Infinite Vacation #2 - Review -Weekly Comic Book Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Christian Ward (art) & Kendall Bruns (photography)

The Story: While learning more about an apparent conspiracy to kill lots of Matts (from multiple universes), Matt also explores some of the ethics and lifestyle choices that this reality-hopping causes.

What’s Good: This comic is at its best when it is exploring the power of choice in a person’s life. Remember the basic premise for Infinite Vacation: A tech company has developed a way to allow you to trade your consciousness with another “you” from a parallel universe for a cash fee. Didn’t get the grade you wanted on a test? Did the hot girl at the bar fail to fall for your pick-up line? Well, there is another “you” who got an A or went home with the hot girl and they would be willing to trade places with you for a price. The main “Matt” in the story is one of the greatest users of the Infinite Vacation but has met an attractive young lady who disdains the technology.

About halfway through the issue, we get a lengthy explanation of why this young lady doesn’t like the technology and that segment is really well done. I won’t spoil her rationale and experience, but this issue really shines when it focuses on happiness and self-esteem and how much of those things you can really have when you’re just buying your way into better circumstances. This leads to some interesting thoughts that I’ll put in the comments section (because I don’t think they really belong in the review itself), but the point is that this comic will cause you to think about stuff. How many writers are good enough to create comics that can do that?

Christian Ward’s art is pretty good too. It isn’t the kind of art where the raw linework just jumps out and grabs you by the throat, but his overall sense of graphic design is really strong in terms of panel and page construction or the colors he is using. A few of the panels in here are really something to look at.

What’s Not So Good: I find that I’m incredibly uninterested in the conspiracy portion of this comic. In some ways, I think Spencer may be his own worst enemy. It is so hard to make the soft and quiet portions of the comic work, but he does that (as I noted above). However, that part of the comic is only about 30% of the content. The rest is taken up with a reality-jumping conspiracy story. That’s part isn’t “bad” per se, but the entire time the story focused on the conspiracy I wanted to go back to the better story of the young lady who is the technology agnostic trying to “heal” Matt, the Infinite Vacation junkie.

I guess my main complaint is that I think a LOT of creative teams could tell the conspiracy story portion of this comic. But, not so many are gifted enough to do the quiet stuff and I hate to see Spencer wasting himself on the routine (is that a backhanded compliment).

And….let’s skip the fumetti! It was an interesting change of pace in the first issue that made me sit up and pay attention. But in this issue, I just groaned when I flipped the page and saw actual photographs with word balloons. I don’t even like photorealistic art. Now I’m afraid I’ll be seeing fumetti in all future issues and I cringe at that thought.

Conclusion: When this issue is exploring the nature of self-determination and the impact that choices and consequences have on our lives, it is Daytripper-good. Unfortunately, it spends too much time in an average reality-jumping, conspiracy story that isn’t bad, but isn’t anything terribly compelling either. Ward does some great graphic design, but I’d suggest that the creators skip the fumetti in the future.

Grade: C+ (which is really an averaging of the good and bad parts of the comic)