The Infinite Vacation by Nick Spencer and Christian Ward

This one's a bit high-concept. The Infinite Vacation requires a bit of familiarity with quantum physics (the firing-particles-at-a-sheet-of-metal kind, not the nonsense-hand-wavy kind).The Infinite Vacation The relevant bits of quantum physics in brief: some particles exist as a wave of probability - it’s not until they're observed that they have a fixed position. Therefore, they exist at all possible points at once until they are observed, at which time the probability waveform collapses to a single point. In Many Worlds Theory, this sort of probability waveform is thought to apply to the whole universe, but the waveform never collapses, so every possibility spirals out as its own parallel universe.

The Infinite Vacation is a marketplace app allows you to purchase another version of your life and switch places with the version of you living it - to switch one point on the probability waveform for another. The world that this creates is incredibly well-realised. The world has adapted to the technology as we do with any impressive burst forward - a initial flurry of excitement that rapidly gives way to accepting it as absolutely normal. There are small, luddite-like groups of organised abstainers, but that's about it.

Mark is a serial vacationer, jumping from life to life in pursuit of the life he wants (something he can’t identify), but always winding up repeating the same patterns, grinding himself down in a dead-end job, and moving on again when he can't take it any more. When it seems that someone is trying to eliminate versions of him from across all possible universes, he groups together with some other versions of himself to figure out what's going on.

I don’t necessarily like the art style in this book so much as appreciate it. What seems scrappy to begin with has the complexity and the brio to take a remarkably complex narrative and make it comprehensible. There are simple tricks like colour-coding for specific characters that help them stand out from the the sometimes highly abstract backgrounds, strong character designs to help distinguish an infinite number of Marks.

After a while, this sort of thing starts to make sense.

A word of warning: there are some genuinely unpleasant scenes - needless to say, with infinite variations of each person, some of those are not very nice. These seem to be played for stakes rather than as Mark Millar-esque shock, but that doesn’t prevent them from being deeply nasty to the unprepared.

It's not that this is the first time many-worlds theory has been tied to a story in this way, but the execution of The Infinite Vacation is superb. Major story themes are directly mapped to elements of quantum theory in a way that is comprehensible without being trite, forced, or overexplained. In the last big action beat of the book the way the art, writing, and the overarching blend of the story and physics come together in a genuinely virtuoso sequence. I have a genuine love for anything that marries theme and plot this tightly - it's one of the reasons I love Alison Bechdel's books. If you have a similar love for that sort of arch-structuralist work, or just something that will make you swear under your breath at the authors' cleverness, The Infinite Vacation is highly recommended.

Paul Pope and the One-Trick Rip-Off

The One-Trick Rip-Off Paul Pope has always been something of an artist’s artist, which is why a collection of his work selling for three times the cover price yet you can still rarely find any of the comics he’s created on the shelves. He first appeared in the mid-nineties, with his weird sci-fi tale THB, about boarding schools and giant genie-like creatures that spring into action with the addition of a drop of water. At the same time, he was starting to work on Supertrouble for manga publisher Kodansha. Supertrouble never really appeared, and THB trickled out spordacially, making it hard to collect for even the most dedicated. Heavy Liquid

Sporadic unavailability of his work has been something of a trademark. In 2007 he curated a retrospective of his work, called Pulphope, which quickly became impossible to find (pro tip: do not look at prices on eBay if you've ever given a copy away, it's sickening). Thankfully for those of us who want to own one, Legendary Comics are issuing a new version with additional material in March. In addition, Image are republishing The One-Trick Rip-Off (originally published by Dark Horse) with Deep Cuts, a collection of Pope's mid-90's work (including Supertrouble). Some more recent work will appear in June, when DC finally collects their artist showcase Solo series as a hardback (all of the artists covered in this series are worth looking into).

Paul Pope's Joker from SOLO

So why should you grab an opportunity to pick up Pope's comics while they're (hopefully less temporarily this time) about? Because his art is unlike anyone else working today. His brushwork is wildly kinetic while still brilliantly precise. Even when he's writing weird sci-fi, he still writes people well (most of the time). Because even when he's not at his best, he's still more interesting than a lot of stuff on the shelves. And because, after years of dallying with the mainstream, it looks like he might be big enough to make a dent under his own name. Good as Batman: Year 100 was, it needed Paul Pope more than Paul Pope needed it.

At the very least, check out the frequently-in-print 100%. A series of interweaving stories based around the lives of a group of people working in and frequenting a bar - hardly the most original idea, but so deftly handled that it deserves to be read. So do.

Fatale Roughs Up Gender Tropes in a Dark Alley

A brief note: I’m using noir in this context to refer to both film noir and noir-ish detective novels, because otherwise it’s just an exhausting exercise in drawing ever more granular distinctions that no one bar three obsessives cares about, and it also fails to inform upon this context. Still here? Good. Let’s go. Fatale

Noir has a troubled relationship with women. Yes, its heroes are meant to be flawed. Greek legend levels of flawed. These people get stuff wrong, a lot, and I appreciate. A lot of noir is still fiercely misogynist, which is problematic, in an enjoying problematic things way. There’s plenty to love about those stories, but the general treatment of women is not one of them.

Fatale (by Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips, who together know more than most about crime fiction) takes the weary femme fatale archetype and subverts it brilliantly. Josephine, the titular character, is a femme fatale that has the role thrust upon her - a murkily-defined ritual has given her the power to manipulate men, and has left her on the run from people far scarier than the usual mobsters and hitmen (of course, these figure). She resents it, fights against it, reluctantly employs it when it’s a matter of using it or surviving. It’s not a million miles away from the usual sad, desperate and manipulative women of noir stories, but it’s that closeness when combined with the crucial differences that makes it a worthwhile comparison.

In creating a character that is aware of her own role in the story, Fatale allows Brubaker not to just use the trope in a modern setting, but also examine and deconstruct it in a dramatic setting. There’s nothing especially campy about Fatale (as there usually is with any post-modern take on noir or pulp), it's just a pulp story told in a framework that allows it to both treat the story and the genre with a certain authenticity (give or take some cosmic horror), while allowing its female lead to be a stronger and more interesting character than the form usually allows.

It’s not the first comic to attempt it. Brian Michael Bendis’ Alias places a female character in the gumshoe role (in the Marvel Universe no less), and doesn’t clean it up in any way. It strays in some ways (superpowered rape analogies, for one thing), but it's still an interesting take on the genre. Both are worth reading, but Fatale is worth picking up now. It's recently been expanded into an ongoing series, and with good reason. Beyond all the clever deconstruction, it's also just an excellent crime / horror tale.