Written by: Jerry OrdwayArt by: June Brigman
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 27, 2015
Infinitely Confusing, Inc.
This has been such a hard tie-in for me to review. First off, it's the one I am the least familiar with. I have NO previous interaction with the Infinity Inc. team besides laughing at Eric for liking the Star Spangled Kid. Second, Jerry Ordway (who co-created the team) didn't hold any hands when it came to jumping in. I'm sure that if you are an Infinity Inc. fan, you were sitting in your mansion, eating strawberries the size of hand fruit, enjoying one last fling with your favorite team while I sat here, struggling to follow this book while eating stupid, regular sized strawberries. Why did I review it then? We only have two guys on the site and I promised myself we would review every book. Stupid promises lead to stupid reviews. I apologize in advance. And away we go...
Last issue ended with Infinity Inc. being attacked by Jonah Hex and the Dogs of War. It's funny, I don't recall them being called the Dogs of War then, but everyone does here and I'm jumping on the trolley. There is a whole lot of stuff going down right away and like I said in that awful intro...Jerry Ordway isn't holding any hands.
Brainwave is down for the count and may or may not be communing with Telos while the rest of Infinity Inc. heads to battle. While most of the team is taking a wait and see approach, Fury wants blood. The two sides square off and a bunch of individual fights break out, but I have to admit, I was confused. Again, this problem is mainly because I don't know these characters well enough. I will take part of the blame, but I also blame Ordway for not giving us more character moments to make me care. The first issue did a decent job with the Infinity Inc. characters (especially Jade, Obsidian and Brainwave), but these Dogs of War are lost on me. It's not that big a problem, because they go down pretty easy.
The fight goes on until the Earthquake hits and Brainwave wakes up. He seems to be the only one talking sense as Obsidian dives into Jonah Hex's awful past and a silent rocket ship driven by Harris (?) shows up. Jonah Hex decides that the Infinity Inc. are a-okay with him and Telos severs contact with Brainwave (remember: Earthquake). Neither side wins, but as Infinity Inc. leave Jonah, his city blows the hell up. WTF?!? They aren't sure if it was the Nuclear reactors damaged by the Earthquake (someone really should have checked on them) or Telos' doing, but they have pressing matters to deal with...they are inducted into the Justice Society of America. The End. By the way guys, it was the nuclear reactors...the dead inhabitants thank you.Well, if you are an Infinity Inc. fan, I guess you got what you wanted in the end...respect. The team was inducted into the JSA and they seemed pretty happy. I just am having problems making sense with the rest.
Usually in an issue that I am this confused about, the art shares a bunch of the blame. Not here. I really liked June Brigeman's art, especially her character designs.
Bits and Pieces:
I tried my best to figure out what was going on in this issue, but I was left utterly confused. The problem is, even the stuff I understood didn't impress me much. In the end, fans of Infinity Inc. got what they wanted and we can file the team away for safe keeping until the next event rolls in.
2.5/10
First, having read every issue of Infinity Inc, I'd like to know where the #*^&@ my mansion and giant strawberries are! Having also read all the issues of the retcon to Infinity Inc., the Young All-Stars I feel there should be a second mansion involved.
ReplyDeleteOh well. The last two pages of #1 did a decent job of explaining the team as far as pre-crisis goes. It at least covered the 'what' of it if not the 'who'. Here are a few interesting details of the who:
Harlequin, the golden-age precursor to the current version, worked with Alan Scott,the Green Lantern. For some fairly ridiculous reason, I think to get his attention, she chose to be a villain. Ultimately, they were married, and I kid you not, Green Lantern thought it would be a romantic touch to consummate the marriage in a green force bubble. Sadly, Rose&Thorn, the golden age equivalent of Poison Ivy broke in on their wedding night, apparently killing Harlequin. Of course, she didn't really die, GL only thought she did and nine months later, the super-powered twins Jade and Obsidian were born. Jade obviously wound up with the ring based powers, while Obsidian wound-up with the mystical powers of the Lantern. The golden age lantern was magic, rather than Oan.
If you ever wondered why the female villain duo on Batman's Animated Adventures was 'giant wood mallet'/'plant power' heavy, they were originally golden-age GL villains and his weakness is of course, wood, not the color yellow.
Brainwave was always the bad boy member of the team since his dad was a super-villain. The comic tells you that much. What they don't mention is that he was also the last member of Infinity Inc. to remember pre-Crisis Earth 2. He was perhaps the only person to remember Crisis besides the Psycho-Pirate. Especially after he erased Fury's memory of the event. It seemed the humane thing to do since she was a parentless anomaly post-Crisis. The whole incident is rendered in a beautiful Todd McFarlane pencilled page, the original of which, now hangs on my wall. OK, OK, maybe I've taken the Infinity Inc. fan thing a bit too far, but it was on ebay. I'd had a few beers. What was I supposed to do? It would however look better in a mansion.
Norda was a family acquaintance of the Golden Age hawks. He was also a childhood friend of Hector/Silver Scarab who was the Hawks' only kid. There was a fair amount of 'you always liked him better than me' angst revolving around this in the original series.
Hector and Fury had a thing which resulted in Fury having Hector's kid, but by then, Hector was already dead. Of course, not really, he'd merely been whisked away to a quasi-egyptian dream dimension where he'd decided he was the 1960's Sandman. This is where it got weird and Neil Gaiman did his only work I ever disliked.
I don't now who Roy Thomas pissed off at DC, but he must have pissed off somebody in a fairly big way. After the original crisis most of his characters and plots were completely gutted. One of the most spectacular examples of this was the Hector and Lyta story. Post Crisis, there's the Neil Gaiman Sandman in his own funnybook. Rather than letting naming collision just slide, DC put Lyta and Hector and their kid in Gaiman's Sandman. Lyta mopes a lot which as you can tell from Convergence Infinity Inc. is completely out of character. Hector seemingly meets some horrible fate, and--I think--their kid winds up being the next Sandman. Go figure.
That's all I've got for now, but if you have questions, I might have answers.
Oh, in closing, your review was pretty spot on. It was nice to see the characters again, but they didn't really do much. Oh well, it's a cross-over event, that's kind of the thing right?