Living In Infamy #2

Archive

Reviewer: Chris Delloiacono
Story Title: N/A

Written by: Benjamin Raab & Deric A. Hughes
Penciled by: Greg Kirkpatrick
Inked by: John Lucas
Colored by: John Passalaqua
Lettered by: Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Rob Steen
Cover by: Howard Chaykin & Michelle Stewart
Editor: Ashley Miller
Published by: Ludovico Technique

A number of films, television shows, comics, and novels have successfully made you root for the bad guys, or at least follow, with great interest, the “bad guy” as a leading character. Two of the greatest examples are the television programs The Shield and The Sopranos. Each of the shows features a primary protagonist that’s got major skeletons in his closet. Vic Mackey in The Shield and Tony Soprano in The Sopranos have committed unspeakable acts, but they also have enough decent moments to keep people watching. Edgy programming that doesn’t give us the usual black and white hat wearing villains and heroes is just one reason why television can now boast more product that’s worth watching than the endless sequels on the big screen.

Ben Raab and Deric Hughes’s Living in Infamy has a lot in common with programs like The Shield and The Sopranos. Infamy features a cast and crew that’s filled out with a group of pretty bad guys and gals. That’s not to say everyone is evil. Yet, much like the shows I mentioned, the bad guys steal the thunder from the good.

Living in Infamy‘s villains are comic book super-villains in the classic sense. The hook of the series is that all of these villains are living in Infamy, Arizona under the United States’ witness protection program. The villains have powers we’ve seen before: controlling ice, mind control, and man capable of building amazing machines–you know…the type that villains have used in comics for more than eighty years. Though these characters have stock powers, the characters themselves are so realistic they’re flipping off the pages. Each character has an arc for themselves and there’s real character development from cover to cover. Something we don’t see in a lot of the Big Two’s books.

There are several stories being juggled magnificently by Raab and Hughes. The main storyline features the return of a major villain Baron Skaar who has a score to settle with several of the villains living in Infamy. There’re also some great sequences featuring the children of a few of the villains–Children that don’t really know what’s going on in Infamy. Their innocence serves as a great device to reveal information about the past, present, and future. Finally, there’s some great work with Shotgun, a villain that seems to, well, always carry around his namesake. Shotgun’s involved in all of the major happenings of the book, but he’s also trying to get up the courage to ask out a local florist. Elements like this serve to humanize these characters as well as give us a deeper understanding of who we’re dealing with. Major kudos must go out to Raab and Hughes for their characterization.

Greg Kirkpatrick’s artwork is the final piece of the puzzle. Kirkpatrick’s got a difficult task in rendering the world of Living in Infamy. Infamy features a multitude of former super-villains that probably used to dress in colorful costumes, but most look rather normal these days. It takes a talented art to make the normal standout in the pages of a comic book. Kirkpatrick’s work looks as good as anything coming out on the comic racks today.