The spaceship Infinity 8 comes to a halt at the edge of a vast collection of the dead and their resting places. The captain is from an aquatic alien species with the ability to reset time 3 hours back 8 times from a given point, giving them multiple chances to unravel what they've found. Each 3-issue story focuses on a different one of those attempts, as different officers are assigned to try and learn what exactly this place is. Each story is drawn by a different artist, and each story deals with a different complication.
In volume 4, Patty Stardust is undercover with a group of revolutionary artists who have something much larger planned than just a concert among the dead. Ann Ninurta in volume 5 has to deal with a zombie apocalypse and trying to protect her daughter during the mission. In volume 3, the officer herself is the danger. Volume 2 involves there being a Nazi Party on the ship, who think the Nazis were just big proponents of German beer and lederhosen and are quite excited to find Hitler's corpse in this floating graveyard. So it gets put on a police bot and tries to start a Fifth Reich. The officer helps them rather than following orders, essentially because she's bored.
(The story also includes a little blue alien named Shlomo Ju, with a bushy beard, long black coat, and one of those wide-brimmed hats, I think Borsalinos, who denounces the Nazis, because he hasn't forgotten what they were really about.
I'm not at all sure what I was supposed to take from that. That's it's all too easy for the people who weren't victims to forget the ugly parts?)
Trondheim uses the repetitive nature to slowly reveal different aspects of life on the ship, while also providing clues as to the purpose of the mausoleum. The first story "Love and Mummies," reveals a race of aliens on-board who like to eat corpses, but absorb characteristics of their food. Volume 3, "The Gospel According to Emma," introduces a guy who can telepathically control or kill anyone whose genetic material he's come into contact with, even if it's through an ancestor. If it's through an extremely ancient ancestor, that increases the number he could control/kill. All this comes together in the 8th volume, when it turns into a race between one side out for revenge, another to ensure future hegemony, and a third just trying to survive.
Some of the stories are sad, some are a bit funnier. A lot of them are just depressing. Volume 7, "All for Nothing," in particular, where a character finds out they've been used as a tool their entire life, and the fact it feels like it ruined their life is unremarked on by the ones doing it. I kept about half the series, ultimately.
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