Written By: David Pinckney

It may have sounded strange but, IDW tired their first universe spanning crossover in the mega event, Infestation. Considering IDW deals a lot with licensed titles, how they were going to go about doing a crossover event left many of us with a bit to wonder. Now that it's all over it's very clear how they did it, and overall, it went over pretty well.

So for those of you who haven't read any of Infestation, the basic premise is this entity called the Undermind has released zombies spanning the main universe and four other universes. Those four other universes were the Transformers, Star Trek, Ghost Busters, and G.I. Joe's universe. Another character by the name of Britt, who is part zombie and part vampire, is being controlled by the Undermind and avatars of Britt have shown up doing bad guy things in other universes. The Undermind is more or less trying to consume universes and Britt seems to be the puppet. So it sounds a little ridiculous, and that's because it is. That doesn't make that a bad thing. The sheer strangeness of the concept makes the story that much more intriguing and even past that IDW did a smart thing and left the four universes separate from each other. This way we don't have Optimus Prime and Spock doing a team up against a common foe, that would just be too jarring.

By keeping the universes separate, not only do they keep themselves from making continuity errors and making stories that just don't make sense together, they can now break up the event into multiple two issue mini-series. What's good about about this is, you don't need to read all of Infestation if you don't want to. You can pick up your favorite series and read just their part in it, though the sum of the parts makes the whole of the event more interesting. The reason being is that Britt (all forms of her) is a consistent character between all the mini-series of Infestation. Her being the only common link allows the reader to really invest themselves into that character.

If we now just focus on issues 1 and 2 of Infestation proper, it reads kind of like a 'B' sci-fi movie. Again, this isn't to be mean, in fact, it's for the best. These issues of Infestation are the parts that seem to be the most outlandish mainly because this is ground zero for the whole event, everything spirals out of it. If you go in just to have fun with this comic, you will without a doubt have some fun. Vampires, zombies, demons, robots, and others all have a place in these issues. Parts of the comic are hilarious, but other parts do feel a little too awkward.

The Infestation event has completed but IDW is going to push forward with some more Infestation fun with Zombies vs. Robots: Undercity coming in April and Outbreak starting in May. What will be interesting to see is what happens in these series. Infestation has a heavy presence of the team, CVO, and the cliffhanger ending of issue 2 of Infestation is really intriguing. They have now toned down the amount of universes to two which means now we may see a little more of an overlap and maybe even more of development of all the characters. Since the original event was across so many universes, you didn't really get to see characters evolve (though Britt was in all the mini-series).

So the event is over but we still have more to look forward to. If you liked what you read of Infestation, keep an eye out of Zombies vs. Robots: Undercity and Outbreak and see how everything plays out since the end of Infestation issue 2. If you haven't read it, give it a chance and see what you think. It's a fun comic and slightly ridiculous event that just might be for you.

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Published on: 2011-04-30 (404 reads)