'Infinity 8 Vol. 7: All for Nothing' by Lewis Trondheim with art by Boulet is the penultimate volume in this time travel graphic novel series.

Douglas is a young recruit, so he is prone to confusion. He is also being used by a time traveling robot. No matter what Douglas does, it has already been anticipated. He does start to wise up by the end in this weird volume of the series.

I've liked the series, but I haven't loved it. The art is varied and didn't really do much for me at first. It did grow on me as it went, as did the story. Douglas is a pretty sympathetic character.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Diamond Book Distributors and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

I couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on in this. Basically some alien was being manipulated by a robot and lots of timey-wimeyness was mentioned. I din't care much for the art either.

Well, That Was Fun

This is the seventh, (and, I think, next to last), in the Infinity 8 series, and so it seemed to be a bad place to first enter the series. Not to worry. I read blurbs for the first few books, and a few reviews, and slipped right in. Each book covers one temporal loop in the mystery investigation, so each book is like a stand alone that references a common theme and threads. I get the impression that each book is distinct in terms of writing, plotting, pace, and artwork, so there doesn't appear to be a series-wide sense to the reviews.

Anyway, this volume was fun. Poor Douglas was set up as a kid, by a time traveler, to play a big role in a later adventure. He never quite knows what's going on, but the characters around him do, because they've been through this loop before. We start out as confused as is Douglas, and we wise up as he does. Douglas is an engaging character with spunk, personality, and an everyman sort of appeal. He meets up with a sort of buccaneer time traveler, who gets all the best lines and is mostly impatient with and then fond of poor Douglas. It's an odd temporal adventure buddy-comedy space story, and it worked for me.

The art varies from issue to issue and at first I wasn't crazy about this one. The lines are "scratchy", the colors are sometimes muted and muddy, and the aliens aren't very engaging. But wait. The style grows on you. The exaggeration starts to make sense. You begin to read expressions even if a creature has four eyes and two mouths, and the whole world comes into focus. Action scenes are still sometimes hard to follow, but this is more of a talker than an actioner anyway, so that's fine.

The upshot is that this had a fine plot, appealing and/or interesting characters, some clever bits, decent dialogue, and a satisfying ending. That made it a good find, and left me wondering about what happened in those other volumes.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)