The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 285: The Infinite Loop #4, July 2015

Alright, getting back on track. Weekends can be funny things, sometimes, especially around the holiday season.

When I read this issue, I had a similar feeling to reading issue #21 of The Invisibles v.2. Everything in that comic happens out of sequence as a result of the activation of a time machine. In The Infinite Loop, it's not a time machine that's activated, but the time manipulation powers of Teddy (last name unknown). To add to the confusion, she's beset by multiple versions of herself who've just revealed to her that various iterations of her are actually the organization that she's ostensibly been working against all this time. Needless to say, for both Teddy and the reader, things are getting a bit weird.

The similarity to that issue of The Invisibles isn't solely due to the non-linear nature of the story. In that penultimate issue of the second part of Morrison's opus, there's a love story going on too. King Mob is about to say goodbye to Ragged Robin for what he thinks will be the last time, and for a brief moment we're witness to an emotion from KM that we've not yet seen - love. This is not to say that he's not working to stop the Archons out of a large sort of revolutionary love, but this love is a personal, individual one, directed at a girl from the future who has to go home.

I think, were I to level a criticism at The Infinite Loop, it's that it doesn't integrate these two stories quite as nicely as "All Tomorrow's Parties" does. I'm never sure whether the time war or the love story should be the main thrust of the tale, and I get the feeling it's creators are unsure as well. Not that one should stay and one should go, but there ought to be some indication as to which is the primary narrative arc and which the secondary. I know that they're fundamentally intertwined, but the equal privileging they're receiving makes it difficult to completely commit to either story. Again, for both the reader and the writers, I'd think. Hopefully they'll wrap up together nicely, and this criticism will fade away in light of the story's end. But we may have to wait a bit to see. I'm going to try to track down the next two issues soon, but until then I think it'll be random comics for a bit. I'm feeling kind of random right now.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 282: The Infinite Loop #3, June 2015

Interestingly, the scan above does not include the "mature readers" warning that the copy I actually own does. And, given the relatively explicit sex scene that occurs on the second page, the caution label is a fair addition. Up to this point, I feel like this comic has had a hard time trying to figure out who its audience is - initially I would have said teens and young adults, but the inclusion of Teddy and Ano's lovemaking perhaps pushes that range a little higher. Y'know, because we can't have the kids seeing loving sex scenes or anything.

This is the philosophy issue of the series. Much of the time is spent in Teddy's "closet," a small portion of spacetime that she has sealed off from the rest of the universe. Ano spends her time here reading humanist texts, a process that radicalizes her to the point of proposing a revolution, with Teddy at the forefront. Teddy is hesitant, hoping to remain hidden, and, she assumes, happy.

The revelation of the identity of the "forgers," against whom Teddy's agency labours, is good, but not really unexpected. What will prove this comic to be either mediocre or really, truly excellent, will be the subsequent handling of (SPOILER ALERT) multiple iterations of the same character. I've just finished marking some essays from my class, and many of the students chose to write about the problem of nature versus nurture in our texts - the depiction of the Teddys will say much about Colinet and Charretier's thoughts on this dichotomy.

Tomorrow I'll be moving on to the latest issue I have, though there are two more in the series. I've not read issue #4 yet, so it'll be a lovely surprise to see where the story goes. Join me, won't you?

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 281: The Infinite Loop #2, May 2015

The nice thing about this series is it kicks into high gear almost from the very beginning. This issue we're introduced to some unsavory characters that are experts at cleaning up the sort of temporal messes that Teddy has made, though they're not shy about using their cleaning powers on anything deemed aberrant, such as a gender-less David Bowie lookalike who witnessed Teddy's crime. We're also introduced to someone who was in Teddy's situation but ended up neutralizing the puppy-shaped anomaly he found, and who realized that the rules under which they labour are, at times, difficult to enforce.

There's also a fair bit of nudity in this issue, which I was not expecting. Usually such things are signaled by a content warning on the cover, but there's no such beast on the cover of this comic.

The beginning of the issue is a visualization of Teddy's internal dialogue when she's faced with difficult situations. We meet a variety of versions of the character, and it's a nice way of thinking through the various voices that we all have in our heads. Though, in Teddy's case, none of them are saying nasty things to her. That's not always the case in our day to day lives.

Having said that the comic kicks into high gear immediately, the story itself hasn't really moved much forward by the end of this issue from the place that it begins. Much of the time is spent kicking around what should be done about this human-shaped anomaly (named "Ano," as she doesn't seem to remember her name), and there's a substantial portion of the comic dedicated to the two women lying in bed together. While this might sound boring, or exploitative, it serves a very interesting function. Though ostensibly a comic about a rogue time anomaly agent, it's more properly a comic about dealing with a relationship that was completely unexpected, and takes one by surprise. Our focal character, Teddy, was certainly not expecting to fall for anyone; she outlines the fact that the future society within which she lives has even gone so far as to somehow remove the feeling of love from human interaction. So when we get these quiet moments, we're seeing a stylized representation of the experience of falling, unexpectedly, in love. And, though slow, these moments can be every bit as exciting as the more kinetic action sequences.

We'll follow Teddy and Ano's adventures a bit more tomorrow. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 280: The Infinite Loop #1, April 2015

I can't tell you why I picked up The Infinite Loop earlier this year. It's probably something to do with my love for a good time travel story. It's probably also something to do with Elsa Charretier's pseudo-Bruce Timm style, an aesthetic that I absolutely adore.

I can tell you, however, what kept me coming back: it's a bloody good story. There's time travel, reality paradoxes, zealous agents, endearing rebels, and some big, unabashed queer love. Reality maintenance agent Teddy falls in love with a gorgeous, purple-haired woman who appears as a time paradox, and goes on the run with her love from the agency for which she works.

I don't want to say too much about the story, because I think it's quite a lovely one that you should go and read. The artwork is beautiful, and the characterizations of the people we meet are really nicely fleshed out. I know that Marvel and DC have started to take little tiny strides toward a more representative gender diversity, but it's really nice to see a smaller company like I.D.W. presenting a no holds barred queer love story.

I will say, however, that the one thing that sort of irked me about this comic was, and continues to be, the top of the letter page. The creators of the comic are very interested in this being a place where queer people can come together, can talk about love and their experiences, but something about it seems really forced. I'm probably just being particular about the language used because, well, that's what I do and it's really hard to turn off. I'm not saying it's disingenuous in any way - in fact, I'm sure it's not. It just sounds...awkward. But maybe that's because it's just not something we see very often in comics, or on a letters page in a comic, and that awkwardness is just the birth pang of something important finding its way into the medium.

The series runs 6 issues, and if I can track down the last one some time in the next week or so, I'll give a full rundown of the series. See you tomorrow for issue 2.