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Underground > Comic Books >

Planetary #16

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18:12 / 29.08.03

A while ago I was chewing my fingertips off waiting for Promethea 26 to hits stores. I think we waited about four months, so not the same at ALL, but still...

When Promethea returned, it was to a strangely mundane and harsh new world. Small interactions felt oceans deep and vastly important.

Planetary 16 felt VERY similar in that regard. Anna Hark is a completely different person than I had thought, and truths we've waited since the beginning to know are revealed- only to pale in comparison to the emotions that kept them hidden.

I ANXIOUSLY await the downfall of the Four, which I assume to occur around 2012, so the ghost of the 20th Century can finally die and give us a Brave New World.

finger n' thump

21:05 / 29.08.03

that bats crossover was better than this convoluted rubbish.

beautiful artwork it must be said

15:35 / 31.08.03

I'm just wondering how effective the fight sequence would be to someone who had not seeon crouching tiger...

16:18 / 31.08.03

Well, I love Crouching Tiger and I thought the fight scene was too long and somewhat boring. Eight pages for a fight scene? How long did that take to write? Cassady carries this title.

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:55 / 31.08.03

I agree re: the fight scene - there was just nothing much achieved by it to justify the length. We're back on this manga-style tale-telling, which obviously is suited to the subject matter, but is also a way to slow down the narrative of a 24-page comic to the point of total inertia.

The conversation betwen Snow and Hark was far more interesting, and Cassaday's portrayal of Hark - *not* as a hot Asian chick, basically - is a depressingly refreshing one. However, this had the feel to me of an episode without a sparkly good idea to drive it - as a way to line up some more of the pieces in the "shiny new non-spandexed superhumans versus the Fantastic Four" arc, it was functional, but as a "relaunch" - I'm not seeing it; this relies too much on knowing about Axel Brass, Hark senior and the Planetary Guides for emotional impact.

18:42 / 31.08.03

actually i disagree with haus on this issue using manga style techniques, or at least using them effectively. My problem with the action sequence was rather that it was so disjointed that unless the reader had actually seen say Crouching Tiger - they would not have the experience to effectively tell what was meant to be going on in the gutters between each panel.

Yeah the action in crouching tiger is very pretty, but it is so stylised that a those unfamiliar with it would be unlikely to recognise it as anything close to a fight sequence - or indeed anything like a serial narrative.

But to inbetween the moments of the fight would have taken more pages and effectively defeated Planetary's other point as being a pop single.

So this issue was a bit of a compromise, and yes hardly the triumphant return you could be forgiven for expecting after Planetary's absence - that task i guess was supposedly accomplished by the batman special. But that said i'm not trying to dis Ellis, its greatn to see the series back to what is hopefully an even keel.

00:58 / 02.09.03

so basically the people floating about in the air hitting and kicking each other would be totally unrecognisable as a fight?

another point: i think the referencing goes deeper than crouching tiger.

m.

06:25 / 02.09.03

I never said that the fight sequence exclusively references crouching tiger, but that is a clear reference and probably the one that the greatest number would recognise...

so basically the people floating about in the air hitting and kicking each other would be totally unrecognisable as a fight?

No but a static image of a man flating on his back in space then doing something completely different in the next panel is not particularly recognisable as a fight. It certainly isn't as effective as creating a fully formed fight sequence using panel transitions that show every second of the fight and its movements.

As I said this approach has its problems, so does my proposed solution - its a trade off - but i still think it is a valid criticism.

The Natural Way

13:07 / 02.09.03

The same old story:

Barbelith starts going on about how great it all is and then my curiosity gets piqued and I read the book and.....I bet I still hate it.

Clunk...clunk..clunkety...clomp.

14:10 / 02.09.03

I'd agree that the fight doesn't totally work, but the art was very nice and the last page was a lot of fun with Hark's 'Special Move'.
But at the same time it wasn't enough, but then with Planetary it's rarely enough, I always end up wanting more of it right then and there.
I actually prefered it to the Batman issue as we finally got down to the plot again after the long wait.

Also no one's mentioned the cover yet, gave me a good feeling when someone showed it to me, above the usual 'Yay Planetary' feeling. It's a lot better than the last time I think he did this sort of thing with the Faux Sandman/Hellblazer cover.

22:43 / 02.09.03

eh. i thought it was a really nice minimalist display. bearing in mind that you're not reading one or two panels out of context, it seemed fairly obvious to me. you know - guy goes crashing through the window, the two of them hanging mid-air in a kind of hovering fight-stance. the fact that the SPECIFIC action, ie, what kind of blow that caused which specific kind of reaction, &c, doesn't really bother me.

for me the best bit was kicking the water so hard that the drops cut his face. noice.

m.

05:11 / 04.09.03

I have to say I'm in the "nay" camp for the fight. I don't like the way western comics do kung-fu at all. It's not that hard to draw a fight that makes sense as a sequence and I think it makes for more effective story telling.

Cassaday even changed his style slightly to make it look like Hong Kong comics, but didn't follow through and make the action resemble it too. Though I suspect that has more with Ellis not knowing how to write it properly.

22:57 / 08.09.03

okay, hit us with an example of this kind of fight scene done well, then.

m.

04:26 / 09.09.03

"Blood Sword" and "Storm Riders" by Ma Wing Shin. I don't like the way hand-to-hand fights are portrayed in western comics.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:44 / 09.09.03

I have to sa that I looked at the fight sequence and I saw Zu Warriors/Chinese Ghost Story and Street Fighter II rather than Crouching Tiger. I take the point that many people will just seee CTHD, or even the second Matrix movie, but there was a strong sense of Hong Kong movies and computer games, the latter especially in the 'secret move'.

Other than that, I also didn't really think much of the issue - it was more like a post-it note saying "I'm back" than a full ep.

Professor Silly

16:14 / 10.09.03

Did I read somewhere in this thread that Planetary will last a total of 24 issues? This makes a lot of sense to me, in that it would break the story into four hardcovers, each covering six issues. The first hardcover, "All Around the World and Other Stories," represents Snow's (re)introduction to Planetary...while the second hardcover, "The Forth Man," shows Snow putting the pieces of his fragmented memory together. This would put us now just over half way through what will appear as the third book, wherein Snow takes the fight back to the Four.
Anna Hark has been mentioned from the very beginning, and I think Snow making an ally of her makes a lot of sense. All in all it seems to be setting up an all-out war for the final six issues....

02:17 / 11.09.03

It will last 24 issues, yes.

22:51 / 12.09.03

Little late to this thread...

My girlfriend and her sister are huge Buffy fans. These girls are exactly the kind of readers the comic industry should be catering to. I bought them some comics I thought they might enjoy and they both got hooked on Fray. An eight issue miniseries that still hasn't gotten past issue 6. Think either one of them is ever going to waste their money on monthly comics?

Personally I wouldn't recommend any monthly comic to a new reader when there's so much excellent material available in trade paperback, featuring better production values, no ads, and most importantly complete stories in one place--complete stories are the only graphic works that have ever ended up hooking any of my non-comicfan friends on the medium in the past. And of course these days something like Fray will be out in collected form within weeks of the final issue being published, so if you think some "civilian" friend would like a particular title, there's no reason not to wait the few months until you can hand them a satisfyingly complete graphic novel that's much more likely to leave them wanting more than a handful of frustratingly incomplete pamphlets.

I really enjoyed Planetary but I would never recommend it to a new comic reader, its just a frustration waiting to happen.
I honesty think that books being this late (especially the few good books) are bad for the entire industry.

Personally I wouldn't recommend Planetary to anyone who hasn't been reading comics since at least the late 80s. Otherwise much of it would just seem arbitrary and generally confusing--would the John Constantine issue have made any sense at all, for instance?

01:33 / 13.09.03

Little late to this thread...

Heh. I'm sure theres still plenty of time to talk about this issue before the next one comes out.

As much as I like the collected books, I still enjoy picking up individual issues a couple times a month and I'm pretty sure other people do too. Its like waiting for your favorite show to come on every week, theres an anticipation, some sort of build up that isn't there with the collections. A long time ago someone else on the board used Watchmen as an example (and I've been ripping them off ever since). Go read the first 11 issues of Watchmen. Then wait a month before you read #12. Thats what makes monthly comics a great thing.

In the case of Fray, the book got a lot of mainstream press because it was Whedon's new baby and I'm pretty sure they weren't the only Buffy fans that felt burned by the wait. Hell, they still haven't got #8 because I quit looking for the book and didn't realise the series finally ended. I'm not sure they care anymore either. Still, if they had waited for the collected version they would have to wait even longer because it still isn't out.

Someone could make a case that Planetary is more about scifi/movie pop culture than comics but it woln't be me. I've lost interes

08:20 / 13.09.03

Personally I wouldn't recommend any monthly comic to a new reader when there's so much excellent material available in trade paperback, featuring better production values, no ads, and most importantly complete stories in one place--complete stories are the only graphic works that have ever ended up hooking any of my non-comicfan friends on the medium in the past.

This comes as a very interesting observation especially since when he pitched it warren ellis viewed the individual episodes as the equivelant of a pop song - and viewed them as self contained stories. looks like over time he's either abandoned that position or at least altered it.

16:24 / 13.09.03

As much as I like the collected books, I still enjoy picking up individual issues a couple times a month and I'm pretty sure other people do too. Its like waiting for your favorite show to come on every week, theres an anticipation, some sort of build up that isn't there with the collections.

Likewise. I quit buying NXM after the "Murder" arc figuring I'd wait for the reliably prompt collections from then on, but I kept seeing the damned issues on the shelf and feeling like I was missing out on all the fun! When #146 came out I broke down and bought it, though I'm waiting to read it until after I get the "Assault on Weapon Plus" TP (October 15th, dammit), having missed that arc entirely. I do increasingly buy mostly collections, though. When GM's NXM run ends I won't be buying any monthlies consistently unless some new compellingly interesting book appears in the meantime.

16:58 / 13.09.03

This comes as a very interesting observation especially since when he pitched it warren ellis viewed the individual episodes as the equivelant of a pop song - and viewed them as self contained stories. looks like over time he's either abandoned that position or at least altered it.

Well, the series did start out that way, though again many of the stories were "self-contained" only to the extent that the reader was familiar with the larger meta-story of comics (and genre films) generally. But for the series to tie up the various threads that have been laid down so far, he really has no choice but to move toward a more standard serial format from here on.

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