Superhero Media: Infestation 2

Hot on the "success" of Infestation, IDW launched the second part, Infestation 2, leaner, meaner and with more than a few changes. Rather than a single entity, like the Undermind, Infestation 2 pits its heroes against the entirety of the Cthulhu mythos, which makes for grander stories, but the overall effect is slightly weakened without a recurring villain like Brit to tie the narrative together. Infestation 2 features the Transformers, Dungeons and Dragons, TMNT, GI Joe and 30 Days of Night, most of which are better than the stories in Infestation, but without the kind of crossover promised, like Snake Eyes meeting Optimus Prime and Leonardo, it's still unfulfilling. Once again, the GI Joe story is the best one, with a cult uprising at a Cobra asylum for insane operatives. Crystal Ball (Cobra Old Ones Expert), Storm Shadow, a Cobra Psychologist and a cadre of lunatics have to survive a wave of hybrids to shut down the ritual and escape. I'd watch that film, even without a GI Joe framework and characters. 

The Transformers story takes place, not "now" or in the near future (like the 1986 film), but in 1887, with most of the Autobots and Decepticons in hiding, until Dunwhich is overrun by Deep Ones and corrupted Decepticons and Nikola Tesla has to awaken Optimus Prime to save the day. It's ridiculous nerd-bait, but the fun concept and diesel-punk transformer designs make it worth a look anyway. Nothing else in the anthology is really worth mentioning, though none of it is strictly bad, if you have the Omnibus Edition like I do, the whole Infestation/Infestation 2 does make for a good read and has plenty of inspiration for supers and horror games of all kinds. For me, the Infestation[s] are a nice additional antagonist for a campaign without having to buy additional miniatures, as I already own more than enough zombies and cultists to combine Infestation with Annihilation or to run it as its own series of games.

I've read almost all of HP Lovecraft's published works, and whilst I'm not a huge fan, his ability to evoke the otherworldly, the uncanny and a sense of unknowable horror is unmatched. It's no wonder that his style and mythos have endured and become a major fixture of popular culture. Of course, having such powerful beings as the great old ones leads some writers to wanting to see this power flexed; hence many derivative stories being more action-focused. As I've mentioned a number of times, a certain subset of supers fans are more interested in seeing the fights than the characters, so that superheroes fighting mythos monsters is a pretty expected result. Sometimes, this works really well, like Hellboy or Atomic Robo, but there are far too many poor attempts that leave me mostly disappointed. For me, the best Old Ones in comics are the ones that were there before we knew what they were, Starro, Galactus and Stardust the Super Wizard, for example. What's the point of a mountain-sized monstrosity when Superman can still throw it into space, after all?