PLANETARY: ALL OVER THE WORLD & OTHER STORIES

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PLANETARY: ALL OVER THE WORLD & OTHER STORIES

June 7th 2010 08:08

Category: Graphic Novels/Comics

Publisher: Wildstorm Productions
Production Team: Warren Ellis – writer, John Cassaday – artist, Laura DePuy – colorist (With David Baron & Wildstorm FX), Ali Fuchs & Bill O’Neill – letterers & Ed Roeder – cover, logo & book design
Cost: AU$19.95/US$14.99

Imagine if you will a comic that comprises elements of the old Avengers TV show, the X-Files, the pulp heroes of the thirties and forties along with iconic superhero comics and you’d likely have some idea of what Planetary is all about. This graphic novel first came to me via the medium of a chunky book titled 500 Graphic Novels You Must Read (or words to that effect), that I borrowed from my local library. As with Grendel Planetary was one of the graphic novels mentioned but unlike my efforts with Grendel I actually managed to track down a copy of the novel that had been mentioned in this book. I didn’t pay much attention to the review; after all I wanted to form my own opinions and ideas from reading it myself.

So just what is Planetary all about? Interestingly it takes a rather unusual approach to things, rather than having a group of heroes run around the countryside punching on with villains or getting ready to punch on with villains there is a focus instead on the strange and unusual. The world it seems has a secret history and Planetary seeks to map and chart that secret history, to uncover it in much the same manner as Howard Carter and his fellows sought to unveil the various tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Planetary is not a team that goes out thwarting bad guys who raise their heads to cause trouble for the good folk of such and such a place, no they a team with fabulous resources and backing who seek out the strange, the unusual and the bizarre. And it all begins in a diner out in the boondocks in a remote region of the United States…

Elijah Snow is a man who has an interesting and possibly chequered past. He sits dressed all in white in a roadside diner in the virtual middle of nowhere complaining about the quality of the coffee to the woman who works behind the counter. He’s a man who definitely looks a bit worse for wear, in fact he looks how I sometimes feel after a big night out, usually around State of Origin time, definitely not a look to cultivate under any circumstances. This day finds him in the diner though after a phone call from a woman named Jakita Wagner. Ms Wagner looks like a brunette Amazon clad in a black trench coat and a figure hugging bodysuit that looks as if it’s intended to provide maximum mobility and protection to it wearer in the event of some intense combat. It’s not something you wear to make a fashion statement but rather if you want to puree someone with your bare hands.
So what interest does this woman have in the washed out looking Mr Snow? We don’t find out, instead what she does reveal is that she’s been asked to recruit Snow into an organisation known as Planetary. She explains what the benefits are, namely a million dollars a year for the rest of his life and the removal of any remaining records of his existence. A nice incentive, Snow’s curiosity is piqued and he decides to take up the offer to join Planetary. One whirlwind helicopter ride later and we see Elijah in a spiffy looking white suit looking a world away from what he once was back in the roadside diner.
And so begins his induction into the world of Planetary, the bulk of this book is taken up with various one shot stories that in turn build up a bigger picture namely of just what is going on in the world and also what the organisation that is Planetary is all about. Certainly there are many mysteries to be unravelled, from an ancient supercomputer beneath a secret mountain hideout in the Adirondack Mountains to an island off the coast of Japan inhabited by monsters to an ancient alternate Earth created ship that can travel between realities. Fascinating stuff that is just so much more interesting than seeing costumed heroes saving the omniverse from the latest omniverse destroying menace of the week. And amongst all the wonder, action and pathos there are moments of good old fashioned dead pan humour.
Of course no team of heroes would be complete without some kind of antagonist and it seems that Planetary does have a nemesis, a group of individuals who seem to been engaged in some kind of secret Machiavellian agenda that no one is quite sure about. All that can be determined is that this group have been responsible for preventing the world being a far better and healthier place than it could be, originally part of a secret Cold War space exploration program codenamed Artemis and formed due to the US capture of Nazi engineers and scientists at the close of World War II this group do not have the best interests of either the world or Planetary in mind. IN fact if anything the four former members of Artemis are more concerned with enjoying the world and creation for their own sakes, the rest of the world is not invited on their grand voyage of discovery.
The Four are villains in the truest sense of the word, they are a thorn in the side of what Planetary is engaged in, seeking to cover up the mysterious, the unusual, the secret for their own agenda. And in the minds of the vast bulk of the world the Four do not exist, even their former masters in the Artemis program thought that they died in 1961 when they attempted to make the first Lunar landing (yep 61, not 69) apparently this secret program sought to have made a lunar landing in 61 and by the time Apollo, the more public face of space exploration, made it there they were planning to be on Mars. Something happened out there in the deeps of Cislunar space, something that changed the Four and made them much more than what they had originally been. Sound familiar? It should do if you know anything about comics. Suffice it to say I thoroughly enjoyed Planetary: All Around the World & Other Stories it was a refreshing change in the whole genre, kudos to Warren Ellis and co for producing such a work.

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