"Infestation 2"
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JediTricks
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Comics are Awesome II
One of Dom's gifts was read by me. TF Infestation 2, issues 1 and 2. To quote the prophet Picard, what the fuck is this shit??? My god, that was just the worst, saddest, most flatlined thing I could imagine. The threat was barely anything, there were a dozen ideas that showed up and then fell off the face of the earth, the whole "C'thulu's friends return through the Seacons" thing didn't work, the characters were lifeless, and the resolution wasn't anything at all. Setting it in Hearts of Steel era only served to lessen that line. This felt like "contractually obligated work that we don't care about" material, phoned-in, it was utterly sad and devoid and reminded me of why I dropped out of comics before. Glad to see RID and MTMTE came after that.
See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
Re: Comics are Awesome II
IDW tried to run "Infestation" as the sort of obligatory cross-over that the big two will run once or twice a year.
The format for both years was a book-ended series where a threat is revealed. (The threat was zombies in the first year, and Lovecraft's Old One's in the second. Both are public domain.) The bookend series involves in-house IDW properties, and maybe a panel or two worth of licensed character art. Then, the threat would manifest across special issues relating to the licensed books, and then be beaten back. (The second "Infestation" involved more of IDW's in-house properties.)
The first "Infestation" pushed the idea of the cross-over hard, urging readers to follow it back to the closing book end. This was especially true for TF, where it derailed a story arc in IDW's main TF book while also leading in to a really bad TF series called "Heart of Darkness".
Given how formulaic "Infestation" is conceptually, it is not suprising that it came out as it did both years. (Year 2 was actually an improvement over year one for TF.)
This year, they did "Mars Attacks", which lacked the book-ends and any unifying elements other than "martians lololololol".
Dom
-notes that we technically talk about this in the "other" forums.
The format for both years was a book-ended series where a threat is revealed. (The threat was zombies in the first year, and Lovecraft's Old One's in the second. Both are public domain.) The bookend series involves in-house IDW properties, and maybe a panel or two worth of licensed character art. Then, the threat would manifest across special issues relating to the licensed books, and then be beaten back. (The second "Infestation" involved more of IDW's in-house properties.)
The first "Infestation" pushed the idea of the cross-over hard, urging readers to follow it back to the closing book end. This was especially true for TF, where it derailed a story arc in IDW's main TF book while also leading in to a really bad TF series called "Heart of Darkness".
Given how formulaic "Infestation" is conceptually, it is not suprising that it came out as it did both years. (Year 2 was actually an improvement over year one for TF.)
This year, they did "Mars Attacks", which lacked the book-ends and any unifying elements other than "martians lololololol".
Dom
-notes that we technically talk about this in the "other" forums.
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JediTricks
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Re: "Infestation 2"
Ok, posts moved.
Alright, that shit needs to stop. It just makes all the books feel sad and awful and like whores, like whores who just lay there and don't care, just do it for money and put as little effort into it as possible.IDW tried to run "Infestation" as the sort of obligatory cross-over that the big two will run once or twice a year.
I'm familiar, and it seemed lame as a concept to begin with, but I was hoping for some execution that surprised me. It didn't.The format for both years was a book-ended series where a threat is revealed. (The threat was zombies in the first year, and Lovecraft's Old One's in the second. Both are public domain.) The bookend series involves in-house IDW properties, and maybe a panel or two worth of licensed character art. Then, the threat would manifest across special issues relating to the licensed books, and then be beaten back. (The second "Infestation" involved more of IDW's in-house properties.)
Geez, that's sad, Infestation 2 was pure stand-alone and pure crap between the other Infestation 2 titles (at least from how it felt at the ending here). Then again, it didn't derail TF ongoing stories so at least there's that.The first "Infestation" pushed the idea of the cross-over hard, urging readers to follow it back to the closing book end. This was especially true for TF, where it derailed a story arc in IDW's main TF book while also leading in to a really bad TF series called "Heart of Darkness".
How could zombies be WORSE than this? I hate zombies but this Elder Gods expression was SO lackluster.Given how formulaic "Infestation" is conceptually, it is not suprising that it came out as it did both years. (Year 2 was actually an improvement over year one for TF.)
This year, they did "Mars Attacks", which lacked the book-ends and any unifying elements other than "martians lololololol".
See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
Re: "Infestation 2"
I agree. Lovecraft can suck it hard.JediTricks wrote:How could zombies be WORSE than this? I hate zombies but this Elder Gods expression was SO lackluster.
Re: "Infestation 2"
The first "Infestation" was worse by virtue of being more intrusive, particularly relative to TF, bit with all of the other properties as well.
In the first "Infestation", all of the 2 issue "license" books had a page of explication or some kind of "to be continued" at the end reminding readers to pick up the story in the second book-end issue. (With TF, this was made worse by the fact that it intruded on the main book both ways, derailing the Kup arc *and* eventually leading in to "Chaos".) The idea was that the zombies were under the control of an other dimensional entity who was both trying to conquer across dimensions and steal tech/magic from them. This entity was at least implied to be the bad guy in "Chaos". All of this was done to boost sales of "Zombies v/s Robots" and some other IDW book.
Tipton did a good job of keeping "Star Trek" wholly self-contained. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and several red shirts land on a planet that has fallen to the titular infestation some time during the movie era. The red shirts are infected. McCoy manages to develop a partial cure which calms the zombies while Kirk manages to defeat the invasive avator creature. As they leave the planet, McCoy says that he will research a more permanent cure. (Given that no mention of this planet is ever made again, it is safe to assume that he probably succeeded.) 'Trek was left out of the second year.
The Joes were dragged in both years. In both scenarios, Raicht set up scenarios where the event was isolated enough from the main books to not matter. Raicht set up a small cast of obscure characters (like Crystal Ball and some other c-lister Cobra agents) that nobody else would be using. The art in the first volume fell victim to confusion about character models (using 80s Viper control art rather than IDW's then current standard). But, that was more an issue with IDW generally being inconsistent on such questions.
Generally, this sort of thing derails (if only temporarily) comics that people are reading. And, generally, the events of the book have little ramification outside of the main event series and/or they simply do not stick beyond undoing other changes.
Dom
-the "Mars Attacks" books was a bad in hosue parody, comparable to something Fun Publications would release....
In the first "Infestation", all of the 2 issue "license" books had a page of explication or some kind of "to be continued" at the end reminding readers to pick up the story in the second book-end issue. (With TF, this was made worse by the fact that it intruded on the main book both ways, derailing the Kup arc *and* eventually leading in to "Chaos".) The idea was that the zombies were under the control of an other dimensional entity who was both trying to conquer across dimensions and steal tech/magic from them. This entity was at least implied to be the bad guy in "Chaos". All of this was done to boost sales of "Zombies v/s Robots" and some other IDW book.
Tipton did a good job of keeping "Star Trek" wholly self-contained. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and several red shirts land on a planet that has fallen to the titular infestation some time during the movie era. The red shirts are infected. McCoy manages to develop a partial cure which calms the zombies while Kirk manages to defeat the invasive avator creature. As they leave the planet, McCoy says that he will research a more permanent cure. (Given that no mention of this planet is ever made again, it is safe to assume that he probably succeeded.) 'Trek was left out of the second year.
The Joes were dragged in both years. In both scenarios, Raicht set up scenarios where the event was isolated enough from the main books to not matter. Raicht set up a small cast of obscure characters (like Crystal Ball and some other c-lister Cobra agents) that nobody else would be using. The art in the first volume fell victim to confusion about character models (using 80s Viper control art rather than IDW's then current standard). But, that was more an issue with IDW generally being inconsistent on such questions.
Agreed.Alright, that shit needs to stop. It just makes all the books feel sad and awful and like whores, like whores who just lay there and don't care, just do it for money and put as little effort into it as possible.
Generally, this sort of thing derails (if only temporarily) comics that people are reading. And, generally, the events of the book have little ramification outside of the main event series and/or they simply do not stick beyond undoing other changes.
Dom
-the "Mars Attacks" books was a bad in hosue parody, comparable to something Fun Publications would release....
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JediTricks
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Re: "Infestation 2"
Sounds like they are trying too hard to crossover fans to build readership in ways that don't lend themselves well to actually DOING that. Nobody who reads Star Trek is going to start reading Transformers because they both had zombie crossover moments, they are very different things.
Trek should have had all the dead redshirts rise up, hundreds of them, angry that Kirk led them to their deaths. That would have been at least fun. Also Transformers just stomping on zombies.
Trek should have had all the dead redshirts rise up, hundreds of them, angry that Kirk led them to their deaths. That would have been at least fun. Also Transformers just stomping on zombies.
See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?