Planetary



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

Comic Book series written by Warren Ellis and drawn (mostly) by John Cassaday, focusing on a team of "mystery archaeologists" employed by the eponymous "Planetary" organisation, who were on a quest to expose the secret history of the Wildstorm comic book universe and harness the fantastic technologies and advances that had been hidden by various malevolent forces. The main characters were:


 * Elijah Snow -- A reclusive and grumpy "Century Baby"; a super-human born at 0 Midnight on the 1st of January 1900 which, as with others sharing that birthday, had granted him virtual immortality and special abilities -- in his case, the ability to freeze things with his mind.
 * Jakita Wagner -- A beautiful and easily-bored superstrong speedster who worked with the organisation primarily because it stopped her from getting bored (by, among other things, giving her the opportunity to beat up various monsters, aliens and giant ants).
 * The Drummer -- A mad technophile who had the ability to visualise any and all forms of information and to communicate with computer systems and other forms of technology.
 * The Fourth Man -- A major mystery in the comic. He funds Planetary and hand picked the field team, but remains behind the scenes.

In their exploits, they were opposed by The Four, a quartet of super-powered ex-astronauts who were at the centre of a deep under-government conspiracy to keep the various wonders and marvels of the universe hidden from the population, and who bore a disconcerting resemblance to a certain family of superheroes who can be found in the Marvel Universe.

The series is essentially Ellis' exploration of popular culture, and the "real-world" ramifications of many of the more far-out concepts that could be found within a century's worth of Speculative Fiction, comic books and popular culture, as seen through the distorting-mirror lens of the Wildstorm Universe. As such, as well as the alternate versions of the Four, an entire back history is composed linking the pulp fiction heroes of the 1920s and 1930s (including versions of Doc Savage and The Shadow) with The Silver Age of Comic Books and, eventually, The Modern Age of Comic Books, with tangents into 1950s sci-fi movies, 1960s spy movies, Japanese monster movies, the Vertigo Comics of the 1980s (including versions of The Sandman and John Constantine) and countless more besides. In fact, pretty much the only appearing characters who aren't based in some way on existing characters are the main characters themselves (except for a special issue which featured different versions of Batman, and a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen homage which, wittily, used the actual Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, and so on).

The final issue was released 2009-10-14, and ties up the series' run.

In addition to the main series, there were three crossover one-shots: Planetary / The Authority: Ruling the World (2000), Planetary / JLA: Terra Occulta (2002), and Planetary / Batman: Night on Earth. (Alternate universes were involved for the two DC Universe crossovers.)

"Elijah: He's getting away! The Drummer: Leave me behind! I'll only slow you down! Elijah: Okay. The Drummer: I didn't mean it, you evil old geezer."
 * Affectionate Parody: A lot, with special mention going to "To Be In England, In The Summertime," an only slightly over-the-top recreation of a Delano-era Hellblazer story.
 * Alternate Company Equivalent: Pretty much every character who appears apart from the main ones, including versions of the Fantastic Four, Superman, James Bond, and more besides.
 * Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: In the Elseworlds JLA crossover "Terra Occulta", Planetary have massively altered society by making super-technology publicly available, unlike in the main Planetary timeline where it's all been hidden away.
 * An Ice Person: It's right there in his name!
 * Anti-Hero: Elijah Snow is grumpy, world-weary and quite ruthless, especially during his quest for revenge against the Four.
 * Anyone Can Die: "Terra Occulta", being set entirely in an alternate universe, doesn't have to worry about keeping the regulars alive.
 * Arc Words: see the page quote, above.
 * Artificial Limbs: 's hand is not as ordinary as it looks.
 * Big Dumb Object: "Mystery in Space"
 * Bizarre Baby Boom: Happens once a century every century in the Wildstorm universe. These "Century Babies" (such as Elijah Snow himself) are born a second after midnight on the first day of a new century and usually grow up to be immortal and superpowered.
 * Black Best Friend: A rare totally platonic example between Jakita and Ambrose. There's no romantic tension from either side(he's happily married with a daughter, and Jakita is insinuated to be rather...active) but assorted flashbacks show that Jakita considered him her best friend, with perhaps only Elijah being closer to her, and he more as a father figure.
 * Black Dude Dies First: Ambrose Chase, originally a member of the group, had the bad fortune to wander into a universe where Horror Tropes were laws of physics, explicitly including this one. Of course, they Never Found the Body. The trope is Invoked by the villain of that issue, Chase even notes that under normal circumstances he would be unkillable.
 * The Can Kicked Him: A guard suffers this fate thanks to Elijah and his freezing powers.
 * Captain Ersatz: The heroes of the past are often pastiches of iconic comic book characters or of present ones. In an early adventure, a quantum computer creates an imaginary Earth with a set of Justice League analogues. Ellis even asked Cassaday to draw them as such. Other instances are The Four (of Marvel's Fantastic Four) and a technological take on Captain Marvel (DC Comics).
 * Not to mention the ersatz Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern that.
 * The Planetary field team are like a photo-negative twist of the original Fantastic Four. Specifically:
 * The Thing, a slow and hideous mutated strongman who desperately wants to be normal again, becomes Jakita Wagner, a sexy woman in a sleek jumpsuit, and is superhumanly fast and strong at the same time, and revels in her superhuman status and constantly seeking new strange thrills.
 * The Invisible Woman, the team mom who could make herself and other things invisible, becomes The Drummer, a boy sidekick who perceives things all around him that most people cannot -- namely, information. For an added bonus, the Invis. Woman has often been written has having some strong emotions simmering under a calm surface. The Drummer, on the other hand, is blatantly insane.
 * Mr. Fantastic is a white man, who creates strange gadgets and distorts his own body via stretching. His counterpart is Ambrose Chase, a black man (who falls victim to a weaponized Black Dude Dies First trope, see above) who uses normal semi-auto guns, and distorts physics and reality *around* himself rather than distorting his own body.
 * The Human Torch is the youngest member, impulsive and brash, who throws around fire. Elijah Snow is the oldest member of his team, is a thoughtful detective, and *subtracts* heat from his environment to freeze things.
 * Between the faux Justice League in issue 1, the death of the High mentioned in issue 5, the caped hero in issue 7, and the star child in issue 10, various ersatz versions of Superman pop up disturbingly regularly.
 * Catch Phrase: "It's a strange world."
 * "Let's keep it that way."
 * Chainsaw Good: Fully-automatic chainsaw bullets.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: The Drummer.
 * Coconut Superpowers: Perhaps the only time this has happened in a comic -- Dowling's scary-ass superpower is going to cause everything to go straight to hell, right? Right? Well, they apparently ran out of page space to show it.
 * Combat Pragmatist: Elijah Snow isn't hesitant to kick someone in the unmentionables, or to use his cold power to simply freeze an opponent solid.
 * Or do BOTH at the same time, resulting in an opponent's crotch region smashed off their body entirely -- as Dracula found out first-hand. And that was when Elijah was still a kid. If anything, he's gotten more ruthless with age.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Anna Hark. She gets better.
 * Crossover: Two with DC Comics, both via alternate universes. In "Night on Earth", the Planetary team pursue an antagonist who keeps flipping them into alternate universes, where they meet various versions of Batman. "Terra Occulta" is set entirely in an alternate universe that contains both a version of Planetary and a version of the Justice League of America.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: The anti-climax that was the final confrontation with the Big Bad.
 * Ambrose Chase Vs. Kim Suskind. Poor lady never had a chance.
 * In the Alternate Universe JLA/Planetary crossover, Elijah Snow vs. never had a chance.
 * Cure for Cancer: The final issue includes a string of news reports about major technological advances Planetary has been able to make with access to the Four's hoard; one is, of course, the development of a cure for cancer.
 * Decompressed Comic
 * Deconstruction: In some cases just outright demolition.
 * Even Deconstructions are deconstructed; the widescale Darker and Edgier trend in superhero comics in the 1980s and 1990s is deconstructed with the appearance of a former Cape who, having apparently suffered one of these during that period and angrily blaming the John Constantine Expy for it for whatever reason, angrily rants that he didn't want or need such a deconstruction just for the hell of it and liked his former, more innocent life perfectly fine, thank you very much.
 * Deconstruction Crossover: The Planetary universe as a whole.
 * Deconstructor Fleet
 * Defictionalization: Planet Fiction
 * Empathy Doll Shot: In the "Planet Fiction" issue.
 * Explosive Leash: In one issue, the Planetary field team raid one of the Four's facilities, where a group of child prodigies in explosive collars are being forced to subvert the internet.
 * Expy: In an odd double way. Jakita's ex-lover Jack Carter is a blatantly obvious (London-based, blonde-haired, trenchcoat-wearing magician) one of John Constantine. Then at the end of that story, he's shaved his head, changed his trenchcoat for a black jacket, and gotten tattoos reminiscent of Spider Jerusalem.
 * Then of course, there's John Stone, Agent of S.T.O.R.M.
 * Eye Scream: The way they torture in the final volume.
 * Flash Step: John Stone has his Blitzen Suit which enables short-range teleportation.
 * Flying Brick: William Leather clearly won the superpower lottery on his team: speed, strength, flight, durablity and pyrokinesis.
 * Genre Shift: Planetary #3 is The Spectre done as a Heroic Bloodshed story.
 * Gilligan Cut: In Night on Earth, after he sees what the issue's antagonist is capable of, the Drummer announces that this time he's going to stay in the base where it's safe. Turn the page, and the next panel is him out in the field with Jakita and Elijah, complaining loudly.
 * Groin Attack: Against Dracula. Somewhat less successfully against William Leather.
 * Guns Akimbo: Both the ghost cop and Ambrose are fond of this.
 * Hell-Bent for Leather: Jakita Wagner.
 * Hidden Elf Village: The lost city of Opak-Re.
 * Interplanetary Voyage: The Gun Club attempt to land on the moon using a Verne-style cannon.
 * Jumped At the Call: Jakita Wagner
 * Kaiju: Complete with homages to Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan.
 * Karmic Death:
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia:
 * Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Of course, these alternate versions, whilst recognisable, are entirely distinct from the originals.
 * Legacy Character: Again, Jakita Wagner.
 * Lightning Bruiser: Jakita Wagner is durable enough to survive being defenestrated from a skycraper without harm, strong enough to "...drop-kick a rhino over the Grand Canyon" and fast enough to out-run trigger-pulls.
 * Locked Out of the Loop: See Laser-Guided Amnesia, above. All the other regular characters know what that character's forgotten, but have their respective reasons for letting the situation continue.
 * Luke, I Might Be Your Father:
 * Man in White: Elijah Snow and Ambrose Chase.
 * Martini-flavored Spy Fiction: John Stone's entire existence.
 * Meta Fiction: In additional to all its other themes, you can read Planetary as a metacommentary on 20th century North American comics, in which the superhero genre eclipsed all other genres (crime, horror, spy, western, pulp sci-fi etc.) at the start of the Silver Age with the release of the Fantastic Four. See this review.
 * Mind Virus: While the other members of The Four get their Marvel counterparts' powers, Dowling gets this: "Anyone who's ever been within a hundred feet of Randall Dowling... probably is Randall Dowling." This is an interpretation of Reed Richards' physical stretching ability mixed with his superintelligence -- Dowling can 'stretch his mind.'
 * Ends up being something of an Informed Ability since we never actually see it used. Most likely because it would make him literally impossible to fight.
 * Mirror Universe: "Terra Occulta", an AU in which evil versions of the Planetary central characters are the villains, and versions of the JLA are plotting to bring them down.
 * Mysterious Employer: The Fourth Man
 * No One Gets Left Behind: Lampshaded.

"Ambrose Chase: You're the Fourth Man? But you're- The Fourth Man: Yes, I noticed that, too."
 * No Poverty: The home of Jakita's mother.
 * Nonhumans Lack Attributes: Unfortunately averted. The Green Lantern Expy who falls on Earth naked has a disturbing mangina.
 * Nostalgia Ain't Like It Used to Be: Subverted in "To Be In England, In The Summertime"; the Affectionate Parody funeral for the John Constantine Expy and the reverent reminisce of the 1980s and 1990s Vertigo Comics (and the political subtexts of them) is undercut when Snow points out that, being relics of a particular time divorced of their cultural and political contexts, they can't help but look a bit ridiculous. Although she passionately defends and supports them, Jakita is forced to concede he has a point.
 * Papa Bear: Elijah, eventually.
 * Production Foreshadowing: In the What If story "Terra Occulta", part of the plot involves the creation of a . Seven years later, in the main story line, the final issue revolves around the creation of a of identical design.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: several characters. Snow was born on January 1 1900 and still looks like a very vigorous forty-something. Anna Hark and Jakita Wagner are the daughters of Century Babies, and both of them are around 70 by the time of the comic; Anna estimates that she(and probably Jakita) will live for roughly 300 years. John Stone, thanks to some very neat drugs, has aged about 5 years since 1965.
 * Red Herring:
 * The scene most fans point to is when Ambrose is first promoted to the field team.


 * Reed Richards Is Useless: Deconstructed; the Four are the evil Mirror Universe equivalent of the Fantastic Four, and they want to hoard all their glories and advances for themselves. As William Leather tells Elijah, "We are adventurers, my crewmates and I, on the human adventure. And you all can't come along."
 * Rule of Cool: Even though this is a cynical, yet nostalgic exploration of fiction of the last century, it still operates on the Rule of Cool Like how about ghost cops that go Guns Akimbo? Chainsaw bullets? Jakita playing Soccer with the head of a giant ant as a ball? A Tarzan expy punching out a giant cyborg snake? An all out brawl between ? The gang going head to head with  ? Let's face it. This series is awesome.
 * Schedule Slip: One of the worst examples in comics history. Originally billed as a 24 issue monthly series, it wound up consisting of 27 issues and 3 specials, and came out over a period of a decade. The final issue came out more than two years after the preceding issue, but the rot set in early: upon its original release, the title was monthly, which rapidly became every 6 weeks, which became bimonthly by issue 4. There were a variety of reasons for the delay -- legal troubles regarding likenesses, creator illnesses (at one point, Ellis was ill so Cassaday took on another assignment to keep working. By the time Ellis had recovered and Cassaday had finished, Cassaday was ill...).
 * Slow Electricity: Saves the Drummer's life in the "Little Drummer Boy" issue, as a guard triggers a fail-safe that causes explosions to destroy all the valuable assets in the facility the Planetary field team are raiding -- one at a time instead of simultaneously, giving Jakita time to separate the Drummer from the explosive that was attached to him.
 * Sharp-Dressed Man: Elijah Snow and John Stone are standouts in this regard.
 * Shrunken Organ: In one issue, a giant man is seen in one panel, dying from his sudden artificial growth. His autopsy reveals "a normal-sized brain hanging in a web of nerve tissues like cables in a skull several feet across."
 * Spy Catsuit: While Jakita Wagner is not a spy, it is definitely a catsuit.
 * : How the final issue basically ends, albeit with a twist.
 * The Starscream:
 * Stat-O-Vision: This is how The Drummer sees the world.
 * Steven Ulysses Perhero: Elijah Snow, who has the power to freeze things.
 * Seems to be common with century babies. See Jenny Sparks, who can control electricity.
 * Superhero Trophy Shelf: All the teams in the comics maintain a collection of strange artifacts and secrets. Most notably the Four, who decimated a parallel earth so that they could "...store their weapons."
 * Supernatural Martial Arts: Issue #16 prominently stars Ah Lien Hark, practitioner of Night Forest School and features a spectacular wuxia-style battle between herself and the villainous Lo. It is hinted later in the issue that Anna Hark also knows the style.
 * Superpowerful Genetics: A major theme, especially concerning children of those born right on the turn of the century.(and Their Kids)
 * Technicolor Fire: William Leather wields blue fire.
 * Time for Plan B: In the issue "Percussion", the high-rise building the Planetary field team are in starts blowing up around them, forcing them to resort to "Exit Plan B" --.
 * Time Stands Still: One of the effects that Ambrose Chase is able to produce with his Reality Warper powers.
 * Transhuman Treachery: Inverted by the Four who betrayed humanity to a bunch of evil superhumans form another dimension in order to become transhumans.
 * Troperrific
 * Un Paused: Not played for laughs in the eighth issue, where a dead woman is successfully revived, and finishes what she was doing when she died: screaming.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: An early Planetary mission introduced
 * In the
 * With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Inverted. Dowling and the Four intentionally sought out someone to give them superpowers because they were already insanely ambitious. The actual transformation doesn't seem to have had much effect on their mental balance for any of them, apart possibly from Greene.
 * You Can See Me?: Carter's story in issue 7. "Oh, for God's sake. You can bloody see me, can't you?"
 * With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Inverted. Dowling and the Four intentionally sought out someone to give them superpowers because they were already insanely ambitious. The actual transformation doesn't seem to have had much effect on their mental balance for any of them, apart possibly from Greene.
 * You Can See Me?: Carter's story in issue 7. "Oh, for God's sake. You can bloody see me, can't you?"