How Did the Outbreak Begin in Marvel Zombies?

Marvel Zombies saw Earth’s mightiest heroes turned into flesh-eating monsters. But what happened? If you’re curious how the outbreak began in Marvel Zombies, here’s the answer.

How the Marvel Zombies Ate Their World

Unofficially, the original Marvel Zombies outbreak was started by Superman. No, I’m not kidding. DC Comics later went on to make its own zombie superhero series, DCeased but it could well have been that Marvel Zombies’ patient zero was meant to be Superman.

It’s never been officially confirmed, but as featured in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, the unidentified character has a big rip where his ‘S’ would be and even has Superman’s hair. The dialogue implies also it’s him, though perhaps Marvel’s lawyers thought clarifying the matter would invoke the ire of DC Comics.

But in-universe? The outbreak was started by Sentry, Marvel’s normally long-haired Superman analogue. Coming from a parallel universe, he crashed into New York and the Avengers were first on scene. He bit and turned them, and while Marvel Zombies has never explained what happened to Sentry, the Avengers went on to infect others.

Unlike your average zombie, they retained their intelligence. So, as revealed in Marvel Zombies/Army of Darkness, they put a call out to the whole Avengers reserve roster. The Avengers then turned the reserves, who then turned others, villains included, and so on. The virus seemed to have a preference for infecting meta-humans.

Nick Fury did have plans to nuke New York, but then Quicksilver was infected, and the infection went global. The world was doomed.

How Did the Marvel Zombies Outbreak End?

The outbreak ‘ended’ when the Marvel Zombies were sent to another dimension, decades after the original outbreak.

Iron Man, Zombie Colonel America, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, and a few others succeeded in killing and devouring Galactus, gaining his powers. After killing most of their fellow zombies, they headed into space in search of new food.

They returned much later, having picked the universe clean. They discovered that a handful of uninfected humans — Black Panther and Forge included — had set up a new society, though both Black Panther and Forge suspected there weren’t enough people to repopulate the Earth.

The zombies were tricked into stepping into a teleporter that sent them to another dimension, nicknamed ‘Earth-Z’. They infected this dimension’s superheroes, including their Sentry. Can you see where this is going?

These new Marvel Zombies were defeated with the aid of Zombie Spider-Man, who had recovered his humanity. Zombie Sentry was captured, and The Watcher sent him back in time to the original Marvel Zombies Earth, where he infected the Avengers and… you get the picture.

So, the original Marvel Zombies infection was a timeloop. There have been other, unconnected Marvel Zombies runs since then. For example, there’s one where the Brood eat Galactus which, in turn, leads to the zombie infection.

So that’s how the original Marvel Zombies outbreak began, it was started by a zombie Sentry crashing into New York. And if you want to read Marvel Zombies in order, here’s how to do that.

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