Planetary are Jakita Wagner, The Drummer and Elijah Snow. At the beginning of the series Jakita picks up Elijah from a remote, unknown location and makes him an impossible offer - to join her and the Drummer (for a cool million dollars for the rest of his life) as they embark to work together and uncover the "secret history of the world". As a team they refer to themselves as "Archaeologists of the Impossible". They are funded by an unknown entity, known only as the "fourth man" (a sly nod to the classic movie, "The third man") and it is rumoured in the book that he could be anyone from Bill Gates to Hitler. None of this is as important, at leat not initially, as the journey that the trio embark on takes them from the strange to the metaphysical and even to comically absurd.
From one issue to the next, writer Warren Ellis concocts such strange, mystifying stories that are only limited by his seemingly endless imagination. Issue one deals with them discovering a supercomputer that was designed during WW2 to code the future of the world, but ended becoming a gateway to a parallel world. Issue two takes them to a remote island near Japan, where the might of nuclear detonation from WW2 temporarily opened up a gateway from where strange prehistoric creatures entered our world. Issue 3 deals with the ghost of a dead cop in Hong Kong who comes back for revenge (a big nod to John Woo here), issue four deals with a ship that can travel between universes and so on. While the stories build up to reveal the bizarre pasts of the character - Elijah Snow we learn is a 100 years old for e.g. and the Drummer can "communicate" with machines - there quickly develops a connecting strand between these stories. What works in Planetary, and works exceptionally well, is that every single issue can be read as a stand alone story, yet it seems to all build towards something more profound, a big revelation which turns out to be the identity of the fourth man.
Its no exaggeration that the reveal and the purpose it serves takes the Planetary stories into a different realm, one that is both strange, fascinating and riddled with homages to other superheroes. The arch enemies of the Planetary for e.g. turn out to be someone who call themselves, the Four - a group of astronauts who went into space and developed special abilities (there's no need to point out the obvious here...). Elijah Snow, we also learn, has lost all memory of his past, and the issue where we found out how this actually happened gave me goosebumps!
Time for you to ask yourself some hard questions, Mr. Snow.
Do you really not remember us? Who benefits from your lack of memory? Who knows the secret history of Elijah Snow? What are your teammates not telling you?
Ellis' writing, as it has always been, is so intelligent, it can only be read to be truly appreciated. His dialogues are funny, but create the right mood of intrigue when needed. Segements that later become central to the core story appear as early as issue 1 or 2; that's how detailed and well thought out this book is. Like the X-files, a show it has a lot in common with and from which it obviously derives many themes but with a superhero tinge, the book has many filler issues (equivalent to the monster of the week stuff from X-files, but since this is a comic, referred to instead as monsters of the month), but the central Myth arc - the fight against the Four, and the discovery of who the fourth man is along with the recollection of Elijah Snow's intriguing past and how this ties in with everything, drive the series very well. No comic book can ever be worth savouring without good art, and Planetary has at its disposal the fine, clean, crisp work of John Cassady to thank.
The team and the title are now legendary in comics circles. The book has single handedly changed what modern comic books are all about - smart, intelligent, post modern and full of mystery.
Rating: 5/5Note: The series, which started in 1999 and has been hit by severe scheduling conflicts, will end this October (2009) with issue 27. This writing reviews the first 3 volumes which collect issues 1 through 18.
