With Halloween about a month away, Disney recently dropped four episodes of Marvel Zombies, the sixteenth TV series set in the MCU, on Disney+. These episodes complete the story that began in a 2021 episode of What If...? that focused on the outbreak of the zombie apocalypse that turned many of our favorite Avengers into flesh-eating zombies. The unique twist on the zombie genre is that our heroes retain their superpowers in their zombified forms.
While the first full appearance of zombies in the Marvel universe occurs in Ultimate Fantastic Four #22, the most valuable comic featuring Marvel Zombies occurs in Marvel Zombies #1, written by none other than Robert Kirkman himself, the celebrated creator of The Walking Dead. After a spike in value that occurred during 2021's "comic boom" that was prolonged by the Marvel Zombies episode of What If...? in September 2021, the value of a CGC 9.8 entered a two-year long period of consolidation where the comic essentially held steady between the $190 and $265 range:
Those who owned 9.8s were willing to sell in this range but generally not for less than $190, nor could they do better than $265 for the most part. For knowing when to buy and sell, it's important to note when you see long periods of consolidation like this one -- often during these periods, you've shaken out everyone who was looking to sell.
And that's when you look for a breakout sale that pushes past previous resistance levels (around $265 in this case). I think we saw that breakout sale just a few weeks ago when this CGC 9.8 (with an older label) sold on eBay for $325:
And then another 9.8 sold for $300, and another for $305, and finally on October 1st we had another sell for #$315 which pushed the 30-day average of a 9.8 ($311) well past the 90-day ($262) or the 1-year average ($248). With these recent breakout sales, it could be a good time to sell if you're not attached to this issue and it's not something you consider to be a part of your PC.
On the other hand, even with this recent breakout, you could make the argument that this issue may be undervalued. Marvel Zombies is one of the few projects that Kirkman has worked on for Marvel. I mentioned in this CGC submissions blog, Kirkman has the "Midas touch" of the Modern Age -- Modern Age grails like Invincible #1 and The Walking Dead #1 are by far the most valuable comics included in GoCollect's Modern Age CPI. The FMV of a CGC 9.8 copy of Invincible #1 is $4,900 and the FMV for a 9.8 copy of The Walking Dead #1 is $2,600. And keep an eye out on the first issue of his new series from Image Comics: Skinbreaker #1.
In addition, high-grade copies of Marvel Zombies are not that easy to find. It had a very small print run; according to Comichron’s March 2006 “Top 300,” the number of copies of Marvel Zombies #1 that comic book shops ordered through Diamond Comic Distributors (the exclusive comic book distributor for Marvel at the time) was only 19,047. Not surprisingly, because of this small print run, there aren't many graded copies of this issue on the CGC Census; there are only 1,492 total copies on the CGC Census and 461 universal blue label 9.8s. This pales in comparison to other Modern Age keys which may have tens of thousands of graded copies.
