The Infinite Vacation #2

Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Christian Ward

I'm glad this book finally came out.  Spencer and Ward are doing something pretty different here, and it's a very interesting ride, even if I have some confusion about the basic concept.

In The Infinite Vacation, people are able to trade lives with the alternate reality counterparts.  At first I thought they simply swapped consciousnesses, but now we see various incarnations of main character Mark (including Nudist Mark - they're like Barbies!) interacting with each other in the same place, so there must be some degree of actual body transference.  I'm not sure about this stuff, and whenever Spencer tries to explain the science behind it (like in the photo-comic scene towards the end) I get more lost.

I'm happy to just watch the story roll out though, as Ward is doing some very cool things with the art here.  The concept of infinity is a difficult thing to visually suggest on a finite comic page, but he's doing an admirable job with his kaleidoscopic artwork and use of colour.  He's really improved as an artist since he did Olympus, and that book was very, very pretty in its own right.

I hope that The Infinite Vacation is able to overcome its scheduling issues, as a story this complex (our Mark has figured out that someone is killing his alternates, and is now after him, and is hiding out in a community of dead-enders who refuse to take an infinite vacation) needs less lag time between issues.