The Infinite Vacation #1

Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Christian Ward

Nick Spencer, the current writerly Golden Boy of comics, is just about everywhere.  This week alone he has two books out (this and THUNDER Agents), one next week (Morning Glories), and his War Machine book, Iron Man 2.0, is set to start soon as well.  His has become one of those names to watch for 2011, and this new title is a good example of why.

I'm not sure I've read many comics like The Infinite Vacation.  To begin with, it seems he's come up with a genuinely new twist on a classic comic book idea.  The characters of this comic (almost all of whom are Mark), are able to travel through alternate realities through an app on their smartphones.  They purchase (at great expense), the ability to swap places with their alternate reality doubles, flitting from one life to another as a way of rectifying simple mistakes or wrong turns in their life.  The girl in the coffee shop leaves before you work up the nerve to talk to her?  Move on to a different life, where she stays a bit longer.

It's a difficult concept to get across, and the fumetti-style infomercial sequence does little to clarify the rules.  Mark has himself for a therapist, and is also his own customer-service rep at the company that runs things.  The problem is, a lot of his alternates seem to be dying these days, and that has him uncomfortable.  So, we get a bit of a mystery, and also realize that not everyone lives like this.  There are a small group of Deadenders - alternate reality Luddites - who oppose this style of living.  Most of this issue is spent in establishing some of the rules of this existence, and the story is intriguing enough to guarantee I'll be back.

Spencer is aided in this book by Christian Ward, who is a remarkable artist.  I loved his work on Olympus a little while back, and have been looking forward to a new series from him.  His impressionistic style reminds me of Eric Nguyen around the start of Strange Girl, and I love the risks he takes with layout in this issue.  I look forward to seeing where this book is going to go.