ZOMS
(from Reality-691)

Classification: Alternate timeline (Reality-691) humans altered by extraterrestrial (Brotherhood of Badoon) medical techniques/technology (31^st century)

Purpose: To be obedient servitors of the Brotherhood of Badoon

Creators: Badoon scientists

User/Possessors: Brotherhood of Badoon (including Lordsires Drang and Droom)

Known Members: None identified. Their original human identities were apparently destroyed and whatever designations the Badoon used to distinguish between them have not been revealed.
Estimated population: Unrevealed

Affiliations: Badoon Elite Guard; Monsters of Badoon

Enemies: Any target designated by their Badoon masters. Zoms have also been programmed to hate their fellow Earthmen.

Base of Operations: The Badoon-occupied planet Earth

First Appearance: Marvel Two-In-One I#4 (July, 1974)

Powers/Abilities: Zoms are humans who have been mentally changed by Badoon medical techniques into living weapons. Psycho-surgery performed on their brains has made them into nothing more than living machines who have been programmed to carry out whatever functions their Badoon masters give them.

   Although often described as being mindless, Zoms do exhibit some limited cognitive abilities. They are capable of following the commands of their Badoon masters and, when attacking their assigned targets, they do so in a way that is at least semi-coordinated (i.e., they don't fire at their targets if their fellow Zoms are in the line of fire). Whether this behavior is due to some limited mental capacity that Zoms retain or is simply the result of how thoroughly they have been programmed by the Badoon has not been revealed.

   Zoms are incapable of feeling pain because the pain centers of their brains have been deadened. As a result, although their bodies can be harmed in battle, they cannot be hurt and thus they continue to fight no matter what blows are struck against them. They can only be stopped by being physically incapacitated.

   Unlike normal humans, Zoms cannot be rendered unconscious by blows to their heads. It has not been revealed if they are also immune to other methods of inducing unconsciousness. It is uncertain if Zoms still require any sleep in order to support decent alertness, performance, and health, or if they, unlike normal humans, are unaffected by sleep deprivation.

   Zoms all look alike. The reason for this similarity in appearance has not been revealed.

Limitations: Due to the Badoon psycho-surgery that created them, Zoms are incapable of independent thought and reasoning. It seems likely that the surgery also destroyed all the personal memories of the human subjects but this has not been confirmed.

   Zoms are incapable of speaking, presumably due to alterations made to the speech centers of their brains. Alternatively, it's possible that the Badoon have stolen their voices by removing or severing their vocal cords.

   Aside from the changes made to their brains, Zoms are apparently not physically enhanced by the Badoon. As such, their basic physical capabilities are (probably) not superhuman and thus their strength, speed, durability, agility, reflexes, stamina and ability to recover from injuries are no greater than those of normal humans.

   Although incapable of feeling pain, Zoms are not invulnerable and are (probably) no more durable than normal humans. As such, their bodies can be penetrated by bladed weapons or projectiles, their bones can be broken and their bodily tissues can be damaged by energy beams or exposure to radiation. Death can be caused by severe blood loss or critical damage to vital organs, including their hearts, their spinal cords and their brains.

Paraphernalia: Zoms all wear identical uniforms that cover their entire bodies except for their heads. These coveralls include boots for their feet and gloves for their hands. Although all members of the same Zom horde wear identical clothing, different hordes have been observed wearing uniforms with different designs and color schemes. For example, the Zoms encountered in New York City in 3014 A.D. wore uniforms that were entirely red except for the sleeves and gloves that were purple. In contrast, the small group of Zoms seen in 3015 A.D. wore uniforms that were entirely a dull olive green color except for their grey gloves.

   All Zoms wear headpieces in the form of golden (or orange) bands that encircle their heads at mid-forehead level.

   Although most Zoms are sent into combat armed only with their hands, some are equipped with conventional Badoon energy weapons

Traits: Zoms are mindlessly loyal and obedient to their Badoon masters, and they are savagely aggressive towards those they have been ordered to attack.

Type: Human (surgically-altered)
Eyes: Two (entirely white with no visible irises or pupils)
Fingers: Four (plus opposable thumbs)
Toes: Five
Skin color: Pinkish-white
Hair: None
Average height: 6' (estimated)

History:
(Marvel Super-Heroes II#18 (fb) - BTS/Defenders I#26 (fb)) <3007 A.D.> - The Brotherhood of Badoon invaded the Sol system and wiped out the colonies on Mercury, Jupiter and Pluto before finally capturing Earth.

(Marvel Super-Heroes II#18 (fb) - BTS/Guardians of the Galaxy I#26 (fb) - BTS) - The Badoon enslaved the human population of Earth and required all (or almost all) of them to wear psyke-disks that forced them to work for the Badoon.

(Defenders I#26 (fb) - BTS/Marvel Presents#3 (fb) - BTS) - At some point, the Badoon, who had conquered Earth for its resources and had no use for humans except as slave labor, eradicated most of the humans on Earth, leaving only 50 million survivors.

(Marvel Two-In-One I#4 (fb) - BTS) - At some point after 3007 A.D. but before 3014 A.D., the Brotherhood of Badoon stopped using psyke-discs to control the human slave population.

(Marvel Two-In-One I#4 (fb) - BTS) - At some point during that same seven-year period, the Badoon began using their psycho-surgical techniques to transform some of their human slaves into servitors who were nothing more than living machines programmed to fulfill whatever function their masters wished. These transformed humans became known as "Zoms" and were mostly (or entirely) used as living weapons.

(Marvel Two-In-One I#4 (fb) - BTS) <3014 A.D.> - In New York City, Zoms were used to patrol the city and enforce the curfew that required all humans to be indoors by nightfall.

(Marvel Two-In-One I#4 - BTS) <3014 A.D.> - A woman named Tarin who lived in New York City was accidentally transported back in time to the Baxter Building in the year 1974 (on Earth-616) where she soon met the Thing (Ben Grimm), Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards) and Medusa of the Fantastic Four, Captain America (Steve Rogers) and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter.

(Marvel Two-In-One I#4) - When Tarin returned from the past accompanied by Captain America, the Thing and Sharon Carter, they arrived on a street in New York City near the Planetary Radio-Teleport building. Seeing that it was night and long past curfew, Tarin warned her companions that they had to find cover before one of the Zom patrols sighted them, but it was already too late. Even as the Thing asked what a Zom patrol was, one such patrol had already spotted them from a rooftop above and immediately opened fire with a couple of laser blasts. As the Zoms leaped down and advanced towards them, Tarin quickly explained that they were servitors of the Badoon whose capacity for thought had been destroyed by Badoon psycho-surgery. With no way to escape, the heroes from the past met the Zoms head-on, and the two groups were soon engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat.

   As the battle continued, Captain America noticed that, no matter how hard they were hit, the Zoms just bounced back, and he soon realized that they didn't feel pain and thus could be harmed but not hurt. When the heroes also discovered that the Zoms couldn't be rendered unconscious, they realized that the only way to stop them was to break every bone in their bodies. Accepting that there was no other way to prevent themselves from being mauled, the heroes began to slowly incapacitate the Zoms. However, just as victory over the Zoms seemed imminent, a Monster of Badoon burst through a wall and joined the battle. The Thing immediately punched it right in its face but was shocked when the Monster remained standing. Seconds later, a Zom struck Carter down, causing her to cry out. Reacting instinctively, Cap turned towards her, leaving himself open to his own Zom opponent just long enough to fall victim to a ray blast. With those two down, the Monster concentrated on the Thing who was quickly knocked out. With the active combatants all fallen, the Zoms and the Monster all received commands relayed to them through their headpieces and obeyed, gathering up the fallen heroes and carrying them off to where the Badoon wanted them to be taken. Watching them go, Tarin wondered if the Zoms and the Monster had forgotten about her or if they had just assumed that one human couldn't matter.

(Marvel Two-In-One I#5) - Later that night, inside the Badoon palace, three Zoms and the Monster brought their three unconscious captives into the royal chamber of Lordsire Drang. The Zoms dumped Captain America and Carter on the floor before the throne and then stepped back while the Monster stood there and continued to hold the Thing under one arm. The Badoon then used their Memory Probe on Captain America to discover who he and his companions were and how they had come to be there. Horrified to learn that they were heroes of Old Earth who posed the first real threat to their rule of Sol-III, the Badoon were considering putting them to death at once when the Thing revealed that he had secretly regained consciousness, and he punched the Monster that was holding him, causing the Monster to fall backwards into the Memory Probe, tear open its power source and be electrocuted. With the Monster out of commission, Drang ordered the Zoms to kill the trio before they could escape, but the Thing took care of the first Zoms with a single punch. While Carter grabbed a weapon dropped by one of the fallen Zoms, Captain America congratulated the Thing, saying that the Badoon would "be scraping Zoms off the walls for weeks," but then warned that there were more of them coming so they had to get out.

   When Cap, the Thing and Carter emerged from the palace, they found the Badoon Elite Guard and another horde (or two) of Zoms waiting for them. Seeing how outnumbered they were, the Thing grabbed a 31^st century car and hurled it at their assembled pursuers, scattering many of them. While Carter used her stolen blaster on various Zoms, Captain America and the Thing attacked them physically but the heroes soon realized that there were just too many foes for them to fight by themselves so they fled into the alleys. During their withdrawal, the heroes managed to round a corner while their pursuers had briefly lost sight of them and then, while hiding in the shadows, they watched as the pursuing Zoms rushed past them. Once the Zoms had all passed, the trio moved out to try to locate Tarin and the Terran Resistance, and over the next several hours they went up and down Manhattan five times without encountering any Zoms. However, a few Zoms were visible fighting Captain America and the Thing in the visicorder tape of the battle on the steps of the Badoon palace that the Terran Resistance sent to the Guardians of the Galaxy to summon them back to Earth to participate in the imminent uprising against the Badoon.

   Although Captain America, the Thing and Agent Carter would later team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and every member of the Terran Underground in the New York Sector in a sunrise assault on the Badoon palace, the only foes they encountered were Badoon and the Monster of Badoon. For some reason, no Zoms were present during that battle which ended with the humans having seized control of New York City.

(Defenders I#27) <3015 A.D.> - The Badoon detected the starship of the Guardians of the Galaxy in orbit around Earth but Lordsire Droom ordered that no obvious action be taken. Later, Droom's attempt to analyze a single sensor probe that the starship had initiated caused the monitoring device to overload explosively. Believing that this meant that the Terrans had developed some new power source that could topple the Badoon Empire, Droom ordered that it be found and destroyed, at any cost and at once!
   Not long afterwards, two members of the Badoon Elite Guard and (at least) nine Zoms teleported up to the Captain America from Earth, arriving in the starship's teleport chamber where they were soon confronted by Charlie-27, Martinex and Nighthawk (Kyle Richmond) who had raced there in response to an intruder alarm from that room. One of the Badoon called upon the trio to halt where they were because their ship had been confiscated in the name of the Brotherhood!

(Defenders I#28) - As the two groups confronted each other, the Badoon commander revealed that they knew that there was some new power source on board the vessel, a sensor probe more potent than any known weapon in Earth's arsenal, and that they had come to confiscate it and the rebels. The Badoon's words caused the heroes to realize that the power source they were seeking was actually the magic of Doctor Strange who had been connected to the ship's computer systems. Since the computer hook-up was already taking Strange to his limits and any tampering with the mechanism would have meant his death, the threesome decided that they had a fight on their hands so they immediately attacked. Martinex used his Pluvian power to fire twin bursts of heat and cold at the Zoms while Charlie-27 used his Jovian mass and strength to barrel over other Zoms and Nighthawk used his doubled strength to batter even more of the Zoms.

    When Nighthawk wondered aloud about how the "creeps" he was fighting kept coming back for more no matter how hard he hit them, Charlie-27 revealed that the Zoms felt no pain because they had been lobotomized by the Badoon, and Martinex added that the only way to stop them was to cripple them or their masters. As Nighthawk tricked two Zoms into colliding with each other head-on, Martinex advised him to take no joy in that and reminded him that there were only 50 million Earthmen left alive, including the Zoms. Then, as Martinex was explaining that he wasn't using his full cryogenic power upon the Zoms was because he was trying to preserve human life, even in that hideous form, one of the Badoon managed to disable Nighthawk with a stun blast and ordered the Zoms to attack him. The Zoms immediately complied, and Nighthawk was quickly overwhelmed and held helpless in their grasp. Using Nighthawk as a hostage, Charlie-27 and Martinex were forced to surrender, and the Badoon demanded to be taken to the mysterious power source.

   With Zoms holding the captives at blaster-point, the group went to the starship's computer center where Martinex informed the Badoon commander that the "outlandishly-garbed human" (Strange) was the power source they sought. When the commander rejected that claim as a lie, stating that no human brain could have emitted a probe of such intensity and especially not the brain of a corpse, Nighthawk's reaction caused the Badoon to realize that Strange had been alive but had apparently burned himself out. After stating that their medical teams could collect the head for further study at a later time, the commander ordered the Zoms to escort the rebels back to the teleport chamber. As the boarders and their captives teleported down to Sol-III, the astral form of Doctor Strange watched them leave, amused that the Badoon had mistaken his physical body's decelerated metabolism for the absence of any life processes at all.

(Defenders I#29) - Once Doctor Strange (with help from Jack Norriss) had magically traveled to every Badoon prison camp on Earth and freed the prisoners by magically dematerializing the fences, those fifty million newly-liberated Terran men, women and children immediately rose up against the Badoon and a bloodbath ensued.
    No Zoms were shown to be involved in the fighting.

(Marvel Presents#3) - The resulting war between the liberated Terrans and the Brotherhood of Badoon ravaged the face of the planet before finally ending when the last of the Badoon were defeated in New Moscow.
    During this war, no Zoms were shown to be involved in the fighting.

   Although many of the Terrans wanted to satisfy their lust for vengeance by methodically maiming, torturing and killing the captured male Badoon, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Starhawk prevented them from carrying out their brutal and savage desires and instead assisted the Sisterhood of Badoon in removing the male Badoon from Earth.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ZOMS AFTER THE BADOON WERE DEFEATED HAS NEVER BEEN REVEALED.

Comments: Created by Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema and F. Giacoia.

   The Zoms were presumably named after zombies, mythological creatures from Haitian folklore who are dead bodies reanimated by necromancy. Having no will of their own, these zombies served as the personal slaves of the bokors (sorcerers or witches) who raised them. The Brotherhood of Badoon (and writer Steve Gerber) presumably chose that name in order to deliberately evoke the feelings of horror and dread associated with the mindless walking corpses, in order to make their servants more fearsome to the rest of the enslaved human population. However, as far as is known, the Zoms were created solely by Badoon medical techniques, without any magic, and were living beings rather than beings who had died and been reanimated.

   The Zoms from Earth-691 only appeared in four issues and on only 20 of the 72 pages in those issues. If one excludes the 7 pages in which their appearances were very trivial, that leaves only 13 pages that are potential sources of images for this profile. And wouldn't you know it, most of the panels on those pages only show Zoms engaging in melee combat with our heroes. As a result, most of the images of Zoms are from behind them as they attack or are partially obscured by the heroes they are fighting. Since they have no dialogue or personal identities, most of the images available are essentially crowd scenes. With so little to work with, I may have overcompensated by including more fight scenes images than were necessary.
   Also, Marvel Two-In-One I#4 is the only comic which shows Zoms on its cover. However, those Zoms (not named as such on the cover) are depicted as yellow-skinned humanoids wearing light blue tunics, briefs, and boots, and their headpieces are also light blue. At least those cover Zoms are accurately shown as all being bald and white-eyed.

   The Zoms, a Monster of Badoon and the psyke-discs were the only three non-generic weapons that the Brotherhood of Badoon were shown using against the humans during their occupation of Earth-691 and, oddly, none of them seemed to have been used very effectively. Although serving as examples of the atrocities that the Badoon were willing to create, the Zoms were never presented as being much more than mooks or cannon fodder – low-level, disposable opponents who lack any personal identity and are sent against the Protagonists to be mowed down with utter impunity, complete disregard and (relatively) little effort. Considering that Steve Gerber went to the trouble of creating them, one would have expected him to include them in the stories he wrote about how the Terrans recaptured New York City in 3014 A.D. and the planet Earth in 3015 A.D., but instead they're completely absent.

   One odd thing about the Zoms was the fact that they all looked exactly alike. This is peculiar because they were just supposed to be individual humans who had had psycho-surgery performed on their brains. Since it seems unlikely that such a procedure would alter the physical appearances of the subjects, what could have caused them to all turn out looking like clones? The only plausible explanation is that the Badoon specifically chose human males with the same height, weight, body type and skin color, then used plastic surgery to make them identical in appearance. That seems like a lot of effort to go to for no good reason, but maybe those Badoon had technology that could make such changes easily, like placing them in transformation tubes overnight to make them all into duplicates of each other. Of course, this is only speculation on my part.
   While writing this, it occurred to me that the fact that the Zoms all look alike is similar to how the Alpha Primitives all look alike. The Alpha Primitives were originally stated to be clones but it was later revealed that they had been normal humans until they were de-evolved into Alpha Primitives by being exposed to the mists from the Xerogen Crystals.

   Aside from the stories in Marvel Two-In-One I#4-5 and Defenders I#27-28, all of which were set in Reality-691, Zoms have only appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy II#7-8. However, there are two different types of Zoms in those issues and neither of them are consistent the Zoms from Earth-691, for different reasons.

   The first type appeared only in the first third of GOTG II#7. While in Security Detention aboard Knowhere, a recently-captured female Starhawk tells Cosmo about the world of the future, a thousand years from then, where Earth and its colonies will be brought to the brink of extinction by the alien Badoon and the only band of freedom fighters who will oppose them will be the Guardians of the Galaxy. This Starhawk's words serve as the narrative for a flashback in which Badoon riding on flying disks as they oversee the Final Cull order the Zom Brigades to sterilize any remaining manling activity, but the Guardians (Charlie-27, Martinex, Major Astro, Yondu and a male Starhawk) arrive and begin wiping out the Zoms. However, the flashback ends with everything disintegrating, something that Starhawk claims is because time has unraveled and the Future Tense is doomed. The Zoms in this flashback look a lot like the first Zoms (except for the color of their uniforms) but there are a few details about this flashback that are inconsistent with it having actually taken place in the Earth-691 timeline.

• For more than ten years I believed that this flashback couldn't be "real" because Marvel Presents#3 established that Starhawk had never helped the four original Guardians battle the Badoon. However, after recently rereading that issue more carefully, I noticed that Major Astro actually said that Starhawk had been "absent during most of the action." Those words mean that Starhawk was present during (at least) some of the final uprising/war against the Badoon that began in Defenders I#29 and that also means that, technically, the battle seen in this flashback could have been one of the times when Starhawk was not absent.
• That being said, although the costumes worn by the five Guardians are almost the same as what they were shown wearing in Marvel Presents#3, Major Astro's costume is not an exact match. Yes, it is a small, trivial difference, but every little bit of evidence helps.
  True, but this could also just be artistic license--Snood
  


• Although the evidence against the flashback having occurred on Earth-691 is, admittedly, less definitive than I had originally thought it was, the situation in the flashback still seems implausible to me. I mean, according to Defenders I#29 and Marvel Presents#3, once they had been liberated, the Terrans took up arms and "a bloodbath ensued as they ran wild against their former masters" so that "war ravaged the face of the globe." Given that the Badoon were facing an armed and strongly-motivated uprising by tens of millions of Terrans, why would they waste resources hunting down unarmed humans who were fleeing from them? Sure, those "manling survivors" might have later acquired weapons and become a threat but wouldn't it have been a better strategy to focus on the immediate danger posed by the armed combatants and leave the few unarmed fugitives for later? In fact, the term "Final Cull" sounds like something that would be carried out once the more aggressive targets had been eliminated and only "survivors" were left to be hunted down.


• In her narration, the female Starhawk described the mindless Zom thralls as "meat puppets built from the cadavers of their (the Badoon's) enemies." The use of the word "cadavers" indicates that these Zoms were dead when the Badoon transformed them, something that was never even suggested in those stories where the 691 Zoms definitely appeared.

   The second type of Zom appeared in the non-flashback parts of GOTG II#7-8 and actually existed in the Earth-616 timeline. While Cosmo had been questioning the female Starhawk, the Guardians had traveled to Benthus Colony, a Spartoi dependency in the Callisto Sector, in response to a psychic scream of pain and horror that Mantis had sensed. After arriving, the Guardians found themselves fighting a revolting enemy, "freakazoids" that Mantis described as being "dead flesh...the waste meat of the slain reengineered into implements of war." Their minds were extinct, except for the deep roots, the atavistic brainstems, which were being agitated by reptilian thought-patterns. During the battle, Major Astro, who was suffering from a major case of amnesia, suddenly recalled that what they were fighting were "Zom slave troops" and that that meant that there were Badoon close by and cloaked. It was soon revealed that some Badoon were there and that they had brought their mobile War Factories to Benthus as a weapons test of their Zom units against live targets. Despite their name, these Zom Units were definitely different from the 691 Zoms because they (and the single Monster of Badoon that also appeared on Benthus Colony) were clearly shown to be patchwork combinations of corpses and the machines needed to make them move. Plus, since they were apparently constructed by the War Factories on Benthus Colony, the dead humanoids whose flesh was used to create them were presumably members of the Spartoi race and were therefore absolutely not humans from Earth.

What happened to the Zoms after the Badoon were defeated?
   As stated above, the final fate of the Zoms remains a mystery but, here in the comments section, we can speculate about how the victorious Terrans might have treated their fellow Earthmen who had been so defiled by the Badoon. As I see it, there were three possible option:

• The first and most desirable option would have been some form of treatment that could somehow restore the Zoms to their original state as human beings capable of independent thought. After all, if the Guardians were unwilling to use lethal force against the Zoms because they were among the only fifty million Earthmen left alive, then one would assume that making them fully human again would also be a preferred option. However, there would be some potential problems.
• First, it's possible that the psycho-surgery that the Badoon performed on their brains was irreversible. After all, considering that the Badoon considered humans to be lower lifeforms, they would not have bothered to develop a procedure that could have been reversed. And while 31^st century "medi-science" could do some amazing things, the brain is a very delicate organ and there's no evidence that Terran medical techniques were advanced enough to help.
• Second, assuming that reversing at least some of the effects of Badoon psycho-surgery was theoretically possible, that would leave the question of how completely the Zoms could be restored. Unless all of the data that had been stored in the brains of the humans who were turned into Zoms had been recorded before their transformations, it would have been impossible to restore their personalities and their memories. Such a partial reversal of what was done to them would have resulted in ex-Zoms who would have been human in form but nothing more than blank slates of their former selves.
• Third, even if the medical techniques had existed, given the state of the planet after the Badoon occupation was ended, Earth might not have had the resources needed to restore the Zoms. In Marvel Presents#3, Martinex discovered that Earth's most extensive technical library had been left exposed to the weather, resulting in the loss of all the knowledge that had been stored there, because the humans had chosen to concentrate on constructing shelters for people instead of preserving the computers and their tapes. Additionally, if a complete restoration of the Zoms to their former human selves was known to be impossible, public sentiment might have therefore viewed any restoration attempts as being nothing more than a waste of resources that could have been put to better use elsewhere.
• Fourth, even if the Zoms could have been completely restored, would they have wanted to be? If the ex-Zoms retained any memories of what their lives had been like while they had been Zoms, including what things they might have done to their fellow Earthmen, then maybe those memories would have been so horrific that they would have preferred to remain in their mindless state.


• The second option for the Zoms, assuming that restoration to their human forms was impossible, would have been to do something to ensure that they no longer posed a threat to the human population.
• One method would have been to erase the brainwashing that made them hate their fellow Earthmen. This would have left the Zoms in a mindless state but also without any motivation to harm humans.
• A second method would have been to physically confine them in prisons where there were no humans available for them to attack.
• A third method would have been to place them in suspended animation, removing any threat that they posed to humanity while preserving them for some future time when a treatment might be found. However, post-occupation Earth may have not had the capabilities or resources needed to employ this method.


• The final option for the Zoms would have been the most cold-blooded. If it were determined that the Zoms could never be restored to their original selves and there was no other way to eliminate the potential threat that they posed to the surviving Earthmen, then euthanizing them might have been the only viable option. Oddly, this option might have also been the most merciful, especially if the Zoms somehow retained any awareness of what had been done to them and/or what they had done in the service of the Badoon. Executing them in some painless fashion would have been seen as mercy killings that were the only way to end the suffering of these sad victims of Badoon cruelty.

   So, what do YOU think happened to the Zoms? Did the enlightened people of the freed Earth restore these victims of the Badoon to their former human selves? Or did they imprison them for life? Or did they just mercy kill them? Given that most of the population of post-occupation Earth quickly began using a completely interactive form of holovision called Realitee-Vee as a way to escape from their lives, I wouldn't be that surprised if they chose the most pragmatic option.

Profile by Donald Campbell.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Zoms from Earth-691 have has no known connections to:

• Zom - a gigantic semi-humanoid demon who possesses virtually limitless magical power and was imprisoned ages ago in an extradimensional realm by Dormammu and Eternity--Strange Tales I#156/2
• The Zomling - a remnant of Zom's evil essence from the Amphora in which it had been imprisoned which, when accidentally released, began feeding on magical energy in an attempt to become a second Zom--Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme#20
• Zoma - a Watcher who was assigned to observe the Outer Rim Territories of the universe and later developed a grudge against She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters)--She-Hulk I#7
• any actual supernatural zombies
• any artificial (i.e., science-created) zombies
• or any beings or groups of beings whose names or aliases begin with "Zom-"

headpieces

   Worn by all Zoms, these golden bands encircle their heads at mid-forehead level. Since none of these headpieces have ever been seen to be knocked off their wearers, they are probably actually attached to their Zom wearers very securely. It seems likely that some components of the headpieces were actually implants that penetrated into the brains of the Zoms wearing them but this has not been confirmed.

   The only confirmed function of these headpieces was to silently relay commands to the Zoms from their Badoon masters. These commands were presumably transmitted via radio waves (or some form of digital transmission) which were picked up by the headpieces and then sent directly to the brains of the Zoms. The headpieces known to have relayed such commands had two antennae extending up from the headpieces, one on each side. These antennae could break if subjected to enough force, as when a Zom flipped by Sharon Carter hit the ground headfirst and one of his antennae snapped on impact. It's worth noting that Zoms whose antennae were slender, curved and several inches long were apparently later seen with antennae that were straight, blockier and much shorter. Whether they were the same Zoms with antennae that could change shape (or retract) or actually two different groups of Zoms was never established.

   Some of these headpieces had circular or oval areas, situated in the middle of the foreheads, that may have been lenses through which their Badoon masters could watch what the Zoms were doing. However, this has not been confirmed.

   In contrast, those few Zoms seen in 3015 A.D. had orange headpieces that only had rectangular boxes affixed to their sides. This apparent lack of any antennae could mean that the Badoon had stopped using radio to transmit their orders to the Zoms.

   Given that the Badoon psycho-surgery had allegedly rendered the Zoms incapable of thought, it's possible that those hypothetical implants may have aided the Zoms in carrying out their orders in a coherent manner. If this were the case, then the technology of the implants could have acted like mini-computers that supplemented the diminished mental functions of the Zoms.

--Marvel Two-In-One I#4 (MTIO I#4-5, Defenders I#27-28

Note: The differing appearances of the headpieces worn by the Zoms is presumably due to the fact that, although Sal Buscema penciled all four issues, the stories were finished by different inkers.

weapons

   Zoms were often (but not always) equipped with Badoon directed-energy weapons that were meant to be fired while being held by both hands. Although somewhat resembling primitive Terran firearms known as rifles or shotguns, these examples of superior Badoon armaments fired energy beams instead of projectiles. These weapons could fire various forms of energy, including red laser beams that could cause pavement to explode as well as bolts of other (unspecified) forms of energy that could stun or kill living beings.

   Although many Zoms were armed, Zom tactics tended to rely on rushing their opponents so that they could then engage in hand-to-hand combat. As a result, Zoms didn't actually use their weapons as often as one would have expected them to do.

   In the three recorded encounters with Zoms that are available for review, their usage of weapons demonstrated a rather underwhelming effectiveness. In the first of these encounters, during which a Zom patrol confronted four non-Badoon who were violating the curfew in effect in New York City, their weapons were fired only four times. The first two shots were simultaneous laser beams directed at the pavement in front of the targets, presumably intended as warning shots. Later, during the ensuing melee combat, a Zom fired at Captain America but the hero blocked the shot with his shield. The fourth and final shot occurred when Captain America, distracted by a cry from Sharon Carter as she was struck down by a blow, turned away from the Zom he was fighting, neglecting his defense for the fraction of a second that the Zom needed to fire on and stun him.

    The second encounter took place later that night, in the palace of Lordsire Drang to which the three captives had been taken. When they broke free of the Monster of Badoon that had been guarding them, Drang called for his Zoms to come and cut them down. However, before they could open fire, the Thing took care of the first wave of Zoms with a single punch, and Sharon Carter was able to take possession of one of the weapons dropped by the fallen Zoms. As the trio continued their escape, they were confronted by both Zoms and members of the Badoon Elite Guard but their attack was disrupted when the Thing threw a car at them. In the ensuing conflict, Carter put the weapon she had acquired to effective use against the Badoon and the Zoms while her comrades, fighting in the midst of their foes, apparently could not be targeted by the Zoms. Perhaps the Zoms were programmed to not fire if there was a chance that they could hit one of the Badoon?

   The final recorded encounter took place aboard the starship Captain America, then in orbit around Earth. Several members of the Badoon Elite Guard had teleported up to the vessel in order to confiscate it and had brought a small group of Zoms with them, all of whom were armed. However, the rebels defending the starship struck first and began using their powers and skills to disarm the Zoms and their masters before they could fire. At one point, two Zoms carrying weapons charged at Nighthawk, with one of the Zoms clearly intending to use the butt end of his weapon as a club, but their target ducked down just in time to allow them to collide with each other. The battle ended seconds later, when one of the Badoon shot Nighthawk with a blast from his stun-pistol, enabling the Zoms to overwhelm the weakened hero who was then used as a hostage to force his two comrades to surrender. During this battle, none of the Zoms managed to fire even a single shot from their weapons.

--Marvel Two-In-One I#4 (MTIO I#4-5, Defenders I#27-28

Note: The weapons carried by the Zoms were never referenced by name in any of the stories in which they appeared. However, Captain America once referred to a weapon carried by a Badoon as a "blaster" so that's probably an appropriate (default) name for them.

images: (without ads)
Marvel Two-In-One I#4, page 15, panel 3 (main image)
      page 16, panel 3 (fighting Captain America and the Thing)
      page 16, panel 2 (Zom being flipped by Agent Carter)
      page 18, panel 3 (Zoms and a Monster of Badoon with their three captives)
Marvel Two-In-One I#5, page 2, panel 1 (Zoms with their captives before Drang)
      page 5, panel 4 (Zoms rushing to kill the would-be escapees)
      page 5, panel 5 (Zoms being stopped by a single punch from the Thing)
Defenders I#28, page 2, panel 4 (Zoms being scattered by Martinex's bursts of heat and cold)
      page 4, panels 6-7 (Zoms swarming and capturing Nighthawk)
Guardians of the Galaxy II#7, page 2, panel 3 (possibly-alternate timeline Zoms)
Marvel Two-In-One I#4, page 15, panel 3 (Zom headpiece in 3014 A.D.)
      page 16, panel 2 (Zom with a newly-broken antenna)
Defenders I#28, page 4, panel 6 (Zom headpiece in 3015 A.D.)
Marvel Two-In-One I#4, page 18, panel 1 (Zom shooting Captain America)
Marvel Two-In-One I#5, page 7, panel 1 (Sharon Carter using a Zom weapon)
Defenders I#28, page 3, panel 4 (Zom trying to use his weapon to strike Nighthawk)

Appearances:
Marvel Two-In-One I#4 (July, 1974) - Steve Gerber (writer), Sal Buscema (artist), F. Giacoia (inker), Roy Thomas (editor)
Marvel Two-In-One I#5 (September, 1974) - Steve Gerber (writer), Sal Buscema (artist), Mike Esposito (inker), Roy Thomas (editor)
Defenders I#27 (September, 1975) - Steve Gerber (writer), Sal Buscema & V. Colletta (artists), Len Wein (editor)
Defenders I#28 (October, 1975) - Steve Gerber (writer), Sal Buscema (artist), Frank Giacoia & John Tartag (embellishers), Marv Wolfman (editor)

Guardians of the Galaxy II#7 (January, 2009) - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (writers), Paui Pelletier (penciler), Rick Magyar (inker), Bill Rosemann (editor)

First Posted: 08/22/2023
Last updated: 08/22/2023

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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