Throughout Marvel Zombies: Red Band, there’s been a conflict between horror and hope. The former is a given, since this is a Marvel Zombies title; the heroes you know and love aren’t necessarily safe. Yet there’s also been a ray of hope, as the living heroes fight tooth and nail to save who they can and potentially find a cure to help the undead. Marvel Zombies: Red Band #5 brings the ultimate clash between these two extremes, featuring two characters who perfectly embody each ideology.
On the side of horror is Knull. The King in Black has been a presence lurking in the shadows, but he finally decides to make his presence known and swallow the Earth whole in his never-ending darkness. The thing that makes Knull such a horrifying villain, at least to me, is the fact that he represents the existential dread we’ve all felt at some point in our lives. He just happens to wield a massive sword crafted out of primordial darkness and commands a legion of symbiote dragons.
Meanwhile, we have Spider-Man as the last remaining living hero on Earth after a zombified Reed Richards used the Infinity Gauntlet to transform Earth into a planet of the dead. Spidey survived thanks to his symbiote suit, but now he faces the end of the world. Yet he refuses to give up hope; he reprograms Ultron to help him find ways to beat Knull, keeps his zombified friends locked up as he tries to find a cure, and goes out to fight Knull despite being vastly overpowered.
Ethan S. Parker and Griffin Sheridan clearly have a handle on what makes Peter Parker tick. He’s been the one superhero to survive the entire book, and his refusal to give up against increasingly stacked odds is what makes him one of the best characters in superhero fiction. Even when facing a god, he’ll never give up. Parker and Sheridan are also having a blast writing Ultron, as the formerly homicidal AI’s shifted into a personality resembling a supremely buggy version of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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An epic showdown deserves an epic artist, and Jan Bazaldua’s proven to be no slouch. While Marvel Zombies: Red Band #5 isn’t as gory as previous issues, it still injects notes of horror as Bazaldua draws close-ups of the zombified heroes, showcasing the flesh peeling off their bones and their dead-eyed stare. Knull himself is a terrifying figure, as Bazaldua draws him towering over everyone in his path. Erick Ariciniega’s colors add to the horror elements, as he drenches the sky in blood red hues and paints the zombies with an appopriate mix of colors resembling decaying flesh.
The ending of Marvel Zombies: Red Band #5 does feel somewhat like a Deus ex machina, as it wraps things up extremely quickly. Yet it also speaks to the eternal conflict between horror and hope, and to how, at the right moment, one side can win out. Marvel Zombies: Red Band #5 wraps up arguably the most interesting take on the concept since Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips’s original run, and based on the ending, there’s plenty of room for the creative team to tell more blood-soaked tales down the road.
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