Customer Reviews

Planetary: All Over the World and Other Stories

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What makes All Over the World so cool? Warren Ellis is at the top of his game here, with dazzling ideas, deft characterization, and great dialogue all working together. Planetary is the story of the secret history of the twentieth century - or at least, the twentieth century as reflected in our fiction. Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner and the Drummer are the field team for the mysterious and extremely wealthy organization called Planetary; they are mystery archaeologists, travelling, well, all over the world to find the hidden wonders in Japanese monster islands, long buried alien spaceships, and the hidden lair of thirties pulp heroes. So what we have is a roaring adventure story that doubles as a commentary on the twentieth century's adventure fiction.

What's important is that Planetary works on both levels. Each chapter of All Over the World seems like a stand alone story, full of wild action and carried by the interplay between Jakita, Drummer, and Elijah. The character interaction and inventive plots would be enough to carry the book, but through each chapter a deeper mystery - largely built around the identity and history of Elijah Snow, but also around the true nature of Planetary and its adversaries - gradually unfolds, and the book ends on a great little cliffhanger that had me eagerly anticipating new chapters.

At the same time, Planetary is Ellis' chance to play with a lot of archetypes. Planetary's main adversaries are clear analogues of Marvel's Fantastic Four; Snow's hatred of them, and the reasons for it, should inspire readers to take another look at the assumptions that allow superhero universes to function. Planetary is a thrill to read, but it's a very intelligent thrill that proves that action stories don't need to check their brains at the door.

Equal credit must go to artist John Cassaday and colorist Laura De Puy. This book looks great. Cassaday's design work is impeccable; the characters' wardrobes, for example, are highly reflective of their personality, and Cassaday makes the wondrous and strange things that Planetary encounters appear wondrous and strange. His faces convey emotion beautifully; there's a two-page conversation could be carried by the art alone. De Puy and her fellow colorists take Cassaday's drawings and make them shine with rich color work that immerses the reader even deeper in the world of Planetary.

Everything about this book works. It's intelligent, accessible, fun, beautiful, and wonderful. Read it.

I'm not one to easily over-praise something I like. I mostly look at the things I enjoy as critical as possible to come to as much of an honest opinion as possible, so that my words really mean something instead of turning into a bold statement which helps nobody. With this title however I can do nothing else but expres how much I enjoy it. It's as close to "historical fiction" as a mainstream 'superhero'-title is ever going to be and it's done well. And the term "superhero-title" isn't exactly right either because it isn't a superhero title, but the main characters ARE supernatural.

About the story: Elijah Snow, a mysterious man who was born on January 1st of the year 1900 encounters a woman called Jakita Wagner (who is accompagnied by another man called 'the Drummer') and she invites him to be part of a supernatural archaeologist group called 'Planetary'. She invites him to be the third member of their field-team who's goal it is to unravel the 'secret history of the world'. They try to map events in history how they REALLY took place, not how the common public was told it all happened. Elijah gets offered a salary of one million dollars a year for the rest of his life and all other professional expenses will also be taken care off by an anonymous financial aid only known as 'the fourth man', a man nobody knows. Elijah accepts and goes on his way to see things common man has never known was there.

The great thing bout this title is that each detail, as little as it looks at first, turns into a mystery of his own in time. Each story in each issue seems to be a self-contained story at first, but later on turns out to be just a piece of the puzzle in the 'grand scheme of things'. There's very little going on that's useless information. What also is very nice is that the essence, the starting line if you will, of the series is reality as WE know it. It's about OUR reality (not one made up as a comic-reality), WE are 'the common public and the way things really happened occured behind OUR backs on things that are REALLY in our history (like the first man on the moon and such things). Think of it as having a little bit the mood like 'X-Files' and you'll know what I mean.

So finally I would like to advise this title to all people who are not strictly interested in superhero clashes but not neccesarily only into 'serious comics' either. It's a mix of the two and it's done very well with a good mixing of illustrating and text. None of the two factors is dominating, it's very well balanced and it makes for a very good experience. For me it's easily the best writing I've seen of Warren Ellis so far.

Continuing the trend of revisionist tales based on comic book company universes that was begun with Alan Moore's Miracleman and the Watchmen, and Frank Miller's Batman: Dark Knight Returns; Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary gives the trend an interesting X-File-ish spin. While I enjoy the series and recommend it to any long-time comic book fan, I have to say that, like Mark Waid and Alex Ross' Kingdom Come, you really have to have been reading comics for some time to get the most out of the book. How many people would know that the ghost of the police officer damned to act as a spirit of vengence in Planetary #3 is both a homage to John Woo's Hong Kong action films as well as a update of DC Comic's Spectre? I must say Ellis recasting the Fantastic Four in such a sinister light is really refreshing. Includes the very hard to find Planetary preview/revisionist view of Marvel Comic's the Hulk which appeared in Gen13 #33. People who enjoy this series should also check out Ellis and Bryan Hitch's excellent work on The Authority #1-12, (oft referred to as the JLA or Avengers, "finally done right")the first eight issues of which will soon be reprinted in The Authority: Relentless trade paperback.

I'm a fan of Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan series, so I thought I'd try out Planetary, based on some strong recommendations. The art and the plot are relatively strong: expansive and wildly imaginative. What seems to have been forgotten was character development. With the exception of the enigmatic Elijah Snow, the other two main characters are bland stick figures. I was unable to identify and uninterested in them. Because of this, Planetary comes off as somewhat pedestrian. I'm sure the character development progressed over the course of the series, but this book by itself just isn't all that intriguing. I suggest you try Transmetropolitan if you're looking for someting a bit more innovative.

For a while now, I've heard a lot of good things about Warren Ellis' Planetary. Taking place in the Wildstorm universe (Wildstorm is a subsidiary of DC Comics), Planetary is somewhat like the X-Files; three agents, Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner, and The Drummer investigate strange phenomena in order to understand the secret history of the 20th century. They are funded by "the Fourth Man", an individual (very little is known about them, not even their gender) with wealth beyond most people's wildest dreams. He/she is known as the Fourth Man because the Planetary field team has always been comprised of three people. In addition to the field team, there are Planetary offices across the world.
Each of the three members has their own unique superpowers. Snow can decrease the temperature in objects around him, Wagner has super strength, speed, and endurance, and Drummer can psychically communicate with machines. Their travels bring them in contact with other super-beings whose very existence has remained secret for years. Many of their adventures lead them to discoveries that parallel the superbeings in the more mainstream DC and Marvel universes, as well as science fiction in general. From a story about the ghost of a cop out for revenge (DC's Spectre) to a trip to Japan where they find an island full of giant bugs and lizards (Godzilla), the Planetary team try to contain these secrets as well as increase their knowledge of the multiverse.
In the final issue of this collection, a supergroup known as the Four (Marvel's Fantastic Four) are introduced, and we are told that they are the antithesis of Planetary, but we don't yet see why.
Ellis' story is certainly interesting, but these first few issues (including the 8-page introduction that was released in other Wildstorm titles such as Gen-13) present many many questions and almost no answers. While this isn't always a bad thing (as fans of ABC's LOST are aware) it is hard to jump into this series. I plan to continue it, but be aware that while these first few issues are definitely good, they aren't as good as I had been told they were.

Thanks to this collection, I'm finally realizing what a gifted writer Warren Ellis is. Luckily, I already knew artist John Cassaday was good, but he really reaches new heights here.

Planetary is a concept I've never seen before -- that of a team of "mystery archaeologists" -- which explores concepts and archetypes seen before but observed in a new light. If you're a DC Comics buff, think of each of Planetary's missions as a tiny peak at an incredible "Elseworlds" story. Another way to look at it is as a sort of Astro City on a global scale, where familiar themes play out in jaw-droppingly new directions.

All of this may make Planetary sound somewhat heady or academic (which it is in a sense) but thanks in large part to Cassaday's beautiful illustration, even the most cerebral moments are visually breathtaking without becoming mere eye candy. Add this to Ellis's breakneck pacing and you've got a thinking person's action-adventure book.

Those people who know Warren Ellis' work on STORMWATCH and THE AUTHORITY are already familiar with the dynamism and imagination of his storytelling. PLANETARY exhibits a lot of these same qualities, but in addition shows Ellis' ability to take some of the most hallowed territory in the pop/comic/sci-fi genres and hold it up to a skewed mirror, resulting in work that is wonderfully inventive but still true to the roots it draws from. Through his "archaelogists of the impossible," Ellis takes figures of the pop culture mythos a lot of us grew up with (Godzilla, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and more) and presents them in forms that are at once familiar and strange. Admittedly, I got a lot of enjoyment out of comparing what my perceptions of these figures were to the treatment of them in PLANETARY, but even if some of the references are lost on a particular reader, the characters Ellis creates are strong enough to carry the book on their own. Ellis' talent for dialogue is well-exercised with all the acerbic exchanges between team members Jakita Wagner, The Drummer, and Elijah Snow. Snow, in particular, bears watching - not only because he's the POV character, but also because he's very cranky...always a plus in a protagonist. All in all, this is a very auspicious start to what promises to be a very interesting ride through the secret history of the 20th century. It also bears mentioning that the artistic team of John Cassaday and Laura DuPuy does a phenomenal job in providing pictures to go along with the words - just a great leap forward for all fans of sequential art (or if you rather, comic books).

"Planetary" is a nice mix of traditional comics story-telling and more offbeat, challenging fare like the works of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, etc. It's traditional in that its various issues involve such comics and popular fiction icons like superheroes, Godzilla-type monsters, pulp adventure heroes, multiple universes, and the like. It's offbeat because it treats those subjects in a darker, edgier way than we're used to seeing.

For example, "Planetary" posits that if there really were superheroes, they probably wouldn't be as white-bread pure as in the typical Marvel or DC offering (indeed, this series' version of the Fantastic Four, seen toward the end of this volume, is shaping up to be the villainous presence of the series). This idea is nothing new, of course, if you've read Alan Moore's "Watchmen", various DC/Vertigo titles, and other titles aimed at the "for mature readers" crowd on the shelves these days. But while "Planetary" definitely gets edgy, dark, and challenging like those works, it also celebrates popular comic book storytelling by giving us enthusiastic action scenes, big set pieces, exciting revelations, etc., genuinely having fun with the fact that in many ways it's a regular ol' comic book. "Planetary" has it both ways and revels in it.

This initial collection includes the first six issues of the original comics series, along with the short, appetite-whetting "Planetary" preview story that ran in the back of a couple of other comics titles just prior to this series' debut.

Are mainstream superhero comics a little bland for you these days, but you also find the edgier, adult fare out there not as exciting and engaging as you like your comics to be? Give the heroic investigators of "Planetary" a shot. I'll bet you won't be sorry.

Did you ever read comics back in the 80's? The larger than life stories... the classic Hulk, Doc Savage, alternate worlds, monsters and aliens?

Then you will truly appreciate and love this trade. Boy, did Ellis and Cassaday bring back memories. And yet with a fresh spin.

It is one of those few trades you can read over and over again as it has quite a number of subtleties in the art and dialogue that you do not notice in story the first few times around.

Planetary, a team of superhuman archelogists, is a uniformly excellent series, and an interesting take on the superhero. Warren Ellis, who has stated on more than one occassion he doesn't care for the superhero genre, weighs in with his take on the field, with vaguely familiar characters dancing in the backgrounds of his stories.

There are a lot of treats to reading Planetary. One is Ellis' sick, twisted imagination, where a group that looks vaguely like Grant Morrison's JLA is suddenly on an emergency mission of genocide, or where the Fantastic Four is re-imagined as a group of Nazis (which does get down to answering the question on why Reed Richards' inventions never seem to help anyone but himself and his family in a rather nasty way). Part of the fun is to try and guess who Ellis is ripping on at any given moment.

Another treat is the story itself. Dealing with the exploits of the Drummer, Jakita Wagner, and the amnesiac Elijah Snow as the three encounter odd phenomena after phenomena. And despite being rather formidably powered, the trio rarely gets physically involved. It's not why they're there. They're there to put together the pieces behind a grand conspiracy, and though most chapters can easily stand alone, the added effect of reading all six at once adds to the whole in ways unseen and unappreciable any other way.

A final treat is artist John Cassaday. This book is clearly as much about his excellent visuals as it is Ellis' writing, and his re-imagining of the looks of classic and recognizable characters adds to the fun, as does his detail work.

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