Just finished reading Marvel Zombies Return #5 this morning, and I did not love it. This is too bad, because I really enjoyed the previous issues–which told a tight, simple, focused chapter in the latest zombie mini each week, all leading to this big conclusion. But this issue seemed to skip a beat, jumping so far ahead in the story that it wasn’t clear how the its heroes came together or why we should care about the particular odd lot of “villains” suddenly and seemingly randomly chosen to play the big bads. And even without considering the insertion of one of my least favorite things about modern Marvel comics–The Sentry–into a pivotal role and the weird logic behind the ending (not cool, Watcher!), the final chapter just felt like a hasty mess. 

This unfortunate bad experience with an otherwise fun series got me thinking deep thoughts about the mixed bag that is the Marvel Zombies and led me to realize how the creators missed an opportunity to tell a much cooler story–with a much cooler lead. I can’t believe it took me this long to realize, but there is a huge hole in the logic of the Marvel Zombies concept, and he wears a shiny yellow shirt and metal tiara.

Let’s be as real as we can when discussing superheroes and zombies, because I’m about to drop some serious geek science on your face: There are plenty of supers in the Marvel multiverse who have some form of invulnerability that should have helped them avoid infection during the zombie virus outbreak. The fact that the Sentry–who I hate, but who also has the power of 10,000 suns coursing though his schizo-superman body–is patient zero in the overall MZ plot is the biggest example of this ill logic. But at the very least, the various creators who have taken a go at telling their portion of the Marvel Zombies tale should have given a bigger role to the man whose main power is that he has unbreakable skin–Luke Cage.

Unbreakable, impenatrable skin = no bitey bitey. Cage should have been one of the last uninfected survivors, if not THE sole human holdout in the original MZ outbreak. He could have even been paired with a zombified Danny Rand who, through the power of his super chi mojo and because his bulky, unbitable buddy is helping him through the pain, holds on to some semblance of his humanity to help fight off the infected. You know you’d love to read that comic!

But instead, poor Power Man got no respect. He was among the first of the infected in the very first Marvel Zombies story by Mark Millar and Greg Land back in Ultimate Fantastic Four.

I know this is just armchair editing at this point (and maybe a little wishful thinking), but if they do another MZ mini, Cage deserves his chance to shine as the one true hero to hire in Marvel zombieland.