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Wednesday Comics Reviews: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3 and Infinite Vacation #1

Published Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:04:05 -0600

Last updated Mon, 24 Jan 2011 04:52:51 -0600

There are two books out from Nick Spencer this week. Only one came through to Britain but I'm making do, thanks to Image's PR people.

The first, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3 continues the revival of this series at DC with art by Howard Chaykin and Cafu, a comic that has had more false starts over the last couple of decades than the JLA movie. And this is very much following the traditional plot of gathering the team, and using people you've just gathered to get others. Seriously, play by play, it feels just like the beginning of the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Even the twist ending seems pulled straight from the LXG movie.

The NoMan stuff seems to want to resonate more for Watchmen readers, especially the multiple-body-big-blue-man-losing-his-humanity stuff, intertwined with the there-is-a-conspiracy-upon-conspiracy and wasn't-the-past-less-rosy-than-it's-been-painted aspect of its P.L.U.N.D.E.R. And there's a touch of The Avengers – TV series, not comic, as well. But it doesn't seem as engaging or fun.

Maybe NoMan's lack of empathy is meant to be catching, in which case it worked, but this comic doesn't encourage me to care.

There's some lovely time priod deliniation by Chaykin and colourist Jesus Abertov, knocking colours back to create an ephemerla world mae more of memory than anything else, again tying in with NoMan's status, which contarsts with the Kevin-Nolan-alike defined work by Cafu, but these seem more like mannequins compared with Chaykin' squishy faces of life. This is a danger of having two artists work on a book like this, one can suffer in comparison.

More of a T.H.U.D.

Something that cannot be said about Spencer's second comic this week, Infinite Vacation. Just the idea is inspirational. An iPhone app that lets you sell your own reality to other parallel dimension versions of yourself – and buy them as well. So from moment to moment, you can change your world for something potentially better, one where ou made a different decision and completely turning the rules of cause and effect on their head in return for a money making opportunity. There's nothing like technology to make what once seemed amazing, such as crossinf from one continent to the other in the air, into something mundane, an uncomfortable chance to catch up on some three-month-old movies. As always the price for getting what we want is getting what we once wanted, as our protagonist Mark's life seems to become more transparent and flimsy, before it returns with vengeance. And naturally Mark ends up trying to knock boots with someone who has refused this lives-changing opportunity, with all the resonance of carnivore trying it on with a vegan.

It also looks like Shaun Of The Dead, the red and the white of the jobbing retail assistant uniform, combined with the bizarreness of the multiverse. So even if Mark is on "vacation", he still looks like he's at work. We even get a little fumetti to explain the whole proces. It's a very inventive, clever comic that totally lives up the the high concept, and gets the reader just as excited in the possibilities unexpressed yet as those on the page. The artwork jumps from the grid framework to the impossibility of the multiverse with ease, yet never loing the reader in its journey. That is a hell of an acheivement, especially considering the mind bending scenes portrayed

The best comic I read this week by far.

Just a shame the rest of the Brits won't get to read it till next week.

Comics from Orbital Comics of London, England.