2 out of 5

A delightful looking book that misses its mark.

The Infinity 8 shtick is perfect: a space mystery that the Infinity 8’s captain is dedicated to solve, employing its ability to rewind time (8 times over…) should attempts to solve go astray.  So for each volume, Lewis Trondheim enlists another writer and artist to send a particular crew member to investigate, and things inevitably do go wrong, allowing for (I presume) 8 volumes of this until we’ve chipped away enough details to come to a conclusion.

In general, each arc can’t go too far until some random element (generally some upstart on the ship) causes a huge distraction.  We’re about half and half at this point – including this volume 4 – for when those distractions feel ‘organic’ to the going-ons versus, well, just distractions.  And Martin Trystam’s entry, Symbolic Guerilla, is unfortunately the latter, and to such an extent that it gets rather boring in its last issue.

Undercover agent Patty is the one sent on the mission this time, pulled away from her quest to expose the working of Roy, a leader of a cultish collective called Symbolic Guerilla.  Artists Kris’ work is delightfully buoyant, told in the sort of simplified but fluid style of a Chris Samnee type, and given a bright palette of pinks and purples by Trystam and Hubert.  Lots of fascinating creatures and instantly recognizable personality types populate Kris’ take on the Infinity 8 world.  Unfortunately, Trystam’s script runs Patty all over the place without much consequence; the intention here is for her mystery work to be interrupted by Roy’s plottings, and that happens, but there’s absolutely zero sense of consequence here.  I know, the timeline reset maybe precludes that, but the other arcs, thus far, have included some type of ticking clock element that suggests that something could prevent the timeline from being reset, and here, that’s never the case.  So Patty goes out into space on her own time; Roy has a vague statement to make that – at least to me – is never really clarified beyond ‘wants to be famous’; Patty returns from space to see Roy making a mess; timeline resets.  The last issue scoots fully away from the mystery stuff, and makes Symbolic Guerilla’s final ‘performance’ its focus, but this is so ill-defined that it makes reading it a chore.

The anthology nature of the series (and that looping timeline) means this won’t, at all, disuay me from continuing, but I do hope this type of stakeless, wandering storytelling doesn’t become the norm.