The final chapter of DCeased, DC’s fan-favorite zombie saga, is arriving this August with a bold cover by Dan Mora that references a 1991 piece of art by former X-Men penciler Jim Lee, who now serves as DC’s Chief Creative Officer.
DCeased: War of the Undead Gods is an eight-issue series written by Tom Taylor and illustrated by Trevor Hairsine, both of whom worked on the previous DCeased series. Variant covers by Dan Mora for issues #1 to 4 form one cohesive image homaging Lee’s art for issue #1 of Marvel’s 1991 relaunch of X-Men.
Lee’s original artwork showed Magneto gesturing menacingly towards the reader while Cyclops, Wolverine, Iceman, Psylocke, Rogue, Colossus, Gambit, Beast, Storm, Angel, Jean Grey and Professor X dashed towards him. Mora’s cover swaps Magneto for Darkseid and replaces Marvel’s mutants with Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, The Flash (Wallace West), Mary Marvel, Wonder Woman, Big Barda, Lobo, Shazam (Cassandra Cain), Green Canary and Cyborg.
Lee’s original iconic cover marked the start of Marvel’s mutant dominance in the 1990s. Written by Chris Claremont with Lee serving as penciler, X-Men #1 received the Guinness World Record award in 2010 for the Highest Selling Single Comic Book. Recently, Lee’s cover was homaged by Todd McFarlane — another best-selling artist of the ’90s — for issue #3 of The Scorched, a team-up book starring the various hellspawn of the Spawn universe.
DCeased, originally a limited series launched in 2019 that investigated how the DC Universe would fare when facing a zombie apocalypse, exploded in popularity and received a sequel, DCeased: Dead Planet in 2020. Several spinoffs were published that delved further into the series’ dystopian undead-laden world, including the one-shot DCeased: A Good Day to Die, a three-part limited series DCeased: Unkillables and an anthology series DCeased: Hope at World’s End.
Known for its gripping horror themes and willingness to kill off DC mainstays like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman — who have respectively been replaced by their children or protégés of Damian Wayne, Jone Kent and Wonder Girl — DCeased will finally come to its long-awaited conclusion with War of the Undead Gods. The series sees the fight against the undead turn into an interplanetary struggle as a reborn Darkseid unleashes the Anti-Life Equation across the cosmos, targeting the current defenders of Earth in his sights.
DCeased: War of the Undead Gods hits comic book store shelves on Aug. 9.
Source: DC
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