Infinity Inc. Vol. #1: Luthor's Monsters
© DC Comics

Mania Grade: D
Written By: Peter Milligan
Art By: Max Fiumara
Publisher: DC Comics
Pages: 128
MSRP: 14.99

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Trade Paperback Review: Infinity Inc. Vol. #1

One of the things I enjoyed about the 52 series from DC Comics was that it worked the DC Universe through a lot of supporting characters and it mined that past pretty well. One area that I found to be very interesting, and amusing, was the way that the Infinity Inc. brand was revitalized. When the first Infinity Inc. series came out, it was one of the first books I got into from DC Comics. Its origins in showcasing the sons and daughters of older heroes from the previous generation was intriguing. Even better for DC was that it got me to pick up their older books to see when they were first introduced and how their parents were in their adventures. Not every comic makes you want to read another one, but Infinity Inc. had a great deal of history to it.

 Bringing that series back into the modern day is certainly problematic in a few ways. Where the writers of 52 managed to make it work was in taking the familiar and completely warping. That often sends fans into a tizzy – if any of them even remember the original. The reason this one worked was because they did it in such a way that it was creative and it did turn things on its ear. With the group having been inactive for quite some time, Lex Luthor steps in and buys out the rights to the name and uses it in his Everyman project in order to build a superhero team of his own. That more than annoyed a lot of people and it caused a lot of friction in the hero community, which was what Luthor was certainly after in doing it. Events in that series came to a rather disastrous end for the group and now it’s a year later.

Taking on the chores for this series is Peter Milligan, a writer that I rather quite enjoyed back in the nineties when he was part of the British pack of writers that worked offbeat characters with offbeat material. His work on Shade the Changing Man is to me one of his best moments and has made me want to sample his works whenever I could find them back then. Unfortunately, his work with Infinity Inc. isn’t up to what I would have expected of him, nor is he the right writer for it. The series takes place about a year after the events of 52 and it spends its first five issues, which make up this collection, doing little of anything beyond throwing one whiny kid after another at the reader.

Everyone that’s left from the original team have found themselves in different states of therapy. Their power acquisition and loss has left them traumatized in very different ways and they’re often angry about it, lashing out in destructive ways. Some of them keep in touch with each other but nobody is really on friendly terms since seeing the others generally reminds them of what they had and lost. The bulk of the book deals with them coming to grips with what’s happened while also starting to experience the changes that their bodies are going through due to the withdrawal of the powers. As it turns out, the changes made to their DNA are causing them to gain new powers that are different from what they had before. So everything that was familiar about these already bland characters is now different, plus they’ve got some psychological issues thrown in.

When the series was first talked about by Dan DiDio, it was given the impression that one of the core unifying characters of the book would be John Henry Irons. As a central character of 52 and with his niece Natasha a part of Infinity Inc., it made perfect sense to give him this kind of home and to serve as something of a mentor to these kids. Unfortunately, so much of his time is spent once again chasing after Natasha that he’s sort of a one note character. His relationship with Mercy, Luthor’s former bodyguard, is an interesting angle but one that is poorly played, especially for those new to the characters and their past history together. Between all of the character drama we get a storyline about a vampire of sorts that feeds on the powers of former Everyman project subjects. Affectionately known as Kid Empty, he brings little threat to the book and serves as someone who only looks creepy, has a poor attitude and kills off paper thin characters.

No look at this book would be complete without talking about the penciling by Max Fiumara. Some of this will be nostalgia on my part to be sure, but one of the appealing things about the original Infinity Inc. series was that it was bright, colorful and full of super-heroes. This installment is a dark murky piece made even murkier by layouts that come across as little more than rough sketches given a splash of color and some inking to try and bind it all together. Infinity Inc. feels like just one more attempt at providing a gritty superhero comic without really giving it a proper sense of character and definition. So many books in recent years have shown how to do this but Fiumara’s artwork is ill suited to all of this. If this was more of a real character drama outside of the superhero world, I can imagine he’d be perfectly suited to something in the Vertigo world. But for a mainstream DC book being launched out of the world of 52, it doesn’t connect well.

I went into Infinity Inc. wanting to like it. It had a writer whom I’ve enjoyed in years past and it had a concept and set of characters that have plenty of potential. The simple conflicts with the original team, their parents and other members of the DC Universe provide for ample avenues to explore. If there was ever a team that needed to prove itself, this is it. Instead we get something that is almost unappealing right out of the gate as it has weak artwork, mismanages the cast of characters and doesn’t even form an actual team within the first book. With the series now slated to end at the twelfth issue, Infinity Inc. is simple another doomed DC Comics titles. And that’s unfortunate because it’s a title that could have been so much more.