From the Vault: Why Planetary Rules the World

While I catch up and get this blog ready to operate on a regular schedule, here's an IGN article I wrote a couple years ago about one of my favorite series of all time, Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary. Enjoy.

One of greatest comic book series of the 20th Century debuted in 1999, but had the majority of its issues see print between the years 2001 and 2007, with the last hitting stands in October 2009. For those who have experienced the wonder of Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary for themselves, that statement might not need much explanation. For those who haven't, allow me to explain.

Although there's certainly no shortage of respected comic book voices loudly proclaiming the greatness of Planetary, the fact that Ellis, Cassaday and company took a whole ten years to complete their 27-issue opus seems to have kept it off that universally accepted short list of mainstream comic book masterworks composed of the likes of Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. Now that the series is finally complete and collected in two beautiful Absolute Editions (available on stands now), that omission is no longer acceptable. Because make no mistake about it: Planetary is the greatest mainstream comic of the last twenty years, and, for a number of complex reasons, might just be the best of the last century. At the very least, it's my favorite. Here's why:

Planetary is built on a deceptively simple premise that becomes strikingly more impressive the more the story unfolds: the most famous and iconic elements and characters from popular 20th Century fiction exist secretly in some form or another in the series' universe, and it's up to the titular organization – and its four figureheads Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner, the Drummer and Ambrose Chase – to unearth those elusive artifacts and figures and connect them into a secret history of the 20th Century.
In short, Planetary exists as a celebratory history of 20th Century Pop Fiction. Or as Joss Whedon put it far more eloquently in his introduction to the series' second collection, "Warren Ellis draws inspiration from so many cultural wellsprings that his work truly does become a sort of history of the twentieth century as it exists in popular fiction. But this is no mere pastiche – Ellis both subverts and elevates the elements he takes, making them fit perfectly his own epic vision."
More specifically, the book's primary concern is unearthing the confluence of influences that led to the idea of The Superhero as our modern culture now knows it. From Doc Savage to James Bond; the Lone Ranger, Green Hornet and The Shadow; Tarzan, noir Private Eyes and Fu Man Chu; 1950's Sci-Fi B-Movies, Godzilla and Hong Kong action flicks; Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern; early Marvel comics, and more predominately, the work of Jack Kirby; the re-inventive, post-modern 1980's DC comics work from English writers like Moore, Grant Morrision, Peter Milligan and company; all the way back to 19th century superhero precursors like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and Frankenstein - - Ellis and Cassaday leave no stone unturned when it comes to excavating the heart of the superhuman myth as it existed in the 20th Century and continues to exist to this day.

The result is a beautiful, breath-taking meditation on pulp, popular film and fiction, superhero comics and all forms of mainstream 20th Century entertainment that eventually morphs into its own sprawling, inspirational epic. And beneath it all is a brilliant structure that elevates the overall story to even greater heights.

Much of Planetary's strength and power resides in its precise, ridiculously tight construction, but not in the way so much of Alan Moore's works are literally about their own form and structure. Each of the series' installments adopts the style and language of the genre it seeks to explore, standing on its own as both an illuminating celebration of the source material and a story in and of itself.

As the series progresses, the individual installments begin to interact with and build atop one another and Ellis' terrifying Fantastic Four analogs are exposed as the series' antagonists. At that point, the story gradually reveals itself as not only its own wondrous tale, but an awe-inspiring metatextual history of the superhero. Holmes, Dracula and Frankenstein give way to pulp heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow, who precede DC's superhero trinity, whom are in turn pushed aside and changed irrevocably by Marvel's First Superhero Family. From there, the evolution continues upwards and onwards past the English Vertigo Invasion of the 1980s, until we're no longer trying to identify a through line between these early and modern ideas of the superhuman, but are instead consumed with what Elijah Snow is after and how he'll get it.
In an age in which so many comic series struggle to provide fulfilling individual episodes while telling a greater narrative, Planetary accomplishes this feat with a near effortless calm and confidence. And at the heart of its structure – the main creative force behind this mammoth accomplishment in form – is the chameleon-like work of John Cassaday.

Planetary catapulted Cassaday to the top artistic ranks of the industry, and all it takes is one reading of the series to understand why. No artist has showcased a more astounding versatility and depth of talent than Cassaday does in this series, morphing his style in celebration of each of the series' myriad influences while also maintaining his own gorgeous blend of comic book fantasy and realism. And although he's certainly provided further proof of his considerable abilities since the series first debuted, Planetary remains his masterpiece.
What other artist could so effortlessly pay homage to such different influences as Jim Steranko, Jack Kirby, sci-fi B-movies, gothic literature, pop art, pulp and noir (among others), while constantly maintaining his own individual style? What other artist can make an environment seem so cavernous and infinite in one panel while conveying so much information with a single facial expression the next? For that matter, I'd argue that no other artist or series deserves and thrives thanks to the oversized Absolute format than Cassaday's Planetary work does. His wide-screen, cinematic panels demand to be appreciated in such a way.

Again, Cassaday has never been as impressive as he is in Planetary. Of course, it's impossible to mention Cassaday's greatness in Planetary without extolling the greatness of colorist Laura Martin, who aids each of Cassaday's chameleon-like transformations while adding a lushness and vibrancy to his work every step of the way. Her contribution to Planetary can't and should not be understated. Neither should that of Ellis, whose limitless imagination pushed Cassaday and Martin harder and further than either has ever been pushed.

Just as it is Cassaday's masterwork, Planetary is the greatest singular achievement of Ellis' career, which is saying quite a lot about the man who created Transmetropolitan, Global Frequency, The Authority and Stormwatch. Beyond the sheer, jaw-dropping scope, overall creative vision and level of precision Ellis shows in this series, the story is also remarkably hopeful and inspiring for a writer known for his pessimism. Even when he's horrifying you with the unabashed evil of The Four, he still constantly finds ways to remind you of the underlying child-like wonder of the 20th Century. Ellis makes the series every bit the celebration of the century's strangeness as he does an examination of its popular fiction, with his hero Elijah Snow dedicated to his mission "to keep the world strange because that's the way it's supposed to be."

The series is filled with moments that make you smile and appreciate the utter weirdness of the world in which we live – a world whose weirdness our fiction often fails to truly emulate. What differentiates Planetary from so many other genre-bending pastiches is Ellis' trademark flare for hard science fiction, which combines with the series' heightened fantasy to create a world that's undoubtedly surreal, but also somehow real.

Planetary is the work that first had many people mentioning Warren Ellis in the same breath as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. More impressively, though, is that Ellis is able to emulate those writers' strengths while also in many ways avoiding their trappings; Planetary has all the limitless imagination and wonder of Morrison's work without any of its ambiguousness, and every bit the tight, intricately woven structure as Moore's work without its impenetrability.
And when all is said and done, Ellis' greatest accomplishment in Planetary is the way he celebrates the 20th Century while blowing open the doors and welcoming all the possibilities of the 21st. After all, as Private Eye-turned-Multiversal Explorer James Wilder puts it towards the story's end, "it's a fine time to be alive: strange and beautiful, and there's nowhere I'd rather be."

Absolute Planetary Volumes 1 & 2 are both available from greater book retailers everywhere. Grab them now before they sell out, experience the series' brilliance for yourself, and see if you agree with my opinion that Planetary is the greatest comic book of both the 20th and 21st Centuries.