Disney+’s newest Marvel series slaughters heroes by the platoon… but, you know, for kids.
I know, I know, animation is a medium and not a genre, and not all animation is for kids. Finding stuff like Grave Of The Fireflies and Legend Of The Overfiend misfiled in my local video store disabused me of that notion decades ago. But Marvel Zombies is animation for kids, and not all the gory death and dismemberment it contains can change that. It’s a cartoon – this is slaughter for the see-saw set. Your kids will love it.
If they’re not too fond of any particular heroes, that is. Captain America is only half the man he used to be when we meet him here, the Star Spangled Avenger already legless and ravenous – and hey, who amongst us?
In this four part animated series, which carries on from the earlier What If…? episode, protagonist duties fall chiefly to Ms Marvel, Kamala Kahn (Iman Vellani), who’s been fighting the good fight against the zombie hordes that now roam the earth, alongside ace archer Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) and Riri Williams, AKA Ironheart (Dominique Thorn, and it’s cool that all three live action actors are voicing their animated counterparts). When the latter two are offed in an attempt to reach a S.H.I.E.L.D. installation, it falls to Kamala to find a spaceship to get off-world and, ideally, signal some interplanetary with this whole zombie situation.
She teams up with a bunch of different heroes along the way, which is the real fun here. The What If…? stories have the distinct advantage of being able to fold, spindle, and mutilate their characters into some really interesting configurations, without worrying about continuity or even leaving them alive at the end of the exercise. So, that means Blade (Todd Williams) can show up, and he’s also Moon Knight! Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) is a head in a jar, floating around on Doctor Strange’s Cloak of Levitation! Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen, probably doing her final Marvel work here) is the Red Queen of the zombies! Okay, that last one’s not much of a stretch.
It’s all very fast-moving and very violent, but in a decidedly cartoonish way that sits oddly with the occasional attempts to tug at the heart strings. One of the biggest issues hampering the broader MCU is the received wisdom that keeping up requires a lot of homework, and it’s a fair criticism. Here, there’s no need to worry about that – just enjoy the spectacle of your favourite superheroes straight-up eating each other.
Marvel Zombies is streaming on Disney+ now.
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