Covers
The issue has three covers. Cover A is by Gabriel Rodriguez. Cover B features art by John K. Snyder III with colors by Jason Wright. A retailer incentive cover is by Ashley Wood.
Plot
The story centers on the Covert Vampiric Operations (CVO) unit, a classified government team, and the beginning of the zombie Infestation.
The Kirtland Underground Munitions Storage Complex in New Mexico is the site of an exotic biological weapon release. Army forces and robot assault units contain the initial outbreak, which involves cadavers animated by an engineered viral strain of unknown origin.
During a clean-up tour for White House officials, a government operative named Wade reveals that the Army was concealing an Interdimensional Portal, speculated to be the source of the release. The portal had been reactivated and sealed by Sci-bots. Wade presents a list of uses for the dimension beyond, but is pulled through by zombie hands before the briefing concludes.
At CVO's Coffin HQ, team leader Cross is haunted by recurring nightmares in which his best friend Noble, his wife Kathryn, and his son Sean appear as zombies. His operative Britt arrives to brief him on a new mission: Kirtland. Director Overmars assigns the team to assess the situation and determine whether any of the White House officials are still alive. A section of New Mexico is sealed under a chemical spill cover story.
The CVO team, consisting of Britt, Benny the Smith, Cross, and Bools, arrives at the facility. Contact with Coffin HQ is lost almost immediately. Benny, a specialist in Artillica (arcane technology), announces he needs three minutes to shut down the portal and analyze the threat. Before he can act, a zombie rips off one of his arms. The team retreats into the ventilation system, where Benny reveals that the zombies are linked by a gestalt hive intelligence called the Undermind. The Undermind has already sensed Benny's knowledge of Artillica and intends to use it to spread the infestation across the Multiverse.
Benny loses control to the Undermind and bites Britt on the leg. Since Britt is already undead (a vampire), she is not converted in the ordinary sense, but becomes something unprecedented: a creature of two undead states, both vampire and zombie simultaneously. Benny teleports himself and several zombies to CVO's Artillica Storage Compound, then takes Britt and uses her duality as a power source. The Warbots arrive with Bools and Cross to intervene, but Britt regenerates even after Bools shoots her in the head, and she begins zombifying a Warbot.
Sci-bot 21 determines that the transdimensional gateway is operating on a Hofstadtian Strange Loop, using mystical energies from alternate universes to sustain itself. Disrupting the Artillica breaks the loop. Four avatars of Britt separate from her just before an explosion neutralizes the zombies at the site.
With the immediate threat contained, Benny jury-rigs the portal to allow a one-way look. He identifies at least four universes that the Undermind has already reached, sending zombied humans and robots into each. Each avatar fragment of Britt has passed through to one of those universes, serving as the Undermind's power source in each world. Cross decides to track her into each universe. The issue closes on the four portals.
Connection to the Ghostbusters
Infestation #1 does not feature the Ghostbusters, and the franchise characters do not appear. However, the comic establishes the entire premise that drives Ghostbusters: Infestation #1 and Ghostbusters: Infestation #2: namely that the Undermind has sent zombies and a fragment of Britt into the Ghostbusters' universe, and that the CVO team will follow. The mechanics of the zombie threat, Britt's nature as "undead squared," and the interdimensional portal technology all carry directly into the Ghostbusters tie-in issues.
The issue also includes a preview of the Ghostbusters tie-in: page 32 reproduces a scene from page 9 of Ghostbusters: Infestation #1, depicting Winston Zeddemore shooting a zombie with his Proton Pistol.
The crossover also ran simultaneous two-part tie-ins in IDW's Transformers, Star Trek, and G.I. Joe comics.
References
- IDW Publishing Comics: Infestation #1 (January 26, 2011)
- IDW Publishing Comics: Ghostbusters: Infestation #1 (March 9, 2011)
