by: Wayne Lackey

Long before the endless iterations of the current crop of flesh-rending super-human Marvel Zombies, there was only one – former New Orleans businessman Simon Garth. First appearing in a short story in Atlas Comics’ Menace #5 (July 1953), the Zombie was shown to be under the controllable with a pair of magical amulets: one draped around Garth’s neck, and the other in the possession of Garth’s former gardener, Gyps. Gyps commanded Garth to locate and bring back Garth’s daughter, Donna. Garth found Donna, but found himself unable (or unwilling) to apprehend her, despite the influence of the amulets. Garth returned to Gyps empty-handed and quickly killed him, then returned to his shallow grave in the swamp, supposedly to never be seen again. Short and sweet, right…?

Flash forward twenty years. Atlas had been transformed into Marvel Comics, and the powers that be decided to publish a line of horror comics and magazines to augment their traditional super-hero comics line. With the initial success of titles like Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night, and Monster of Frankenstein, and the general popularity of voodoo and zombies at the time, Marvel launched a black-and-white magazine called Tales of the Zombie (ToTZ) in 1973. The first issue included a slightly-modified reprint of the Zombie story from Menace #5, and also included stories that painted an expanded picture of Simon Garth, his circumstances, and his supporting cast. It turns out that Garth was the “Coffee King” of New Orleans, and led a rich and opulent lifestyle in the Big Easy. He lived with his daughter Donna at his mansion. Garth was divorced from his wife Miranda for a number of years, stemming from his marital neglect and frequently violent outbursts. His gardener and handyman, Gyps, was loudly and brutally dismissed for watching his daughter skinny-dipping in their pool.

Gyps decided he wanted revenge on his former employer and kidnapped him, handing him over to a local voodoo cult to be used for their human sacrifice in a nearby swamp. Only one problem – the voodoo priestess was actually Layla, Garth’s secretary at his coffee company, who was secretly in love with him. Layla helped Garth escape, but he was soon hunted down by Gyps, who killed Garth with a pair of gardening shears. Garth was buried in the swamp with only a cross to mark his grave. Unsatisfied with Garth’s lack of suffering, Gyps demanded that Garth be raised from the dead as a zombie to be his slave. The voodoo cultists did as Gyps requested, and brought Garth back as a zombie. One of two amulets – the Amulets of Damballah – was placed around Garth’s neck, and the other given to Gyps. As with the original story, Gyps sent Garth after Donna, returned and killed Gyps instead, and then settled back into his swampy grave.

Gyps eventually turned up at the city morgue, where he was identified by Donna, who convinced the police to allow her to take possession of Gyps’ amulet, which caused the Zombie to rise again. Over the course of the 10-issue series (Zombie only appeared in the first nine issues, although he did appear on the cover of the tenth issue), subsequent issues of ToTZ saw the amulet make its way into the hands of several different individuals, each with their own agendas and each causing typically macabre and grisly encounters by the Zombie. Eventually, Garth’s old secretary Layla, with the help of her grandfather (a voodoo practitioner called Papa Doc), sacrificed her life force to allow Garth 24 hours of life to get his affairs in order and to then finally be laid to rest. The series ended with its tenth issue in March 1975.

Zombie appeared sparsely over the next twenty-odd years, having encounters in the 1990s with Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Hannibal King, and was once controlled by Lilith, daughter of Dracula. Zombie acted under the control of his daughter Donna in the first issue of the horror anthology Strange Tales in 1998. A version of Zombie also appeared in the alternate universe of the Supernaturals. Most recently, Garth has been seen in Legion of Monsters: Man-Thing, and also carrying around the head of zombie-verse Deadpool in Marvel Zombies 4. There have also been two recent Marvel MAX mini-series (Zombie [2006] and The Zombie: Simon Garth [2008]) with a re-working of Garth’s origin and some of the supporting characters, molded from contemporary zombie movies and concepts.

Bibliography:
Menace (1953) #5
Tales of the Zombie (1973) #1-10
Bizarre Adventures (1981) #33
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (1983) #14
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition (1985) #20
Daredevil (1964) Annual #9
Spider-Man (1990) Annual ‘97
Spider-Man Unlimited (1993) #20
Strange Tales (1998) #1
Supernaturals (1998) #3
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Horror 2005 (2005)
Zombie (MAX, 2006) #1-4
Legion of Monsters: Man-Thing (2007) #1
The Zombie: Simon Garth (MAX, 2008) #1-4
Marvel Zombies 4 (2009) #1-4
Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth (2009) #2

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