WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Task Force Z #1, on sale now from DC Comics.
After being busted by the authorities, Jason Todd has a new, government-mandated team of misfits to lead in saving the DC Universe with Task Force Z but the Red Hood's latest team definitely aren't like Jason's previous squad, the Outlaws. Jason now heads a team of recently deceased supervillains from Batman's extensive rogues gallery, with a twist: While each of the nefarious figures have been raised from the grave and appear to have been transformed into ravenous zombies, the nature of their twisted new lease on unlife puts them in a weird interim state between being fully resurrected and a bloodthirsty creature of the night.
Jason and Task Force Z are assigned to track down and bust up any operations throughout Gotham City smuggling Lazarus resin, a restorative substance derived from the chemicals within the death-defying Lazarus Pits around the world. The resin is also used to revive the undead members of Task Force Z; however, the government only gives them a limited amount of the substance to keep them more obedient and reliant on edibles fashioned from the resin.
And while the Lazarus resin was recently seen being able to completely resurrect the recent-dead, with Amanda Waller obtaining her own supply to revive fallen members of the Suicide Squad, Task Force Z #1 -- by Matthew Rosenberg, Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, Adriano Lucas and Rob Leigh -- reveals a far more monstrous side effect of taking an insufficient dose of the resin.
Though Jason's superiors in Task Force Z disagree with him using the term "zombie" to describe his team on the field, seeing that the resin doesn't quite make them undead nor able to apparently transmit their flesh-craving condition to the living through bites, Jason's assessment isn't all that far off. Everyone from Bane to the Arkham Knight are barely able to contain a voracious hunger for human flesh, with Jason and his overseers constantly having to prevent them from consuming prisoners held in custody in their immediate presence. And though Man-Bat has always been a bit on the wild side, his Task Force Z iteration has made him more feral than ever, seen sinking his fangs into a hapless victim as the team busts a smuggling operation led by Mister Freeze.
This idea that the resin could cause a significant drive towards cannibalism may come from one of the Lazarus Pit's most noted side effects for those that use to it heal their bodies and restore life: Temporary insanity. Every time Ra's al Ghul emerges from the life-giving waters of the pit, he is more erratically murderous than usual, menacing anyone that happens to be in the immediate vicinity. This, coupled with the tortured state between life and death most of Task Force Z finds themselves in, has led to the lethal hunger that could even put Jason at risk of being devoured by his own team.
While Red Hood may have avoided being convicted for his vigilante activities, he has instead been forced to command a team of would-be zombie supervillains that somehow carry on a more tortured existence due to the Lazarus resin. And while the government may insist that their muscle on Task Force Z aren't zombies, they certainly display all the familiar hallmarks that make true zombies so terrifying as they operate from the shadows of the DCU to keep the world safe from Lazarus resin falling into the wrong hands.