Nightmare in New Orleans

The Avengers have just announced their new roster to the crowd that has formed outside. In the middle of the festivities, a shipping crate delivered to the mansion suddenly implodes, revealing Wonder Man was inside. The previously deceased Simon Williams then accuses the Vision of stealing his mind before collapsing to the ground.[1] Ignoring questions from reporter Sam Reuter, Captain America picks up Wonder Man and retreats back inside with the rest of the team. Yellowjacket has Wonder Man taken down to the lab for examination. However, they find no answers to explain how Wonder Man can still be alive after being dead for so long. Wonder Man wakes up again only to mutter something about a silver shadow and a reaching hand before passing out again.

The Vision can’t help but wonder if Wonder Man is right and if he has any right to exist due to his mind being based on Simon Williams’ stolen brain patterns. The Scarlet Witch refuses to believe this of her husband and goes outside for search for clues as to who shipped Wonder Man to the mansion. Outside, she finds a mob of people still waiting outside and uses her hex powers to drive them away. Searching the shattered shipping crate she finds some dirt and uses her witchcraft to try and divine where it came from.[2] She gets a vision of people in cloaks engaged in some sort of arcane ritual in New Orleans. She returns to her teammates and tells them that whoever revived Wonder Man also turned him into a zombie. This comes as a shock to the Avengers, but they quickly load up Wonder Man’s body onto a Quinjet and set course for New Orleans to find out who is responsible for turning Williams into a zombie. Along the way, the Avengers come to terms with the possibility that zombies are real, particularly after their own brushes with the supernatural.[3]

When they arrive in New Orleans, the Scarlet Witch leads them to a nearby bar where she recognizes one of the patrons as one of the men involved in the voodoo ritual. The man tries to flee under the cover of the other patrons who are all common street crooks who are frightened off by the appearance of the Avengers. Unfortunately for him, the Avengers manage to catch up with him and he tells him where the voodoo ceremony was held. Taking Wonder Man’s body, the Avengers enter a region called the Le Mort Bayou. As they walk through the muck and mire, the Vision continues to grimly consider his own existence as Wonder Man’s return leaves him wondering if he ever had a soul of his own. Suddenly, Wonder Man’s body begins moving again. The Beast puts it down and it gets up and begins to walk toward where a bunch of people are dancing around a massive fire as part of some ritual.

Watching this dance is the voodoo practitioner who calls himself the Black Talon. As Wonder Man approaches his master, more zombies begin to rise from the ground. Black Talon cannot understand why Wonder Man has returned and assumes Simon failed in his mission.[4] That’s when the Avengers rush the ceremony. This leads to a clash between the Avengers and Black Talon’s followers and zombie horde. Their foes quickly fall, prompting Black Talon to summon Damballa for more power. The very presence of the voodoo god causes everyone to be pinned to the ground except for the Scarlet Witch, who is protected by her own mystical abilities. She fights back but Damballa is far too powerful. That’s when she realizes the deity is hiding in the darkness and drives him away by tossing a flaming log into the darkness, driving it away.

The Black Talon is quickly defeated, but he has no answers for them about who brought Wonder Man to him, or why. This leaves the Scarlet Witch totally confused and she announces to the others that she needs time alone, even from the Vision, and leaves.[5]

Recurring Characters

Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Yellowjacket, Wasp, Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Beast), Wonder Man, Black Talon, Edwin Jarvis, Damballa

Continuity Notes

1. Until this point, the Avengers believed Simon Williams was dead due to a side effect of the process that gave him his powers in Avengers #9. In reality, his body entered a death-like state as it underwent a metamorphosis into a being of pure ionic energy. This will be explained in Avengers #164. When Ultron created Vision by using the brain patterns of Wonder Man to override the original mind and personality of the original Human Torch. See Avengers #57-58 and 134-135.

2. Wanda mentions how she received witchcraft training from Agatha Harkness. This was from Avengers #128 until Giant-Size Avengers #4.

3. Captain America recounts his first encounter with the vampire Baron Blood in Invaders #6 and Iron Man mentions how he encountered Jack Russell in Werewolf by Night #42.

4. A note here reminds readers that Black Talon first appeared in Strange Tales #173.

5. Wonder Man’s resurrection was instigated by his brother, the Grim-Reaper, as revealed in Avengers #160.

Topical References

• Sam Reuters compares the Avengers “covering up” Wonder Man’s survival to the Watergate scandal, which Reuters states he covered himself. This should be considered a topical reference.

Zuvembie or Zombie?

In this story, Wonder Man is called a Zuvembie instead of the more typical Zombie. At the time this story was published the Comic Code Authority was loosening its censorship practices that had placed a moratorium on horror themes that had been banned since the 1950s when the code was established. At the time, the loosening restrictions was based on the argument that classic monsters such as vampires, werewolves, and the Frankenstein’s Monster were actually classic literature and, thus, had educational value, or something of similarly stupid logic. At any rate — and don’t quote me here — I don’t think zombies were among the horror themes that were part of the loosened restrictions.

At the time, Marvel skirted a lot of the more mature horror themes by publishing horror magazines. These were basically comic books published in magazine format which allowed them to get around the CAC rules on a technicality. Until then, zombies only appeared in these magazines.

I think the use of the “zuvembie” instead of zombie was to have zombies without actually calling them zombies. Yeah, the Code was that fucking stupid. Zuvembie is a horrendously stereotypical “phonetic” pronunciation of the word zombi in the Haitian dialect. The Americanized zombie is actually more accurate and less offensive.

Anyway, the term Zuvembie is still used in some Official Handbook profiles, which is just ridiculous. Zuvembie sounds stupid and it’s not even accurate and anyone who still uses the term in the 21st Century is an ignorant moron.