Planetary (metacomic)

AUTHOR: Ellis, Warren

ARTIST: John Cassaday (penciller, inker, and cover artist); Laura Depuy (colorist); Laura Martin (colorist); Bill O’Neil (letterer); Richard Starkings (letterer)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1999-2009

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2000-2010

Publication History

Produced by the DC Comics imprint WildStorm, Planetary was initially planned as a twenty-five-issue series; it eventually extended to twenty-seven issues. While both Warren Ellis and John Cassaday are credited as creators, Ellis wrote all the scripts.

Ellis’s original Planetary proposal asked, “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?” He intended each issue to be like a short film and tie heavily into the WildStorm Universe, with WildStorm Universe characters frequently appearing in the foreground while Planetary skulked in the background. However, the only WildStorm Universe characters mentioned were Jenny Sparks (The Authority) and John Cumberland (Stormwatch). A one-shot, Planetary/Authority: Ruling the World, was released between Planetary, issues 10 and 11, but in this “crossover” the two teams do not meet.

Plagued by an erratic publishing schedule, Planetary published twenty-seven issues over a ten-year span (1999-2009); the issues were collected into four graphic novels. Ellis expected Planetary to run about three years and be his last superhero project, designed to say everything he had left to say about superheroes. While initially keeping to a semiregular schedule (fifteen issues were published between April, 1999, and October, 2001), the publication schedule was disrupted when Ellis was beset by illness. However, he felt that Planetary was something for which people seemed prepared to wait. Indeed, readers waited two years between issues 15 (October, 2001) and 16 (October, 2003). In May, 2003, having issues 16-18 and part of 19 written for some time, Ellis stopped writing to allow Cassaday to catch up. After issue 16, Planetary maintained no reliable publication schedule; the last twelve issues were produced over six years, with almost three years between issues 26 and 27.

While much of the early delays stemmed from Ellis’s personal life, the delay of the final issue seems to be attributed to Cassaday. Ellis had finished and delivered the script in June, 2007, but Cassaday did not start drawing until June, 2008. By March of 2009, he was still working on the art. Cassaday attributed part of the delay to not wanting “to let it go.”

Ellis stated before the release of the final issue that he could barely bring himself to proofread it:

It’s a book I associate with bad times: protracted illnesses, big arguments . . . my physical collapse and months in bed, and my dad’s long illness and eventual death. All of these things are intertwined with Planetary for me, and make it difficult to enjoy the moment. I’m just glad people won’t ask me about it anymore.

Plot

Planetary is a metacomic that draws upon superhero comic history and pop-culture influences. While Planetary can be read simply as a superhero story, the comic rewards “superreaders” who are familiar with and recognize the pop-culture signs and references that influence the series.

Planetary tells the story of Elijah Snow’s crusade to uncover the secret history, technology, and knowledge of the twentieth century, which had been suppressed by a group known as The Four (a parody of Marvel comics’ superhero group the Fantastic Four). Planetary member Jakita Wagner offers a broken-down Elijah Snow one million dollars a year for the rest of his life to join the privately and massively funded Planetary organization to help uncover the secret history of the twentieth century. Jakita tells Elijah that Planetary is run by “The Fourth Man.”

After investigating a number of strange cases, Elijah is apprised of the activities of The Four, who are Randall Dowling, Jacob Greene, William Leather, and Kim Süskind. These individuals were part of a secret space program that achieved spaceflight in 1961. However, during their flight they lost contact with Earth for an hour. Upon their return they each had been changed to a posthuman state with extraordinary powers. For the subsequent forty years, The Four had been using their abilities either to suppress or to kill extraordinary knowledge, technologies, and individuals. Elijah becomes determined to eliminate The Four and deliver the suppressed technologies and knowledge to humanity.

Elijah, Jakita, and the Drummer infiltrate The Four’s New York lab, where they encounter Leather. He escapes but says he knows Elijah, who at first refuses to believe him. Leather urges him to question Planetary’s motives. After this encounter, Elijah realizes parts of his memory are missing.

John Stone, an old ally of Elijah, helps his memory return with a few well-laid hints. Elijah remembers he is actually the owner of the Planetary organization; he is the Fourth Man. He also remembers another member of the planetary organization: Ambrose Chase. Ambrose had been shot and presumed dead during a Planetary investigation during the time Elijah had been away.

The events leading to Elijah’s loss of memory appear in issue 14. In an ill-fated attempt to capture The Four, the Planetary team was instead captured. For Dowling, Planetary had become too much of a threat. It had provided an amusing game but one he could not afford to lose. Dowling threatens to kill the Planetary team unless Elijah allows memory blocks to be implanted and then go into hiding. Elijah instructs the Planetary team not to seek him out, but they eventually do in the hope that he would overcome his memory blocks.

Once his full memory returns, Elijah, far from being intimidated, decides to take on The Four. Elijah captures William Leather, whom he later tortures to learn Dowling and Süskind’s whereabouts, and strands Jacob Green on an alien construct in space.

Elijah realizes that John Stone has been working for The Four, and he captures and interrogates him. Stone explains how The Four got their superhuman abilities. Dowling had discovered a passage, a “crack in the bleed,” in cislunar space (the space between Earth and the orbit of the Moon). Dowling sent a probe into this crack, which returned with a proposition from the immortal superhuman inhabitants of a parallel Earth. The deal granted The Four access to the parallel Earth’s transformative apparatus, giving them extraordinary powers in exchange for Dowling delivering the secret knowledge of Earth and, indeed, the whole of the Earth. In simple terms, Dowling has actually sold the Earth. Once Earth is subjugated, Dowling intends to traverse the vast reaches of the multiverse. However, if Elijah stops Dowling, he will not be able to fulfill his part of the deal to deliver a subjugated Earth.

Elijah visits a shaman and discovers that as a “century baby” born with superhuman ability, he is “not naturally alive” but has been created to do a job, which is not to simply destroy The Four. This epiphany leads Elijah to believe that he must “save things,” to keep the world strange, and “save the people in it.” Apart from saving the Earth, Elijah also has a more personal goal: saving Ambrose Chase, which he does by using technology he believes Dowling has suppressed.

Elijah contacts Dowling offering a deal: Dowling’s knowledge in return for letting him remain alive, even allowing Dowling’s deal with the parallel Earth to stand. When Dowling (and Süskind) meet Elijah, he offers Dowling to join him to defend the world against the parallel Earth. He refuses. However Elijah has secreted a device that renders Dowling and Süskind powerless, and they are killed.

The Planetary team then travels to the parallel Earth, dumping Dowling and Süskind’s bodies there as a warning. A year after The Four’s defeat, the Planetary organization begins releasing the suppressed technology. Elijah, Jakita, and the Drummer also use the technology to locate and save Ambrose Chase.

Volumes

•Planetary: All Over the World, and Other Stories (2000). Collects issues 1-6. Recounts Elijah Snow’s recruitment by the Planetary organization to investigate the secret history of the twentieth century. A group known as The Four is pinpointed as having suppressed for more than forty years knowledge and technology that could benefit humanity.

•Planetary: The Fourth Man (2001). Collects issues 7-12. The depth of The Four’s involvement in repressing technology and knowledge is revealed. Elijah Snow’s memory starts returning. He is revealed as the owner of the Planetary organization.

•Planetary: Leaving the Twentieth Century (2004). Collects issues 13-18. Recounts the missing episodes of Elijah’s memory and the circumstances leading to his memory blocks being implanted by Randall Dowling of The Four.

•Planetary: Spacetime Archaeology (2010). Collects issues 19-27. Details Elijah’s defeat of The Four and the release to the public of the twentieth century’s suppressed knowledge and technology. Elijah also realizes his role is to save people, experiences, and the planet.

Characters

•Elijah Snow, the protagonist, is the white-haired, white-suit-wearing owner of Planetary. He appears to be between fifty and sixty years old but is actually almost one hundred years old. He is a “century baby,” born on January 1, 1900, giving him the ability to manipulate heat and cold and making him functionally immortal. He is cynical, more than a little irascible, and no one’s friend. The dark years of the twentieth century have leached the joy of life out of him. Planetary is at least partly the story of him rediscovering his sense of wonder and rejoining the human race.

•Jakita Wagner is the daughter of Lord Blackstock, a Tarzan analogue and century baby, and Anaykah, an African woman from the hidden city of Opak-Re. Because she was a half-caste, as an infant, she was left outside the city when the inhabitants decided to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Elijah rescues her and places her with a German family before recruiting her to work for Planetary. She is the “muscle” of Planetary. She has superhuman speed, strength, and healing abilities inherited from her father. She is also bored easily.

•The Drummer is a highly intelligent male in his early twenties who has the ability to interpret information of any kind through kinetic energy. He is the “brains” of Planetary. As a child, he was rescued by Elijah and Planetary from an experiment conducted by Randall Dowling designed to control the flow of information on the Internet. He has a passing resemblance to artist Cassaday.

•Randall Dowling, the primary antagonist and the leader of The Four, is loosely based on Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) of the Fantastic Four. He is arrogant and a brilliant scientist. He is able to stretch his mind into other people’s minds, implanting ideas and controlling their actions. He strives to suppress, kill, or keep for himself Earth’s strange technologies or knowledge. He is motivated by the deal he made with inhabitants of a parallel world. He was killed by Elijah Snow, and his body was dumped on the parallel Earth on which he gained his superhuman powers.

•Kim Süskind, member of The Four, is loosely based on Sue Storm (Invisible Girl) of the Fantastic Four and is Randall Dowling’s partner. She is able to turn invisible at will. When she is invisible, light passes straight through her eyes, rendering her blind, unless she wears special goggles. The transformation also rendered her unable to have children. She dies in the same manner as Randall Dowling.

•William Leather, member of The Four, is loosely based on Johnny Storm (Human Torch) of the Fantastic Four. He believed himself to be the child of superhuman crime fighter Bret Leather. However, he did not inherit his father’s superhuman abilities because his mother had been unfaithful. Feeling cheated of his birthright, he was primed for seduction by Randall Dowling, therefore joining The Four. He had his personality restructured after Elijah Snow tortured him to reveal Randall Dowling’s whereabouts.

•Jacob Greene, is a short-tempered, barrel-chested member of The Four, loosely based on Ben Grimm (The Thing) of the Fantastic Four. Physically, he was affected the worst of The Four by the change in 1961, mutating into something no longer human but with immense strength. He has effectively become a “monster.” He is sent by Randall to investigate an alien construct orbiting inner space near Earth. He becomes stranded on the construct after Elijah blows up the ship that he piloted to get there.

•Dr. “Doc” Axel Brass is loosely based on the pulp-fiction character Doc Savage. He has short, bright red hair and bronze skin tone. He is physically perfect except for his legs, which were injured when he thwarted an attack from a parallel world. He then spent the next fifty years wounded and guarding “the snowflake,” a three-dimensional representation of the multiverse, until he was saved by Elijah Snow and Planetary. He is also a century baby who learned how to live without food and how to close wounds with his mind.

•Jim Wilder is a private investigator employed by the Hark Corporation. He was lured by a disguised John Stone to step on a “travelstone” uncovered after the demolition of a Hark Corporation building. Wilder was teleported into a sentient “shiftship” that had crash-landed on Earth during the dinosaur age. Only able to be piloted by superhumans, the shiftship asks Wilder to help it return home to a parallel world. Wilder agrees and is granted superhuman powers.

•Ambrose Chase is an African American member of the Planetary organization. He was shot during an investigation into a fictional reality built by Randall Dowling. Using his ability to distort local physical reality, Ambrose froze time in a bubble around himself until he was able to be rescued by Elijah and Planetary

•John Stone is a spy and ally of Elijah Snow. He set in motion the breakdown of Elijah Snow’s memory blocks but was also blackmailed by Randall Dowling.

Artistic Style

Ellis intended each issue of Planetary as a sort of “pop single.” Each cover would be unique in its own right to make it beautiful, unique, and instantly recognizable, speaking directly to the issue’s contents. The covers would change radically and be put together according to their own distinct plan. Logos would be moved, altered, ghosted, warped, and sometimes removed completely. Covers that changed depending on issue content meant that Planetary drew on diverse artistic styles (Australian Aboriginal art, psychedelia) and pop-culture mediums such as pulp-fiction characters (Doc Savage), Hong Kong action cinema, Japanese and American monster films, Westerns, the DC Comics Vertigo line (especially Dave McKean’s The Sandman covers), the X-Files television series, and nineteenth- century penny dreadfuls (which were essentially pulp-fiction serial publications).

Planetary continues the wide-screen style of storytelling that Ellis utilized in The Authority (1999- ), drawing upon cinematic techniques, with wide and close-up shots dominating and rarely more than six panels per page. In wide-screen style, panels are the complete width of the page, allowing the page to be read vertically down rather than the traditional “Z” reading pattern.

Cassaday’s artistic style leans more toward the realistic than the traditional, using realistically proportioned human characters. Cassaday inks his own work, and much of the delays in later production can be attributed to his perfectionism. The pages are generally open and uncluttered, keeping focus on the characters. Extensive use of close-ups dispenses with the need for detailed backgrounds, although when employed, Cassaday’s backgrounds are highly detailed. Flashbacks are often colored in simple two-tone effects. There are also no written sound effects. Fight and action scenes are devoid of dialogue, as is common with Ellis’s scripts, which employ a “speed reading” ethic. Cassaday bears a physical resemblance to the character the Drummer.

Themes

Planetary’s major theme is an exploration of superhero history through a superhero story. Planetary proposes that the fictions of the “real” world are the truths of the Planetary world. At base, Planetary is a “good versus evil” story, in which one group of superhumans (Planetary) fights another group of superhumans (The Four) over the fate of the Earth. On a deeper level, Planetary represents a high point in the field of revisionist comics or metacomics, which historicize comic book continuity. Revisionist comics comment on the conventions of superhero stories or on familiar characters who are often thinly disguised. However, Planetary takes the idea a step further, referencing characters and genres from all of pop-culture history. Planetary is a postmodern pastiche of styles; Ellis deliberately weaves the story around pop-culture influences. Elijah, Jakita, and the Drummer uncover connections among these fictional elements.

Ellis sees Planetary as a book about the genre of superheroes, an exploration of the superhero subgenre and its antecedents. For Professor Geoff Klock, Planetary is an investigation of fiction through fiction, on the plane of fiction. As a comic book, author and critic Douglas Wolk explains, Planetary is directed at an audience of comics superreaders—readers familiar with enormous numbers of old comics who understand what is really being discussed.

Planetary also presents a problematic version of the Silver Age of comics, one in which the Golden Age never existed or was never allowed to exist. This is most evident in issue 10, “Magic and Loss,” which shows The Four killing analogues of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern before they establish a presence on Earth. Another direct reference to The Fantastic Four involves Elijah’s memory loss. Just as The Four wipe Elijah’s memory, early in The Fantastic Four series, the Fantastic Four mind-wiped the Skrulls.

Impact

Planetary was moderately successful as a series; it has developed a cult following and is regarded as key text in the evolution of the comic book medium. However, its main impact was the elevation of both Ellis and Cassaday’s stature in the comics industry. They were relatively new to the comics industry in 1999, and Planetary made Cassaday a sought-after artist; he earned extended runs on the high-profile titles Astonishing X-Men and Captain America. Likewise, although he had been working in American comics from as early as 1994 and had some success with The Authority, Ellis became one of the best-known and respected comic book writers in the industry because of Planetary, and he went on to write Ultimate Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Thunderbolts. This level of esteem allowed Ellis to persuade publishers to try his experimental and outlandish ideas.

While analogues of superheroes and the parodying of superhero figures had been done (specifically in series such as Watchmen, Squadron Supreme, and Astro City), Ellis treats superhero-comics history with a degree of seriousness previously unseen and in a way that is neither nostalgic nor openly critically deconstructive. From Planetary onward, the use of superhero history and superhero analogues becomes commonplace almost to the point of cliché; examples include Alias, Powers, The Boys, and Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.

Ellis also defines a unique concept for the genesis of superhumans: century babies. Century babies are beings born on January 1, 1900. The world consists of and is built on information. The generation of century babies—Elijah Snow, Axel Brass, Bret Leather, John Stone, Lord Blackstock (and Jenny Sparks)—protect that information in a certain area of Earth. As Elijah finds out, he and the other century babies are basically “informational anomalies” that operate “outside the system.” Because they are not “alive,” they are functionally immortal. The century-baby concept has been used and extended in The Authority.

Further Reading

Ellis, Warren, Bryan Hitch, and Paul Neary. The Authority: Relentless (2000).

Ellis, Warren, and Facundo Percio. Anna Mercury, Volume 1: The Cutter (2009).

Moore, Alan, and Kevin O’Neill. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2000).

Bibliography

Kidder, Orion Ussner. “Useful Play: Historicization in Alan Moore’s Supreme and Warren Ellis/John Cassaday’s Planetary.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 21, no. 1 (2010): 77-96.

Klock, Geoff. How to Read Superhero Comics and Why. New York: Continuum, 2006.

Wolk, Douglas. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. New York: Da Capo Press, 2007.