Interview: Marvel Zombies 4

Did you already have the idea for Marvel Zombies 4

when writing 3?

Sort of. MZ3 #1 sold out and Marvel asked us to do a

sequel, so we started bandying about various ideas. I've

always loved the 1970s Marvel horror characters, and so it just seemed natural to me to give those monsters a new lease on life by marrying them with the vastly more popular Marvel Zombies series.

How did you choose the cast of the Midnight Sons? Where there any characters you wanted to use but couldn’t?

I wanted iconic characters, like a werewolf and a vampire, etc. And Morbius, Jennifer Kale and Man-Thing had appeared in MZ3 #1, so I had them on the brain already.

Originally, Son of Satan's place on the team was taken up by Brother Voodoo. It just made sense to me, if you're going off to fight zombies, to have a voodoo guy along! But it turned out I couldn't use him because Brian Bendis had already chosen him to be the new Sorcerer Supreme over in "New Avengers". Then I think Bill Rosemann, my great editor, suggested Daimon. And I'm glad he did! So much of the story ended up revolving around him, and I don't think the book would have been nearly as good without him.

   Did you have to convey with all the other writers using

  the Hood when using him?

  I was actually writing The Hood already over in DARK

  REIGN: MR. NEGATIVE, so I knew quite a bit about him

  already. I read original MAX series when it first came out

  because I love the intersection of superheroes and crime

  so much.

  The real treat there was using the Night Shift, a bunch of

  truly Z-list characters from the 1980's that used to be The

  Shroud's gang. It was fun to turn them into really fearsome

  antagonists for the Sons.

  Where did the idea for using the zombie head of Deapool

  come from?

  Deadpool was one of the few marquee heroes that hadn't

  had a major zombie character fashioned from him, so I thought he would be a good zombie to attack The Florida Initiative in MZ3 #1. Also, I thought the pun on "Merc with a Mouth" would be funny. Then, when he got pureed in a swamp buggy, I had the head get taken back to ARMOR headquarters, as a throwaway gag.

When I saw what a great reaction the character got on-line, I knew he had to make a return appearance in the sequel.

How did you choose the setting of the book?

The idea of Atlantean zombies attacking a cruise ship came to me first. It just seemed like a real balls-to-the-wall way of opening the story. Then everything kind of logically fell into place -- the cruise ship would be in the Caribbean, home of voodoo, and that led to me having the Black Talon in there, and a gave him a connection to The Hood. It all flowed very logically.