I generally try to avoid spoilers in my reviews if I can help it, but discussing Nick Spencer’s Infinite Vacation #1 without revealing it’s high concept would be pointless. In the world of Infinite Vacation, man has figured out that there are infinite alternate universes out there and the company Infinite Vacation offers people the opportunity to travel between them. Basically, People have started vacationing in alternate universes as if they were time shares in Florida. In addition to being able to travel between universes, the company offers the option to interact with alternate versions of yourself from those worlds, which is a cool twist on your typical alternate reality story.

The first issue of this new Image Comics series explores a Grant Morrison-y amount of ideas about this world and how it works in a very short amount of space. And somehow it does so while only featuring three speaking characters: various incarnations of the protagonist Mark, a pitchman for Infinite Vacations, and a so far unnamed beautiful girl. Maybe it’s cheating to lump all of those Marks together, but I’m doing it anyway.

Spencer seems to have seized hold of the “Next Big Thing” mantle with the success of his other Image series, Morning Glories, as well as his Jimmy Olsen back up features in DC’s Action Comics. I definitely have enjoyed all three of these series so far, but I won’t totally jump on the Spencer bandwagon until the stories offer their first real payoffs.

The art in Infinite Vacation by Christian Ward is pretty effective. The whole issue has a sort of dreamy feel to it similar to the cover above that nicely compliments the universe jumping, trippy feel of the story. The bright colors amplify that dreamy effect. I also found the use of photography during the appearance by the Infinite Vacation salesman to be an interesting experiment. I suspect we’ll see further artistic experiments from Ward in coming issues and I look forward to it.

Ultimately, I think Infinite Vacation is off to an interesting start. It gets by, however, largely on the strength of it’s high concept and I hope that Spencer will support that concept with a compelling story and strong characters. I suspect he has a lot to say about man’s evolving reliance on technology and I can’t wait to see it all unfold. Here at MLD we tend to focus on DC and Marvel’s output, but with books like Chew, Morning Glories, and now Infinite Vacation (plus that other little Zombie book), Image is becoming hard to ignore.

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