It’s here, a work of art fully equal to any other Big Story, and is by Warren Ellis and illustrated by John Casady.
It tells the whole story of fantastic fictional worlds, from the Invisible Man and Dracula to the Hulk and the Fantastic Four, featuring a heat subtracter, a tank and a guy whose head is in the information space. It deconstructs the very concept of super powers, and these gorgeously-illustrated and brilliantly-written issues are, along with a deep story.
Rereadable in the extreme, and each cover has a different logo, which was inspired by early Cure singles.
I eagerly waited for each issue of Planetary to come out.
I enjoyed each of the three leads as mysterious and felt a little disappointed when they got origin stories later on.
Looking back i wonder now how much background you needed to enjoy this series throughly? Did you need to have watched Godzilla movies to feel the danger in monster island or was some knowledge of Jurrasic Park or just dinosaurs enough? I was a kid in the fifties and we practiced hiding under our desks and saw signs for nuclear war shelters in apartment basements but i never understood the McCarthy era until much later. I doubt the young know anything abkut it at all. The victims of Mccarthyism lost their jobs but they were not sent to concentration camps and experimented on until they became like the monsters of the horror films of that era which was also meant to symbolize the atom bomb. The fate of Marilyn Monroe here makes her actual murder seem almost kind. And the fates of the alternative baby Superman Green Lantern and Wonder Woman how much did you have to know of these characters to feel their murders and absence as this world nears destruction on an evil Fantastic Four? And is just seeing the pulp heroes of the 1930s and 40s enough or did you have read their adventures?
Ennis enployed all of the fantastic figures in Pop Culture while writing these incredible stories.
Like reading Swamp Thing i often felt horror when entering this world. But also awe and excitement was always there.
Truly a remarkable piece of literature. Love how the character and storiess where an omiage to classic comic characters
, science fiction genres and detective stories.
I have a great love of Wildstorm comics from the beginning. Many titles have been my favorites, Stormwatch, The Authority, Wildcats, but after Planetary launched it became a battle for second place.
I echo this. I own a good chunk of single issues and the hardcover omnibus and smiled wide when I saw it on the comic list here. You’re already paying for it, Planetary is a classic!
I love Planetary! I read about it in a Wizard magazine where they showed some of the pastiches of other comics. That got me interested and I found the first trade. I loved it. I picked up the second trade and loved it even more. By that time I had came for the pastiche but I stayed for the overall story.The reveal of the Fourth Man was amazing. I was kicking myself for not figuring it out sooner.
Then I started picking up issues here and there until I was caught up with the issue where we saw Jacob Greene. From then on I waited for each new issue to come out (and if you’re a Planetary fan, you know what a wait that was). It’s the rare time a series has stuck the landing.
I’ll go to it every now and then, reading it from start to finish. It never gets old.
Planetary is the only physical comic I have purchased in the last 15 years. That’s saying a lot because at one time I had 20k comics. It’s my all time favorite series. I still own the single issues and the oversize hardcovers.
