Some thoughts about Inferior Five #1

What happened after the Invasion?

There is a part of history that most people try to forget, one that involved the destruction of most of the Earth but now a mysterious force is coming to remind everyone of the danger that is still around.

The Inferior Five are a joke, they have always been but maybe they won't always be. That's the premise that one of my favorite authors, Jeff Lemire, and another that I at least appreciate, Keith Giffen, are willing to demonstrate and this issue does at the very least a decent job at creating an intriguing opening.

The team (if you can call them that) has always been a parody of superheroes by making their members as incompetent as possible, therefore their name. That being said, this story is clearly going for a more serious tone. Suited in an universe where the crossover event Invasion was actually successful and took over the Earth, people are trying to continue with their lives the best way they can but there's a strange creature that could be just as dangerous as the Dominators.

If there's something that is pretty obvious from the get go is that both Lemire and Giffen decided to go with their weirder ideas for this series which you can easily see from the presentation, reinventions and tone as a whole. There are references to comics (and Giffen's typical criticism of decompressed stories), bizarre creatures, classic characters reintroduced in let's say, interesting ways (Dumb Bunny being used as an insulting nickname instead of a superhero name comes to mind), they all manage to evoke some of the best strange ideas from both writers.

The plot doesn't progress much to be honest but it shows an intriguing scenario as I've mentioned and makes me wonder what's going to happen next.

Giffen handles the art and I've always been a fan of his pencils despite of the rough finish and his style might not be everyone cup of tea because of the awkward proportions and such but I believe this is on purpose for the tone of the story.

There's a second feature about Peacemaker written and drawn by Lemire and is once again, interesting at least due that it presents an obscure character in a new scenario and Lemire's pencils make it distinctive.

Intriguing overall. Not sure what to expect next since Giffen's stories tend to fall apart over time no matter how good they start because he simply doesn't plan far away, but Lemire will hopefully help with the long-term planning.