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Underground > Comic Books >

Planetary

16:01 / 16.03.04

please can someone explain me why you all respect planetary
i ve read the first fours and the one with authority and i didnt find it interssesting...
for me it was like a mix of xfiles with heroes from different times
no drama, no suspense, not strong investigations

yawn - thing's buddy

21:33 / 16.03.04

good art.
fun to hate ellis.
funny shitty comic.

21:58 / 16.03.04

You need to read the first twelve issues to get the full impact of Planetary. Issue #9 is great and was what drew me in.

However the incredibly slow release of issues has really damaged the flow of the story.

But JC's art is breathtaking...

01:50 / 17.03.04

The last issue was phoned in. Suuupeerrrdecompresssed.

It captured a kinda zeitgeist 3 years ago.

Warren Ellis has read a few books.

09:08 / 17.03.04

modernism:
an evanescent moment of sheer wonder
still reading this shit when we're old enough to know better
each issue of planetary makes things new in a new way
for a moment

02:55 / 18.03.04

Planetary is probably the most overdiscussed and overrated comic in my opinion. The writing is middling, it's full of promise that a better writer than Ellis should be doing. It's all as someone on this board said before, High Concept stuff that doesn't really have any depth or original story.

The art...I read it for the art.

16:27 / 18.03.04

Good points: Meta-comic potential, great art (for the most part), some good throw-away ideas here and there.

Bad points: Never know when (or if) the next issue is coming out, the story is getting too convoluted, lots of things are brought up and then don't get resolved, the writing is very inconsistent.

But still, its on my pull list.

22:41 / 18.03.04

Planetary is a lot more satisfying if you read it as a series of illustrated essays on 20th century culture. Its a lot less satisfying if you try an read it as a monthly comic...

Horatio Hellpop

22:35 / 19.03.04

except the essays aren't really about culture (or anything), just in reference to it.

00:32 / 20.03.04

You don't think so? Ther have been some interesting insights, I think: the longing for a rationalist utopia that underpins heroic fiction, for instance.

Or the unexamined assumptions about intellectual property and freedom of information implicit in scientific romances (like Marvel Comics)--that is, the notion that it's perfectly okay for super-scientists to withhold miraculous technologies (that they have either invented or plundered) from the general public, and keep them solely for personal use.

And how giant-monster movies relate to the state of the Japanese psyche post-WWII.

That's three pretty heady ideas off the top of me bonce.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

12:18 / 20.03.04

I dearly wish that Planetary ended three years ago. It so perfectly encapsulated that time in comics. Now it's just very boring and the missed deadlines make it very hard for me to get excited about it anymore. In fact, I've missed the last two-three issues, I think.

But I agree that reading those first two collections back-to-back is a good read.

Horatio Hellpop

17:01 / 20.03.04

i guess what bothers me is that most of the ideas that are raised and discussed (like the ones mentioned) are implicit in the story, not explicit. i'm umcomfortable discussing my associations with the text as the text itself. is that a character flaw or a reasonable critical position? is the text the comic book or the interpretation? is planetary specifically intended for this audience? that's what it seems like, and i feel like *i* get what's going on, but only because i have the extra-textual knowledge. the actual comics seem to just float on the surface of this whole ocean of ideas that remain unexplored except here...

Horatio Hellpop

19:15 / 20.03.04

really it's just that the meta-commentary is not enough to hold my interest (or evaluate the work as non-emphemeral, a criticism which i'll grant is of debatable value). i want something that communicates on another more fundamental human (emotive) level. planetary doesn't seem terribly different (except in its quality of execution) from the endless revisiting of any of the major corporate superhero franchises inside of their respective continuity. i've often found that original stories (and i'll use jack kirby as an example, say the new gods) have very human moral concerns and the inheritors of the property often retain the visual shell within which those concerns were expressed, ignoring what the shell was built to house. a lot of time in superhero comics is spent exploring the the ramifications of certain ideas as they effect internal continuities, and increasingly farther from their moral implications and relevance to the real real world. and warren ellis in planetary is no different, except that he controls his playground. the characters and concepts rarely crossover from meta-commentary to actual commentary. i still read planetary and look forward to each issue (despite disappointment, i still enjoy the series) but have difficulty treating as substantive. it's just fun. and much better in installments than treated as a work, in my opinion, though i should probably be more tentative in throwing that out since it's not complete, but obviously my lack of faith is already apparent. but that's ok! no one's holding a gun to my head.