a cure thanks to Bruce Banner’s presence, something we haven’t seen in these books, which tend to lean on death and nihilism. Not even Rocket Raccoon, who gets hurled out into space thanks to Groot’s arm snapping, is a confirmed kill at this point. Things may look dark, but it’s possible things won’t be dark forever.
The art is truly fantastic with some brutally bloody battle scenes to be had. The most memorable moment is Groot being stretched to the limit in an attempt at catching Rocket, who’s been sucked out into space thanks to some quick decompression. It’s visceral and scary in a whole new way. But I have to subtract some points for those vegetative embellishments. Intended to resemble Groot’s blossoms, they look more like the gruesomely icky blossoms from The Last of Us.
In any event, this is a promising start to a different, completely twisted take on the zombie trope. Time will tell if it holds up.
