Planetary

[dyeyk2000]

Background

Planetary is an American comic book series created by Warren Ellis (writer) and John Cassaday (artist), published by the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics. Planetary also refers to the group portrayed in the series.

Planetary was previewed in the September 1998 issues of Gen¹³ (#33) and C-23 (#6), and issue #1 was cover-dated April 1999. It was originally intended to be a 24-issue bi-monthly series. However due to illness of Ellis and other commitments by Cassaday, the series was put on hiatus between 2001 and 2003; it has since restarted and concluded with issue #27 in October 2009.

Laura Martin (also credited as Laura DePuy) colored almost every issue of the series.

Premise

Planetary is an organization billing themselves as "Archaeologists of the Impossible", tracking down the world's secret history. Funded by the mysterious Fourth Man, who it is said could be anyone from Bill Gates to Adolf Hitler, the field team consists of three superhumans: Jakita Wagner, who is strong, fast and nearly invulnerable; The Drummer, who can detect and manipulate nearby information streams, most commonly used to manipulate computers and other electronics; the new recruit Elijah Snow, who can extract heat from nearby substances at will, freezing them; and the former third man Ambrose Chase, who has a "selective physics-distortion field".

[dyeyk2000]

Mixing things up from the daily boardgame discussion grind.

I wonder how many of you guys have actually read this? I used to be a hardcore comic book reader and Planetary is my absolute favorite series. Beating out Fables, Y The Last Man, Invincible and even blockbusters like the Green Lantern Rebirth, Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night Trilogy.

And this comic book took forever to finish. But it was worth it.

I've recently started rereading this so thus the post. I'd highly recommend this to anyone, though from my experience, too many people give up after the first 1-3 issues.  The way it's written, it feels like you came in the middle of the movie and missed a big chunk. But by issue 9, if you give it a chance, you realize that you've been riding the Awesome Express all along.. and the ride is about to hit overdrive on it's way to the final issue!!

I don't want to pigeon hole it, but if I had to describe it. It's how X-Files/Fringe would be if they had superpowers and then you upped the rating to Mature. Good stuff. Read it now. Go. Run.

[maskmanjoe]

Hey this was what we were talking about last week right? Do you have scans readily available?

[dyeyk2000]

Yup. Even better. I can lend you the books bebeh.

[maskmanjoe]

Yup. Even better. I can lend you the books bebeh.

Lovely! If we're gaming on Tue then I'd like to borrow some for the Holy Week weekends come up

[Talismanic (Mark)]

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/114560-beautiful-and-unique-snowflakes-individuality-humanity-and-compassio/

-For those of you who have finished Planetary, this is an interesting article on why it had to end at issue 27, more or less.

It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.

[dyeyk2000]

I miss Planetary Wish more people would discover this awesome series.

This was a great article Mark. Made me appreciate Planetary even more. I prefer that he no longer create new issues me thinks. I think there's no other way to end the series other than the way he did.

I'm reading The Authority now. Tides me over waiting for the next Ellis masterpiece. Hahaha.

[Talismanic (Mark)]

I'm reading The Authority now. Tides me over waiting for the next Ellis masterpiece. Hahaha.

Then you should also read: http://www.freakangels.com/



 

[dyeyk2000]

Wow. That looks weird. But ill read it based on Ellis alone. Haha