Planetary Comics

[Justina Ky]

Planetaryis an American comic book series created by writer Warren Ellis and artist John Cassaday, and published by the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics. After an initial preview issue in September 1998, the series ran for 27 issues from April 1999 to October 2009.

Ellis intended the focus of the book to be the superhero genre, rather than the superheroes themselves: "I wanted to do something that actually went deeper into the subgenre, exposed its roots and showed its branches"[1] and stated in his proposal for the comic series: "[...] What if you had a hundred years of superhero history just slowly leaking out into this young and modern superhero world of the Wildstorm Universe? What if you could take everything old and make it new again?"[2]

Rich Kreiner described John Cassaday's artwork in The Comics Journal as being "close to the gold standard for fabulous realism in mainstream comics".[3] Tom Underhill noted colorist Laura Martin's contribution as "every bit as compelling" as Cassaday's in his review for The Comics Journal.[4]

One of the main features of the series is the portrayal of alternate versions of many figures from popular culture, such as Godzilla, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes,[5] and Doc Savage.[6] This extends to comic book characters from both DC Comics (e.g. Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman) and Marvel Comics (e.g. the Fantastic Four,[7] the Hulk, and Thor).

Ellis also introduced the concept of a multiverse to the series, drawing upon the mathematical concept known as the Monster group for inspiration.[8] The multiverse is described as "a theoretical snowflake existing in 196,833 dimensional space",[9] a reference to the visualization method used by some mathematicians when describing the Monster group.

In 1999, Elijah Snow, a reclusive centenarian and former adventurer with cryokinesis powers, reluctantly accepts recruitment by the field team of Planetary, an organization that investigates the "secret history" of the twentieth century. The field team, also made up of superhuman Jakita Wagner and a technopath called only the Drummer, is supported by a network of global offices, specialists, and equipment, and unconditionally funded by an unidentified, unseen patron called the "Fourth Man." On their missions, the field team encounter concepts from speculative fiction in the flesh, such as pulp magazine heroes, superheroes, kaiju, wuxia and gun fu, a superspy, B movie monsters, Jules Verne's imaginary technology, and interstellar starships. The team embraces the fantastical nature of their findings, embodied by the mantra: "It's a strange world; let's keep it that way."

Aided by secret agent John Stone, Snow regains many lost memories, including various secret adventures he documented in a publication called the Planetary Guide. He remembers that he himself is the Fourth Man and the field team his trusted colleagues, but, after a failed operation against the Four, he submitted to memory blocks and exile by their leader, Randall Dowling, in exchange for the team's lives. Fearing the Four's reprisal, the team had sought to return Snow to the field without disturbing his memory blocks. Snow also remembers former team member Ambrose Chase, able to alter the laws of physics inside a limited field, who was seemingly fatally shot by a Dowling operative but inexplicably vanished, leaving no body.

Re-assuming leadership, Snow actively opposes the Four, thwarting their plans and turning their allies before targeting their members outright: he captures and tortures William Leather, and sacrifices the observation of a unique extraterrestrial object to permanently strand Jacob Greene off-planet. Wagner is alienated by Snow's seemingly vindictive turn, but the Drummer, who was rescued by Snow from the Four, and who knows that Snow saved Wagner as a baby, trusts that his goal is to save lives above all.

After the field team evades an orbital death ray attack by the Four, they subdue Stone, who was outed by Leather as the Four's informant. Stone reveals the Four's true goal: to eliminate resistance against future invasion by a hostile parallel Earth, as payment for granting the Four's superpowers. Snow contacts Dowling and demands the Four's entire database of knowledge, and their capitulation, in exchange for sparing their lives, despite seemingly possessing no weapon as leverage.

Bemused, the remaining members of the Four, Dowling and Kim Sskind, meet Snow at his chosen location. After securing the Four's database but not their surrender, Snow launches the now-crewed shiftship, long buried underground, opening a vast chasm and dropping Dowling and Sskind to their deaths. Snow visits the hostile Earth by shiftship and, to deter their invasion, issues an ultimatum threatening their annihilation.

Planetary deploys the recovered technology worldwide non-commercially, greatly advancing scientific and humanitarian progress. Meanwhile, theorizing that Chase is alive but suspended in a field of stopped time, Snow orders the construction of a time machine to collapse the field by a frame-dragging effect,[10] overruling the Drummer's fear that, according to quantum mechanics, the advent of time travel would predetermine the entire future timeline by wave function collapse. However, Snow personally turns on the time machine, and his intent to keep the world strange, exerted by the observer effect, manifests many timelines instead of one: while Chase is retrieved and successfully triaged, numerous versions of the field team all arrive from different futures, promising yet more adventures to come.

The 2023-24 DC Comics series Outsiders, written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, revived the premise of Planetary in the DC Universe: the DC characters Luke Fox and Batwoman, teaming with a woman identifying as the Drummer, embark on missions to investigate the DC Universe's secret history, embodied by its many continuity reboots.[11] The new Drummer reveals herself to be Jakita Wagner, the sole survivor of the Planetary continuity becoming erased in one such reboot.

We had for some time been seeking to revisit Planetary. This is a comic book series which ran intermittently from 1999 to 2009, published by WildStorm, an imprint of American comic book publisher DC Comics.

Second, the lost portal of alternative comics into the mainstream, Vertigo Comics, which published titles such as Swamp Thing, Transmetropolitan; and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This issue is particularly poignant to revisit, as Vertigo was recently killed off by DC Comics: see -eulogy-for-vertigo-comics/

Third, we have one issue devoted to the use of psychoactives as therapy drugs. Melanctha, a trippy scientist (more of a shaman, although she specifically denies it), takes the vengeance-driven Elijah Snow on a journey of self-discovery using mild doses of a hallucinogen in Planetary #19. LSD was banned for medical use in the 1966 in the UK and 1968 in the US. But in 2011, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies was established and started conducting trials of LSD. This recent 2020 publication is a systematic review of randomised / controlled clinical trials for the use of LSD in psychotherapy: A

What Mr Ellis is alleged to have done does not compare to what Mr Spacey is alleged to have done. But with Mr Ellis, the task is more difficult. Mr Ellis always seemed to have a plain moral compass, in so far as the characters in his writing were concerned.

An interesting comic book series that made use of pulp and proto-pulp characters and themes is Planetary, by writer Warren Ellis and artist John Cassaday. This series ran 27 issues (plus some one-off additions) over 10 years (1999-2009) from DC/Wildstorm. You should still be able to get the collections of the comics.

In the series, pulp and proto-pulp characters play a role. So I thought I would focus on those for this posting. Other issues are inspired by several comic book genres, movie genres (such as Hong Kong cop movies, Japanese giant monsters, 50s sf movies, etc.), and much more.

Toward the end of World War II, these heroes came together to try to help the world be a better place. To do so, they created a quantum computer to run through a wide range of possible outcomes. This computer actually created alternate Earths, and from one of these a group of Justice League of America analogues emerged to try to stop the pulp heroes. In the ensuing fight, all are killed but one of the pulp heroes, who now guards the computer until Planetary finds him and is able to help him turn off the computer.

This issue focuses on Doc Brass, with a cover inspired by the Bantam Docs. We learn more about Doc Brass and his past adventures, including some with the other pulp heroes. We learn a little more about Anna Hark, and we learn how Doc was able to get Hark to join him in saving the world, by having him understand that China is part of the world, so by protecting the whole world he is also protecting China.

With another pulp-inspired cover, this issue tells the story of Texas Ranger John Leather, who becomes the Dead Ranger, a much darker analogue to the Lone Ranger. He wears a mask of ashes, dark clothes, and rides an all-black steed. He uses silver bullets, but ones contaminated with mercury so even those wounded by them will suffer and die.

Great post, Tracy! I read all kinds of comics as a kid and I still read them now. Batman was and is a favourite followed by the Hulk. I'm not fond of graphic novels because I don't like the artworks or the stories. Frankly, I shouldn't be judging them as I've read only a handful that includes the "Watchmen" series you mentioned. Besides, graphic novels in India are expensive and they occupy a lot of space. I'm not familiar with the "Planetary" series but it sounds exciting. I still prefer the early 20-odd page A4-size comics printed on thin paper, staped at the spine, which used to sell for a few cents or rupees. Now these have been replaced by glossies with complex artworks and stories revealed in several parts across weeks.

I agree one needs to refamiliarise with comic-books after all these years. A good test would be to pick up any vintage "Classics Illustrated" comic and see if the illustrations hold up; chances are they don't, in spite of the top value of these comics today. Those were, and are, real comics.

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