While writing Ultimate Fantastic Four, Mark Millar decided to introduce an alternate Earth populated by zombies in the "Crossover" story-arc, featured in issues #21–23.
[1] To revisit the zombie world, Marvel hired Robert Kirkman to write and Sean Phillips to illustrate it.
He also expressed excitement upon learning which artist would be in charge of illustrating the series; Kirkman was a longtime fan of Phillips' work, like in DC Comics' Sleeper.
Comparing the protagonists with the "slow moving, mindless Romero style zombies" he used in The Walking Dead, Kirkman reasoned that the Marvel characters, either heroes or villains, retained their usual personalities and powers, only driven to devour flesh by their uncontrollable hunger, with the miniseries depicting how they deal with their hunger and how they interact with each other.
Like other types of zombies, it was decided to establish how the zombified Marvel characters could specifically be killed in the story's context.
However, after seeing the finished art for Millar's issues, Kirkman discovered that Greg Land had already drawn Luke Cage as a zombie, and the idea was dropped, which Marvel originally objected to.
The zombie superheroes largely retain their intellect, personality and superpowers, and are able to function regardless of the damage to their brain,[4] although they are consistently driven by the "Hunger" for human flesh.
The Silver Surfer arrives on Earth and informs the zombies that his master Galactus is en route to devour the planet.
The zombies attack the Silver Surfer, who is overpowered and devoured by several of the former superheroes: Captain America, Iron Man, Giant-Man, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, the Hulk, and Wolverine.
Giant-Man, Iron Man and Bruce Banner create a device that amplifies the powers they gained from the Silver Surfer, and together with Captain America, Luke Cage, Spider-Man and Wolverine they are able to injure Galactus.
The cosmic-powered zombies fight off zombified versions of several supervillains, although Captain America is killed by the Red Skull, and then proceed to devour Galactus.
Giant-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Spider-Man and Wolverine are then infused with Galactus' power cosmic', the group thus becomes collective Galacti.
Five years later, Black Panther, the Acolytes, and the Wasp, restored with a cybernetic body, return to Earth to find the planet depopulated.
In the final scenes, an intelligent alien race on a distant planet is fearful of the coming of Galactus, as they can see the signs of his imminent arrival in the night sky.
In 2006, the October issue of Wizard magazine featured a one-page Marvel Zombies comic by artist Sean Phillips called "Eat the Neighbors".
They start by targeting the Deadland resistance, led by surviving heroes the Vision, Wonder Man, and Jim Hammond, who gather those exiled beyond the Wall into a secure city they have established.
At the time of the attack, the three heroes have managed to rescue a version of Hank Pym exiled from a Wild-West-era zone,[8] who is able to use his counterpart's notes to devise a means of shutting down the hive mind of Ultron's drones despite his more primitive background, at the cost of sacrificing the Vision and Wonder Man to make the machine work (although Wonder Man's android lover is reconfigured so that she can die in Hammond's place).
[14] Wizkids' HeroClix has had appearances of zombie versions of Spider-Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Wolverine as Chase figures in the "Supernova" set.
Additionally, a generic Skrull, Super-Skrull, Mole Man, Morbius, Gladiator, Red Skull, Magneto, Doctor Doom, and a Zombies Team Base were released in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" set.