Marvel Zombies Has A Shockingly Wholesome Origin Story

The four-episode animated Marvel Cinematic Universe miniseries "Marvel Zombies" is based on the Marvel Comic line of the same name, which kicked off in 2025. These comics take place in a parallel universe where a zombie virus wreaks havoc on Marvel's most popular characters. In the lore of the comics, the virus causes those infected to begin decaying and infuses them with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. If they don't eat human meat, the zombies will become feral and uncontrollable. Once they do eat, however, they become thoughtful and rational again. The Marvel Zombies may look like zombies, but they're a little more like vampires in practice.

The initial run of "Marvel Zombies" comic books were immensely popular, so multiple additional "Marvel Zombies" stories were penned and published in the years that followed. In one sequel, the zombies fought Ash from Sam Raimi's "Army of Darkness." In another, they traveled to a parallel universe to fight ape versions of the Marvel heroes. In yet another, they traveled to a world where zombie Nazis had won (zombie) World War II. The "Zombies" titles were basically all an excuse to write new kinds of horror mayhem. Now, the "Marvel Zombies" miniseries has put a different spin on established MCU heroes.

Longtime Marvel Comics fans, however, may be smiling through all of this. The term "Marvel Zombies" is actually something of an in-joke. The phrase didn't originate with comic books but in the Marvel offices many decades ago. It seems that Marvel head honcho Stan Lee, longtime Marvel artist Jack Kirby, and several other company insiders used the term "Marvel Zombie" as a half-affectionate, half-derogatory nickname for obsessive (and annoying) Marvel super-fans. The Marvel Zombies weren't flesh-eating, costume-wearing vigilantes; they were ultra-nerds. Eventually, fans got wind of what the term actually meant and started using it, quite proudly, to describe themselves.

Indeed, back in 2018, Comic Book Resources (CBR) went through Marvel Comics' letters pages — nicknamed Bullpen Bulletins — and found many references to "Marvel Zombies," as the term was used to describe Marvel's readers.

According to CBR, Lee tended to use the appellation "Marvel Zombies" with affection, and the fans adopted the term with ease. Readers of other publishers, however, used the term as an insult. Don't pay any attention to Skeezix over there, they would say, he's a Marvel Zombie. He only consumes Marvel products without using his brain. "Marvel Zombie" was a term for people who only indulged in (yuck) mainstream entertainment.

The derogatory angle actually extends deeper than mere hipster gatekeeping, however. It should be stated that Lee served as the face of Marvel Comics for many decades ... and his collaborators kind of hated that. Lee would often write editorials about the state of the company and how brilliant he was, usually failing to cite individual artists and writers in the company. He would also take way too much credit for Marvel's successful characters, and a lot of artists left their tenures at Marvel hating him. Those dejected creatives, in turn, start to feel like Marvel's readers were mindlessly swallowing Lee's company updates and come to regard them as, well, Marvel Zombies.

Of course, people who deeply loved Marvel Comics easily took ownership of the term. Many fans began writing letters to Marvel, happy to be a Marvel Zombie and eager to see what the company would do next. Outsiders used "Marvel Zombie" as an insult, but insiders wielded it with pride. Something similar happened with "Trekkie" in the 1980s. It was once an insult, but Trekkies ceased caring and used it to identify themselves. The term might have mean-spirited origins, but it was just as swiftly turned into something kind of wholesome.

There was also an additional usage of "Marvel Zombies" that referred to a very specific kind of Marvel reader, not just a super-fan. Specifically, it was a super-fan who was so deep into Marvel comic books that they began to gravitate toward the company's worst, weirdest publications. According to CBR, the term was used by noted author J.M. DeMatteis as a way to describe his own personal tendency to read really, really awful comic books that Marvel was publishing during the 1970s. As he wrote:

"I had two friends who read comics. One [...] was older, and every so often we would swap a huge, brown paper bag of comics, so we bought less comics that way. Another buddy of mine was a total DC nerd, while I was a Marvel Zombie, so we rarely read each others comics. I was the only one who subscribed to a comic. And, yes, it was Howard The Duck."

"Howard the Duck," of course, was a satirical book about an anthropomorphic waterfowl who went on outlandish intergalactic adventures. The title was always something of an outsider phenomenon, but it became a punchline after the critical and financial failure of Marvel's live-action "Howard the Duck" movie in 1986. Only Marvel Zombies — the types who gravitated to the most embarrassing parts of the Marvel library — would read such a book.

It makes one wonder: if you're a fan of the new "Marvel Zombies" animated series, would you be considered a Marvel Zombies Zombie?