Novelists add weight to 'Marvel Zombies'

Marvel Comics has enlisted the aid of popular zombie fiction writers for the latest instalment of the Marvel Zombies series.

Incredible Hercules writer Fred Van Lente will be joined by authors David Wellington, Jonathan Maberry, and Seth Grahame-Smith to pen Marvel Zombies Return.

The series is set on an alternate Earth which has been overrun by the undead, with the majority of popular Marvel heroes transformed into ghouls hungry for human flesh. The latest series will follow the tales of some of the most popular zombie-heroes after they disappeared at the end of Marvel Zombies 2.

"As the doubters have discovered with Volumes 3 and 4, there’s still plenty of life in this undead express," editor Bill Rosemann told Comic Book Resources. "Our only limitations in telling fresh and innovative stories is our brains - that is, if the zombies don’t eat them."

Grahame-Smith is the author of the best-selling Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, Maberry the Bram Stoker Award-winning writer of the Deep Pine series of supernatural thrillers, and Wellington is best known for his Zombie Trilogy.

The five-week series will be published in September 2009.