“Guarding the Globe” #2 wastes no time pretending to be something it isn’t. Phil Hester, Todd Nauck, John Rauch and Rus Wooton get right down to the business of making this a candid and amusing superhero comic. The issue opens and closes with a splash page, catering more to Todd Nauck’s knack for drawing a showy character pose. Nauck has the benefit of working with Phil Hester, a writer who also happens to be quite an accomplished artist in his own right.

Hester has taken the guidelines established by Robert Kirkman in the letters page of the first issue of this series to heart. Sometimes the comic features Brit, sometimes Best Tiger. Whoever steps into the spotlight, even in a brief page or a panel, Hester gives them a chance to strut. Granted, two issues into this series I still need to make notes about the characters and who they’re with, but I have the general notion of what the “main” characters are about despite having not read very many issues of “Invincible” or other books set in the Invinci-verse.

As for those characters, Hester and Nauck span the globe (as the title would suggest) from Bangladesh to Kuwait to Mexico to Utah and back to Kuwait again where Kaboomerang and Best Tiger are tracking a trafficking ring that leads them into a trap set by the Mauler. They need help and they send out a call for aid, which brings in other team members. All of this leads to a spotlight placed on El Chupacabra and a cliffhanger that draws varied Kirkman’s creations closer together.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to keep anyone straight as there are a slew of characters at every turn, most of them quite new to me, but I’m enjoying this book. It has the energy of a long-lost childhood sketchbook filled unhampered ideas and innocuous artwork found once more and used for inspiration. Coat that with Nauck’s buoyant illustrating style and colors that are exactly what they need to be: bright and solid, and you have a throwback comic book with a witty edge. John Rauch doesn’t mess around with cutesy effects or patterns, but colors a book like it was meant to be colored.

This is a nice alternative to comic books you might be reading out of habit rather than enjoyment. If you’ve been let down by new universes or updates, then give “Guarding the Globe” a look. It’s fun, straight-forward, unapologetic comic book fun with just the right amount of melodrama.