Comic Vine Review

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Infestation 2 #1

3

GI Joe! TMNT! The Transformers! HP Lovecraft! Only one will mean anything in this issue, despite what the advertising says! Does that condemn this comic to mediocrity?

The Good

I really enjoyed the art in this book, and despite the gripes I had with the content (see below), I really enjoyed the actual execution of the story; the character dialog is strong and the people that are speaking seem believable.

I had no problem with the way people were portrayed (except one, see below), and I'm curious as to how their performance will play out.

There are also a couple of in-jokes to those of us who go to comic conventions, and I can always appreciate a couple pokes at that culture.

The Bad

This book is a poor jumping-on point for anyone who did not read the first crossover, not just because of the plot, but the absence of any of the "crossover" properties that are supposed to provoke nostalgia from readers.

I mean, when you read that the Transformers, GI Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are going to be teaming up, don't you expect them to actually do something besides showing up in two panels?

These characters don't seem to have any role in the first issue,which urges you at the end to pick up "TRANSFORMERS: INFESTATION #1"; this seems a bit insulting. I mean, why would you put these characters on the cover without having them as part of the book?

Nitpicking aside, my only other complaint was the heavy-handedness of the HP Lovecraft allusions. While it isn't exactly a problem that the writer is using Lovecraft's work as a literal basis for these catastrophic events, it's disappointing because with all the other "borrowed" properties, there's little original here.

The female vampire's breasts seem to defy gravity and conventional clothing practicality. In some panels they shoot out like missiles from her torso, and in others the jacket she's unzipped down to her navel seems to be incapable of keeping them in.

As a whole, I really didn't like this character, as a strong, strike-team Vampire shouldn't be able to be disabled by two possessed guys; she wasn't quite a damsel in distress, but she didn't exactly have any depth associated with her. Sadly, she seems to be a bit of more eye candy than an actual character.

The Verdict

For all the nitpicking I did above, I liked this book a lot more than other "major" books this week; by all definitions, it was a good comic, but it just didn't seem to deliver on what it promised.

It felt as if someone had written a good comic, but someone along the line said "You know what this needs? The Ninja Turtles. And GI Joe. And the Transfomers. And the villain should be HP Lovecraft monsters instead of those boring old aliens. They're public domain, right?"

Which is saddening, because if those properties hadn't been slapped on, it might've gotten a higher score.

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