Infestation 2

The name or term "Infestation" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Infestation (disambiguation).

Messenger of fear in sight
Dark deception kills the light
Hybrid children watch the sea
Pray for Father, roaming free

Infestation 2 is a 2012 multi-property crossover event from IDW Publishing. It follows on from Infestation, in which the natural order of magic was "reset" worldwide, by seeing fans of H. P. Lovecraft unwittingly fuel an extradimensional Elder God prison break. This results in eldritch creatures invading different worlds, with the returning Transformers and G.I. Joe being joined by other licenses Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dungeons & Dragons, IDW-owned comics like CVO: Covert Vampiric Operations and 30 Days of Night, and a few other surprises.

Unlike its predecessor, Infestation 2 did not feature any crossover characters, with each universe's adventure being pretty self-contained. The framing story again took the form of a pair of issues set in the CVO continuity bookending four two-issue limited series as well as two individual one-shots. An "ashcan" preview titled Dark Secrets of Infestation—containing the first four pages of the first issue–was made available for free from participating comic book stores in November 2011.

Unlike the previous event, which involved the 2005 IDW continuity, the Transformers portion of Infestation 2 continued the story of the 2005 steampunk miniseries, Hearts of Steel, reuniting the creative team of Chuck Dixon and Guido Guidi.

«	Infestation 2 issues:
#1 #2

«	Infestation 2: The Transformers issues:	»
#1 #2

IDW Publishing's comic book events
Inter-company crossovers	Infestation Infestation 2 Mars Attacks The X‑Files: Conspiracy Deviations
Transformers events	"Dark Cybertron" "Combiner Wars" "Titans Return"
Hasbro Universe events	Revolution First Strike Unicron

Overview

The Elder Gods are held prisoner outside of space and time, but they are able to discreetly influence the human subconscious, including that of H. P. Lovecraft, who translates their whispers into pulp literature. Lovecraft is assassinated by Emanuel Houellebecq of the secret organisation Oblivion to prevent the Elder Gods' plans. By the 21st Century, Lovecraft's work has amassed an enormous following throughout various forms of mass media, and the combined power of fandom imagination and magic technology artillica–and later, artillica's almost complete absence–allows the Elder Gods to break free of their prison and invade infinite planes of existence.

In one such reality, eldritch beings manifest across the United States and gain the attention of Covert Vampiric Operations. At a Lovecraft convention in Rhode Island, Britt fights through enthralled fans, sensing them to be full of artillica. In San Francisco, Bools rescues a woman from a sentient, omnivorous slime, and finds her to be Amanda Houellebecq, the latest leader of Oblivion. And in a small town in Texas, Cross combats an enormous eldritch worm but apparently suffers a heart attack–causing Britt to realise that Cross's artillica-fused heart is the conduit to the Elder Gods' invasion...

In another universe, in the late 19th Century, an Elder God and its fish people servants enthral dormant undersea Decepticons, and the ocean above their sunken city becomes a hotbed for attacks on human ships. Ironhide, travelling in disguise on the USS Miskatonic, escapes to alert the other Autobots of the otherworldly attackers. Bumblebee reunites with his old friend Tobias Muldoon and tasks him with reviving Optimus Prime. Muldoon embarks on a journey to a Canadian glacier with a train of Autobots and his new friend Nikola Tesla. Meanwhile, the mesmerised people (and Transformers) of the coastal town of Port Cenotaph summon the Elder God forth from the deep. Having been energised by a Tesla tower, Optimus Prime turns up and chops the Elder God into pieces with saws.

Back in CVO's universe, Britt tearfully rips the heart from the chest of her oldest friend. Bools and Houellebecq arrive with the Relic–an eldritch parasite removed from Lovecraft's corpse. Houellebecq tosses the combination of the two organs into the Elder Gods' portal, which seals the monsters off from reality, but she is pulled in herself by tentacles. Later, Cross awakens, still alive thanks to a decidedly eldritch-looking "phantom heart"...

Checklist

The full story of Infestation 2 was told across the following issues.

Franchise	Issue	Release date
Infestation 2	Dark Secrets of Infestation	November, 2011
Infestation 2	Infestation 2 issue 1	January 25, 2012
The Transformers	Infestation 2: The Transformers issue 1	February 1, 2012
Dungeons & Dragons	Infestation 2: Dungeons & Dragons issue 1	February 8, 2012
The Transformers	Infestation 2: The Transformers issue 2	February 15, 2012
Dungeons & Dragons	Infestation 2: Dungeons & Dragons issue 2	February 22, 2012
Infestation 2	Infestation 2 Team-Up	February 29, 2012
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles	Infestation 2: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles issue 1	March 7, 2012
G.I. Joe	Infestation 2: G.I. Joe issue 1	March 14, 2012
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles	Infestation 2: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles issue 2	March 21, 2012
G.I. Joe	Infestation 2: G.I. Joe issue 2	March 28, 2012
30 Days of Night	Infestation 2: 30 Days of Night	April 4, 2012
Infestation 2	Infestation 2 issue 2	April 11, 2011

Infestation 2 follows on from the original Infestation, which saw all magic in the CVO: Covert Vampiric Operations universe rendered inert. The event span off into Infestation: Outbreak, a CVO miniseries that rolled in characters and concepts from IDW's 2009 sci-fi miniseries Groom Lake. During the events of Outbreak, Cross rejoins CVO, Britt recovers from her experiences with the Undermind, and the organisation discovers that the magic barriers of an underground alien prison have fallen. What's more, the aliens are colluding with demons from Hell to apparently invade the surface world–though the final issue reveals that the same removal of magic has allowed Elder Gods to conquer Hell, with the demons merely trying to escape.

As mentioned, the Transformers portion of the crossover serves as a sequel to the Hearts of Steel miniseries, advancing its timeline about twenty years. The Dungeons & Dragons portion takes place in the Eberron campaign setting (and was initially announced as Infestation 2: Dungeons & Dragons: Eberron before dropping the sub-subtitle) and stars the Holmes/Watson pair of half-elf Inquisitive Abraxis Wren and dwarf companion Torin as they uncover a conspiracy involving kidnapped asylum inmates and an Elder God prison. The two characters originated in a pair of novels and went on to appear in their own one-shot comic in April.

Infestation 2 Team-Up is a decidedly offbeat one-shot, arriving as a fifth-week event on leap day. In it, the grey alien Archibald from Groom Lake (recently seen in Outbreak) is whisked away to the universe of satirical tabloid Weekly World News (as previously seen in a 2010 IDW miniseries). The issue had a cynical Archie make thinly-veiled complaints about the concept of a yearly comic event upending ongoing stories with few lasting consequences. The unlicensed cameo appearances of characters from other properties and the corresponding nature of the multiverse is best left not thought about.

Normal service resumed in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles portion, set in the ongoing IDW continuity, where the turts uncovered a cultist deep in the sewers sacrificing humans to Shub-Niggurath. The G.I. Joe portion saw the return of Interrogator from Infestation, as he contended with an outbreak of Lovecraftian proportions brought to a Cobra asylum by an unearthed artefact. The 30 Days of Night one-shot told a standalone story set in 1952 about a photojournalist recruited by the U.S. Department of Defence to investigate what turns out to be an eldritch ritual held by vampires. Infestation 2 issue 2 returned to CVO's universe, and featured a sequence starring Danger Girl's Abbey Chase written so vaguely that the character was unnamed and her universe of origin unclear. Despite the cliffhanger ending, as of this writing this was CVO's last appearance in comics.

In 2016, Revolution retconned the IDW Transformers continuity and their G.I. Joe continuity to be part of the same Hasbro Universe timeline. In 2017, Revolutionaries revealed that events identical to those seen in the Hearts of Steel books also transpired in the same continuity. The upshot of this is that both Transformers and G.I. Joe portions of both Infestation events all occurred in one single continuity, despite how they had been presented at the time.

Collections

• Infestation 2, Volume 1 (June 6, 2012) ISBN 1613772254 / ISBN 978-1613772256

• Contains Infestation 2: Part 1, Infestation 2 Team Up, Infestation 2: 30 Days of Night and Infestation 2: Part 2
• Bonus material includes an art gallery.

• Infestation 2, Volume 2 (July 4, 2012) ISBN 1613772807 / ISBN 978-1613772805

• Contains Infestation 2: Transformers and Infestation 2: G.I. Joe
• Bonus material includes an art gallery.

• Infestation 2, Volume 3 No Transformers content

• Infestation 2 (The Complete Series) (November 28, 2012) ISBN 161377513X / ISBN 978-1613775134

• Hardcover
• Contains Infestation 2: Part 1, Infestation 2: Transformers, Infestation 2: Dungeons and Dragons, Infestation 2 Team Up, Infestation 2: TMNT, Infestation 2: G.I. Joe, Infestation 2: 30 Days of Night and Infestation 2: Part 2
• Bonus material includes an art gallery.

• Infestation Omnibus (July 30, 2014) ISBN 1631400142 / ISBN 978-1631400148

• Contains Infestation: Part 1, Infestation: Transformers, Infestation: G.I. Joe, Infestation: Star Trek, Infestation: Ghostbusters, Infestation: Part 2, Infestation: Pocket God, Infestation 2: Part 1, Infestation 2: Transformers, Infestation 2: Dungeons & Dragons, Infestation 2 Team-Up, Infestation 2: TMNT, Infestation 2: G.I. Joe, Infestation 2: 30 Days of Night and Infestation 2: Part 2.
• Bonus material includes ???

• 
  Volume 1 cover by Livio Ramondelli
• 
  Volume 2 cover by Livio Ramondelli
• 
  Complete Series cover by Alex Garner
• 
  Omnibus cover by Gabriel Rodríguez

Notes

• IDW editorial wanted Godzilla for Infestation, specifically to fight Cthulhu. Toho said no.
• Optimus Prime sat out the original Hearts of Steel miniseries, appearing only a) deactivated and b) in a body designed to transform into a sauropod dinosaur. His steam engine body was revealed in concept art printed in the Hearts of Steel trade paperback; Infestation 2 marked the first time it was seen in fiction.

Future

The text of Infestation 2 Team-Up took the stance that the only way to stop publishers doing big, upheaving events is to stop buying the comics, which it followed up with the punchline that Infestation 3 would be coming in 2013. The standalone nature of each part of Infestation 2 presaged that, after two such events, IDW would scale back on the cross-license multiversal crisis approach.

• In 2013, IDW celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Mars Attacks by having the Martians invade various other properties. Mars Attacks: The Transformers was set in its own universe parodying the original Transformers cartoon, lacking the complicated dimension-hopping multiversal explanations that had defined the two Infestations.
• In 2014, IDW published The X-Files: Conspiracy, a series of one-shots following the Lone Gunmen. Conspiracy was a linear story of six chapters, again eschewing multiversal shenanigans by setting itself in one shared universe. None of the licensed properties interacted with each other; the Ghostbusters portion of the crossover was declared non-canon to its IDW continuity, whereas the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles portion was not. The X-Files: Conspiracy: The Transformers explicitly continued the story of the Hearts of Steel cast after their involvement in Infestation 2. After an encounter with The Crow, the Lone Gunman created a time paradox that wiped the series' events from history.

The main IDW Transformers continuity had, by this point, started having its own event comics crossing over its self-contained ongoing books, starting with "Dark Cybertron" crossing over More than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise. IDW's further events went on to focus on shared themes rather than any real crossovers, while Transformers was typically excluded in favour of being the focus of Hasbro Universe events.

• The event for 2016 was Deviations (later called Deviations: Alpha), a number of one-shots that asked "What if?" questions of its properties. Transformers: Deviations depicted a world where Optimus Prime didn't die in The Transformers: The Movie. This was the last time Transformers (and G.I. Joe) appeared in an event with non-Hasbro properties.
• 2017 saw Deviations: Beta, which involved further franchises in "What if?" scenarios. In the same year, IDW released an event under the banner Funko Universe, its stories asking questions like "What if [characters from franchise] were Funko Pop!s?" Well, it's more like one question, really.
• In 2019, IDW celebrated its twentieth anniversary with 20/20, an event of five one-shots that shared the theme of exploring each license either twenty years into its past or twenty years into its future. Transformers was too busy preparing for its own continuity reboot to participate.

This appears to have been IDW's last event comic. The year prior, the company seemed to start prioritising crossover miniseries typically between two properties, several of which involved Transformers.

External links

• "The Infestation Spreads Again" press release @ idwpublishing.com (archived link)