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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 9h

Zom-B is on the list, but the sequel is on the work pile.

Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

These are good questions. 1) the baseline is last week's reading check in, which was at most 20% zombie. 2) Even though I got the zombie theme from Buckley's chapter on Zom-B, it will stay on the work pile.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

That's it for this week! Next week, it's zombies, all the way down!

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

And Hulk really doesn't want to go back to Avengers Tower. It's essentially a buddy comedy of Groot and Hulk, where Groot is trying desperately to be the responsible one. I kind of liked it. It's a million miles from where the Marvel Zombies brand started in tone and audience, but it works.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The plot is that we're again dealing with the MCU Avengers, plus Groot. The outbreak happens in Central Park, and Groot has to escourt Banner back to Avengers Tower to make a cure. The catch is that Banner isn't immune to the virus, but Hulk is, so Hulk has to make the trip.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

And finally, we have Marvel Zombies: Dawn of Decay, bu Thomas Krajewski and Jason Muhr. This is very strange--it's a child-friendly zombie outbreak, where the zombies infect, but they're plant infections instead of gory zombie infections.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

3)Matt Groom and Alessandro Vitti on a Black Widow story, where she gives up and walks away from survival. They're all very moody, and work well as one shots.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

2) Gail Simone and Dale Eaglesham on Mr Fantastic isolating himself to come up with a cure; I'm not sure what the ending is supposed to be exactly, but otherwise, it's a great character study.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Marvel Zombies Black, White and Blood is a series of zombie short stories that aren't connected to each other. My favorite three: 1) Garth Ennis and Rachael Scott, where a zombie Daredevil is kept as combat slave for a group of thugs, and is given a chance to escape.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

It actually does a really great job of capturing the despair of the heroes, and largely plays it straight as a zombie apocalypse reaching its apex, with a total infection of all humans. And the zombies' repeated mantra of "come and see" is appropriately spooky. I'm iffier on Kirk's art for it, tho.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The five issue Marvel Zombies Resurrection is about a zombie apocalypse brought about by Galactus-improved Brood. With his own family dead, Peter Parker devotes his life to keeping Franklin and Valeria safe.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Some gorgeous art from Ryp, and a surprisingly emotional end involving a Sinister Foes of Spider-Man reunion.

Shocker embraces the resurrected Boomerang, in a moment the story earns very nicely.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

For similar reasons, I read Cavan Scott and Juan Jose Ryp's Venom War Zombiotes 3 issue mini, which is about She-Hulk and Hellcat being forced to work with Shocker and Overdrive during a symbiote zombie outbreak.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Some nice Guice art, particularly when he teams up with Mack Chater in issue 2.

Guice and Chater draw a very stylish car explosion.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I read Death of Wolverine: Claws of a Killer 3 issue min, by Mariko Tamaki and Butch Guice; it's technically not part of the brand, though the premise is zombie-adjacent; Daken, Deathstrike, and Sabretooth follow a lead to Wolverine's stolen corpse, but instead are ambushed by a town of zombie.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

That matters mostly because it has a manga pacing, with many more panels than the typical 24 page Western comic issue. It works great for a zombie story, as it allows the tension to build. Probably the best part is a truly menacing zombie Hulk, looming over the heroes.

From issue 2. Captain America, Hawkeye, and Iron Man fend off a zombie Hulk.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I read Zombies Assemble 2, by Yusaka Komiyaka and Jim Zub. The plot is very hard to take seriously when we find the main villain's motivation, but it's basically the Marvel Cinematic Universe crew fighting zombies, and infected versions of each other. It's drawn and written in manga style.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

My other comics read is that I finished Marvel Zombies, or at least as many Marvel Zombies as I can find on Marvel Unlimited. It was 80+ issues, though, so I'm happy to be done. (And maybe done with comics for this zombie reading, though we'll see.)

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I'm a sucker for a Battle Royale narrative, so I love this. Tynion knows how to do this kind of story in his sleep, and does well with it here. Walsh's art is appropriately striking and gory in turns. The only detracting point is boo on the three issue collection. It's barely enough space to start.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

And collateral damage in the town is strongly encouraged. Volume 1 covers the initial recruitment, and the first few hours as the townsfolk realize something is very, very wrong, and the first few killers kill and are killed. It's basically Battle Royale, with the social class elements of Squid Game

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Over in comics, I read through the first volume of James Tynion IV and Michael Walsh's Exquisite Corpses. The plot is that every 5 years on Halloween, the wealthiest family in the US pick a town and each send a hired killer there. The last killer standing's hirers become the controlling family.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

And it's presented in a way that makes it feel like you're supposed to be leering alongside the male protagonist, which is further gross. It brings down what would have otherwise been an okay experience with a few standout highlights.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The gender politics of the book suuuuuck, and it cuts both ways. Virtually every male character is vaguely grizzly and unpleasant. Of the three female characters you can find, two are sexualized damsels, and the third is a stripper.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

And a lot of New York specific locations--the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Yankees Stadium, the Met. It's fun to re-conceptualize these locations under the zombie apocalypse setting.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The strength of the book is the settings. Brallier does a lot with a lot of locations that vary from each other, but are interesting from zombie scenarios: construction site, packed bridge, subway tunnel, zoo, comics convention, bar, (sigh) strip club.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

It's a fairly simple choice; it gives the reader a lot to explore, and it fits the deadliness of a zombie apocalypse. It's a bit plain--you could do some interesting things with survivor teams, or inventory in this setting--but it's fine.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

On the design side, it's a time cave/many branches type, as Sam Kabo Ashwell's typology would describe it. That is, you get a lot of choices, there's virtually no remerging, no state tracking, and a LOT of endings. Here's the mapping.

The choice map for Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse by Sam Kabo Ashwell.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I finished the CYOA book, Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, by Max Brallier. It averages out to ok to bad--the design is a bit plain, but acceptable; the scenarios are inventive; the gender politics are atrocious.

Cover of Can YOU Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, by Max Brallier.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

And on top of that, the story is largely told through the perspective of their familiars--each human agent is partners with an animal, and we get the animals going around, making deals, spying on each other, and hiding the occasional murder. It's delightful, and perfect Halloween reading.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

A group of people have met in a small village to perform a strange ritual; some are using the configuration of the full moon on Halloween to open a portal to arcane beings, and some are trying to prevent it. But no one is sure who is on which side, so they're all in kind of an arcane spy cold war.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I'm nearly done Roger Zelazny's A Night in Lonesome October, which I was recommended as a zombie book. If there are zombies, they'd better show up soon. But even if there are no zombies, it's a great read, with a truly fun premise.

Cover of Roger Zelazny's A Night in Lonesome october. Various well dressed people loungue about a room. In the midground, we get the mad monk and the witch discussing things, and the foreground, we have the detective and the vampire; the vampire has a hand on our lead, who may be a scottish deerhound. (I'm not great with dog breeds.)

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

My only real detracting point is that I'm not thrilled with how they handled the love interest, but I think it wound up in a good place. I put the sequel on my to-read list.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

For the most part, it's a teen boy adventure story that hits its emotional goals well. That and the more sympathetic conception of zombies means it's not rating very high on the horror scale, but that's ok.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I finished Jonathan Maberry's Rot & Ruin. I liked it a lot, and I think it did a lot of things in the zombie subgenre that were interesting. It reoriented the focus on zombies as tragic and meaningful to the survivors, rather than something to be hated. And it did some fun worldbuilding.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

So our protagonist has to figure out who killed him, to avoid being named culprit himself. That's about as far as I've gotten. It's very "locked room" generic, but also executed with some style.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

In particular, he thinks the world is ending from the return of Haley's Comet, and so they reluctantly agree to allow the narrator and the other servants to board them into their rooms that night, and protect them from cosmic rays. In the morning, they take the boards down, and the gentleman is dead

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The back of the book blurbs it as Downton Abbey meets Knives Out, and yep, that's it in a nutshell. A former convict gets a job as a tertiary butler at a remote mansion estate. The gentleman who owns the estate has gathered an eclectic group to host them for the weekend.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I'm also about a third of the way through Ross Montgomery's The Murder at World's End. I'm supposed to be discussing it at a reading group on Wednesday, so, uh, I'll have to move quickly with it. (And that group is the only reason it's not being back burnered like the rest of my non-zombie fare.)

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I liked that she kept her doubts about the guy, and was much more interested in solving the mystery than him per se, while still acknowledging that he was cute. But the story never felt as spooky as it could have been, and the protagonist is largely actionless at its climax.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The lead's willingness to join in the parade after everything she learned about this family is very silly, and it seemed like there was an emotional build up to a confrontation with her father that didn't happen.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

As our lead learns more about the curse and grows closer to the guy, she has to decide who she trusts more. I liked this a lot more than the other gothic teen book I'd been reading to help with Buckley's theory, Coram Boy. But it also felt like it didn't live up to its full potential.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

More spookily, she meets a ghost in the graveyard. She's the illegitimate Black daughter of one of the rich families, killed by the family's matriarch in a rage when she learned of the ghost's heritage. The ghost's mother put a curse on the family that their daughters would die at age 17.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I finished Paula Morris' Ruined. It's about a teen girl who has to go from New York to live with her New Orleans aunt, as NO recovers from Hurricane Katrina. She has tension with the rich, snobby kids, except for one guy that seems kind of into her. (It's largely mutual.)

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I'm enjoying the book a lot; I was broadly familiar with modern zombie discourse, but I don't know if I've ever read something that traced out the roots so thoroughly.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

What I have been reading a lot of is Better off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human, edited by Christie and Lauro. I've moved past the initial chapters on Haitian zombies, and I've read more on Matheson's I, Legend and Romero.

Cover of Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human, edited by Deborah Christie and Sarah Juliet Lauro.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

#SundayReading #BookSky This week, I continue the slow shift towards horror reading with at least 30% more zombies. Academically, I've read a little more of Chloé Germaine Buckley's Twenty-First-Century Children's Gothic, but it's going on pause for now for the Halloween reading.

Cover of Chloé Germaine Buckley's Twenty-First-Century Children's Gothic.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

1) this is cool. 2) I don't have a meaningful contribution or commentary to add, so I'll just take this as an opportunity to say Empress Zoe rocks

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It works in the one shot, but in any other context, it would be a very, very weird choice by Moon Girl.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

And last, in Marvel Zombie, a oneshot by W Maxwell Prince and Steffano Raffaele, Moon Girl and a tween decide they can't kill Garth, Marvel's zombie character that predates Marvel Zombies, despite the fact that it means the certain death of the Avengers.

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Michael Hancock @personofcon.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

And in Battleworld Red Skull, a suicide squad-like is sent to confirm Red Skull's death in No Man's Land, which includes going through the zombie territory in the first issue (though the rest is more Annihilus focused).

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