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Underground > Comic Books >

Planetary #21

  
 
Keith, like a scientist
22:51 / 03.11.04
Anyone read this? Thoughts?

It's almost as if Grant ghost-wrote it.
 
 
ciarconn
23:15 / 03.11.04
I liked it... even if at the end i felt a little bit cheated... I mean, tree issues to go and no action, and we find out that what we thought about Snow's mission as a part of Earth's immunitary system is not limited/related to the four.

Loved the tittle:

Death
Machine
Telemetry

Melanctha is a mixture of Doctor Strange and Lord Fanny, with a bit of WICCA and Quantum physics added on.

Behold the Eye of Aggamotto!
 
 
Mark Parsons
05:54 / 04.11.04
As far as I understand it, Ellis plans to continue PLANETARY beyond the stated issue 25 (or whatever). The end is in sight, but he's reserving the right not to cram story into a limited space. So maybe we'll get another three or four issues or so (beyond 25).
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
09:15 / 04.11.04
Ellis?

Cram?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Hee. Ha.

Jesus, that was a good one.
 
 
Triplets
09:37 / 04.11.04
Word,

Swamp Thing: Yeah, there's some freaky science shit out there. BTW, I drugged your tea, I hope you like non-consensual sex!

Snow: FUCK.

Swamp Thing: Also, it turns out you're some kind of protective mechanism like a White Blood Cell. Or Robocop.

Snow: FUCK.

Looks nice, though!
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:39 / 04.11.04
Pretty!

Pretty crappy.

After a brief outbreak of plot, Ellis is back to what he does best - episodes in which nothing happens, and dialogue is either lengthy and cribbed from Wikipedia, or

Portentously

Allocated just a few

Words to a

Panel.

And at the end Deus Exposition Melanctha offers an oooooh scary revelation, about which no sane human being should care.

"You're not really alive, Saga Holiday Bobby Drake. Also, you are not teh gay."

No shit. Of course he isn't alive. He's a random sampling of body parts from the Warren Ellis curmudgeon-in-suit bits box. He's one of a number of antibodies created by the universe to have their books cancelled or taken over by hacks. What new or exciting thing does this tell me about the character or the action? Unless the next four issues are of Saga Holiday Bobby Drake sitting on a beanbag reading the Vedas as the Three sex up and eat his friends in the next room, bollocks all. Actually, take out the sex and the action and I may have nailed it.
 
 
osymandus
10:22 / 04.11.04
How odd. I learnt Elijha can feel the cold, i also learnt that the four arnt the threat that their made out to be (funny that , 4 ego driven lunatics not really being that dangerous !).

And the magiacian wasnt a magician.


As above so below . Maybe you guys/gals just need to read more.

Oh and one other thing unless any of your Ellis or his publishers or DC you dont own this story , read or dont it dosnt matter , its survived 2 years almost in the wilderness .
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:55 / 04.11.04
Was Synchronicity a character in the Authority?
 
 
osymandus
11:15 / 04.11.04
Only in Millers run :X
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:27 / 04.11.04
But seriously, Oz, that was perhaps the worst defence of a comic books I have read on Barbelith, which is really going some. I don't see that whether Saga Holiday Bobby Drake feels cold or not is a huge plot point. I'm not surprised that, having apparently scored a major victory, it is suddenly revealed to be irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. Terrax the Tamer, anyone? And I *really* don't care whether Deus Ex Melua is a magician or not. I'm more curious to know whether she is an agent of HYDRA.

With As above so below . Maybe you guys/gals just need to read more. you not only stop making sense (as above so below? That actually *means* something, you know. Crowley sticks it into things to sound clever, but he also says stuff around it), but move off the very taxing and exhausting subject of discussing a comic book by trying to move the discussion on to the failings of anyone who dares to disagree with you. It's a gambit known in chess-playing circles as the U all suX0r why dont you go to the village of GAY in the land of GAYDONIA were every1 is GAY and has GAY SEX defence".

And as for:

Oh and one other thing unless any of your Ellis or his publishers or DC you dont own this story , read or dont it dosnt matter , its survived 2 years almost in the wilderness.

Are you Warren Ellis? Are you his publisher? Are you DC Comics? If not, then why are you wasting time expressing an opinion about a comic when clearly you are not entitled to? Just read it or don't.

I have to say, I knew the standard of debate was going down through the election, but I never thought we'd settle on "Warren Ellis' Planetary: love it or leave it".
 
 
fluid_state
13:02 / 04.11.04
Well, I liked it. I liked the expression of Snow's obsession with the Four, and the short sharp shock of the wake-up call Swampy delivers. His drug trip was fantastically expressed (I, uh, don't think GM has ownership over the "magic mirror", as it seems to have been around for awhile longer than he has), and introducing an underverse as a complement to Reality's Snowflake is great; That Planetary may have seen "all" of reality, but that there's way more to it than that between the cracks, pushes their unaware egotism into the light.

I'm trying to figure out what the complaints are with Ellis' pacing, and they seem to boil down to "it wasn't exciting enough", or a variation thereof ("I paid 5 dollars for this and Jakita Wagner didn't kick anybody's head off").

"U all suX0r why dont you go to the village of GAY in the land of GAYDONIA were every1 is GAY and has GAY SEX "

hey, I've been using that in regular conversation for years now. It's multipurpose, based on context, like Ciao. I just KNEW I'd find some hipsters here...
 
 
osymandus
13:14 / 04.11.04
Oh im only funning you guys honest i love you all.



But seriously, Oz, that was perhaps the worst defence of a comic books I have read on Barbelith, which is really going some. I don't see that whether Saga Holiday Bobby Drake feels cold or not is a huge plot point.

Its a refrence from issue 1, and has been refernced throughout the enitre serious that he dosent feel the cold at all . The shudder and realisation the coldness of his reality ? I dont really understand the comparison of this Saga Holiday Bobby Drake (aside from the oap ice man ha ha my sides are splitting no really such insight !).

If your having ago at a charcter why compare it to essentialy (and i do like Iceman) , a soap opera character and use it as a benchmark for how it should be portrayed ??


I'm not surprised that, having apparently scored a major victory, it is suddenly revealed to be irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. Terrax the Tamer, anyone? And I *really* don't care whether Deus Ex Melua is a magician or not. I'm more curious to know whether she is an agent of HYDRA.

LOL , Astonishing Xmen refernce maybe ? Maybe they were drawn at the same time and Cassidy was being lazy .


With As above so below . Maybe you guys/gals just need to read more. you not only stop making sense (as above so below? That actually *means* something, you know. Crowley sticks it into things to sound clever, but he also says stuff around it),

Hence my refernceing it, and really the point of narrative of this issue . Sorry if it sounded rude wasnt the intention , just lazyness on my part

but move off the very taxing and exhausting subject of discussing a comic book by trying to move the discussion on to the failings of anyone who dares to disagree with you.

Not at all (though the posts proir to mine seem to contain more that attitude ?)


It's a gambit known in chess-playing circles as the U all suX0r why dont you go to the village of GAY in the land of GAYDONIA were every1 is GAY and has GAY SEX defence".

OR your opinion of mine maybe , and i wasnt defending the comic absoulte , just the issue and what seemed to be annoyance at a non clear explenation of the current story , which may require a bit more digging to provide what you seek (obviously as a read of A Crowley you would be aware of this , or should comcis really provide you with everything in the one narrative ?)



And as for:

Oh and one other thing unless any of your Ellis or his publishers or DC you dont own this story , read or dont it dosnt matter , its survived 2 years almost in the wilderness.

Are you Warren Ellis? Are you his publisher? Are you DC Comics? If not, then why are you wasting time expressing an opinion about a comic when clearly you are not entitled to? Just read it or don't.

More in reply to peoples annoyance at lateness and quailty of script (sorry hang over from previous arguments)AT NO STAGE DOES IT IMPLY YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO REPLY ! prime example of being unable to truly express intent in mssg board replys.



I have to say, I knew the standard of debate was going down through the election, but I never thought we'd settle on "Warren Ellis' Planetary: love it or leave it".


Well surly that IS the whole point , its a comic take it or leave it !
 
 
Triplets
13:33 / 04.11.04
Wow, I managed to get to the quote about Haus calling Gambit gay before I tore my eyes out. Further than I expected!

I'm not going to bother responding to Oz because 1. he's an idiot and 2. if you took Key 23 his spelling would manifest as a cock fucking you in the soul.

Moving on, Planetary 21. It was alright, and what feels like much of a retread does have some function in the greater arc. We get retold [as Drum's brought it up issues ago] that Snow's purpose is to 'save the world' in some function or at least preserve it's strangeness. For Planetary strangeness = creativity in comics. The Four are a stifling presence that kill and hoard these marvels [ho ho!] for themselves.

However, I think Ellis is now saying, 'well okay, but it's time to look at the big picture' and see how we can save the multiverse/the industry.

The biggest annoyance is that a lot of the meat of this issue could be found for free in the 4-page preview that got posted on PopComicShopShock or whatever it was. It felt like I was buying the last page almost and a purty cover.

Meh, roll on 22: The Torture of Wilhelm Leather.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:43 / 04.11.04

Well surly that IS the whole point , its a comic take it or leave it

In which case perhaps we should shut down this forum... either you buy it, in which case you like it, or you buy it, don't like it and stop buying it, or you don't buy it.

solid_state: I don't *think* anyone has so far complained about an absence of Jakita Wagner (a name first used by Warren Ellis in Hellstorm, by the way, joining the recurring motif soup in which we also encounter that bloody nuclear pub). It's more, for me, that the treatment this issue was plodding and tedious. After some nice, big, fun sci-fi adventure, Ellis has now decided to show us that there is important to remember that small things are important also. Which he does by making Elijah all magically tinysmall, so he can go "Gosh. I had not realised how the very bigness of my adventures was underpinned by tininess. Because not only am I an antibody, I am also a cretin." It's dull, didactic storytelling.

And by God, the references... "See! The pub I mentioned in Stormwatch! The antibody theory I flogged to death in the Authority! All that shamanic stuff from X-Man and passim. See how all of this forms a quilt of tinysmall interrelations. It's the circle of liiiiiife."

So, no. No Jakita Wagner headkick fun complaints from me. Only that a writer should have more wit and more energy than to rely on Cassaday to keep the reader happy as he explains the next plot twist in voiceover through a sock puppet.
 
 
_Boboss
14:02 / 04.11.04
yep, i'm THAT gambit.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
16:22 / 04.11.04
Please get over The Invisibles.
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
16:49 / 04.11.04
yeah, i wasn't terribly impressed, just found it interesting for it's Invisibles Cliff Notes stuff.

no new info or anything...

i think next issue is titled "the torture of william leather," in which he spills the beans about his family and just what the heck he's been doing. apparently, a lot.
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
16:53 / 04.11.04
oh whoops! missed your post, Triplets. You already revealed the next issue's title.
 
 
uncle retrospective
21:48 / 04.11.04
well I liked it.
 
 
matsya
09:28 / 05.11.04
Yeah, I liked it too. Some of the exposition was a little clunky, but I thought it had a good mood to it. I liked the twistiness to it - everything's building up to the showdown between the four and Planetary and now E's had a revelation that that's not the way to go, so that leaves me thinking well... what are they going to do now? makes things a bit fresher.

m.
 
 
sleazenation
09:42 / 05.11.04
I'm afraid I fall again into the ranks of the unimpressed - the revelations, such as they are, fell as flat, as did the dialogue - not a good thing in an issue that consist of a conversation between two characters.

The art was indeed beautiful, but never quite as compelling or complex as it could have been. Maybe it just suffers in comparison to the beautiful designed and fantastically detailed work of Frank Quitely, that'll teach me not to read planetary and WE3 in the same sitting.
 
 
Krug
13:17 / 05.11.04
The issue was okay, kinda like any other issue, not terrible, not brilliant.

The art is consistently remarkable, and is almsot stunning. We3 has raised the bar I'm afraid.
 
 
FinderWolf
13:22 / 05.11.04
I agree with death at sunup

>> i also learnt that the four arnt the threat that their made out to be (funny that , 4 ego driven lunatics not really being that dangerous !).

Maybe the same can apply to my hatred of George W. Bush - that I need to remind myself there is a larger world out there and the universe will survive W's mayhem.
 
 
_Boboss
11:18 / 07.11.04
well, despite my usual excitement on the rare occasions when this title comes out i'm going to have to go with the thumbs-downs here. incredibly flat and conservative in its layout for a piece of psychedelia. the invisibles issue of planetary was number 9, and what did the linguaspores in this issue say that the three-d bullets in that didn't? wasn't even satisfying as a planetary treatment of...well, what? doctor strange? the filth? huh.
 
 
DaveBCooper
15:55 / 15.11.04
Don’t often read Planetary (like many avid followers of it, yes, I know, stop that at the back), but thought I’d buy an issue, why not. Skimmed through it in the shop, and thought ‘nice art as ever, I’ll buy this’.
And then when I read it through, it took about twice as long as my cursory skim. Decompression or pacing my well-formed backside, that’s padding. A perfect example of wRiting for the trade, or perhaps leaning on the artist.
Though in places the art didn’t look quite as polished as Cassaday’s does in AXM, which frankly I have no problem with, as that’s a comic where stuff happens and people do – as has already been pointed out – speak more than six words per panel, and at the end of the comic I find myself giving a monkey’s.
 
 
FinderWolf
17:13 / 15.11.04
I do like the message here, though, as alluded to in my earlier post, which is that a single-minded quest for revenge is a bit small minded and not very enlightened way to go about one's life. It kind of takes the piss out of the whole "He's a badass! He's mad as hell! He will get revenge at all costs!! Isn't he cool!?!?" storyline we've all seen so many times in heroic fiction.

Beware anger, it leads to the dark side...and so forth. And also, this notion that any focus on one thing as the sole focus in one's life blinds you to the larger tapestry of life & the big picture.
 
 
DaveBCooper
13:43 / 17.11.04
That’s true, though it kind of de-rails the story a bit, as hasn’t he spent the last 12 issues or so trying to hunt them down ? If the series is as close to its end as some of the rumours suggest, then that’s either misdirection on the creators’ part, or a sudden gear change. The latter of which provides something of a knee to the nads of the theory that the story’s all planned out in advance, if this is a sudden insight for Snow as opposed to something that’s been foreshadowed all along.

I’m not entirely sure about the above , I’ll freely admit, I tend to read it in collected format.
 
 
sleazenation
14:03 / 17.11.04
I believe there has been a change of format that would allow Ellis to spin the story on past issue24, the planned last issue. This would certainly come as welcome news to Wildstorm who have had considerable trouble replicating the initial success they had with Ellis' Authority and Planetary. Irregular as it is, Planetary is still a solid seller...
 
 
DaveBCooper
14:56 / 17.11.04
Sleaze, you confirmed my nasty suspicion that it was not an entirely creative decision that was at work here.

Though that’s not unusual, I just find it a bit ‘eh’ – after nodding in agreement at many of Ellis’s polemics on what’s wrong with comics, I find myself shaking my head when something this business-oriented seems to be dictating the way the story goes.

It’s as if the Bride has finally tracked Bill down, and then decided to live happily ever after with him. It makes it look as if the creators are making it up as they go along. Which might be about acceptable in an ongoing series, but in one with an allegedly defined end in mind, it looks pretty shoddy
 
 
sleazenation
15:19 / 17.11.04
From what I recall, Planetary had already deviated from its original plan seeing as it was intended to draw a line under the 20th century and terminate before the start of the 21st... It was also intended that each issue would be like a pop single - complete in an of itself... not spread over more than one part. The Planetary/Batman oneshot was also initially intended to form part of the run...

For what it's worth I don't think this is a case of Wildstorm forcing Ellis to revise his plans... it's a bit more complicated than that...
 
 
DaveBCooper
08:03 / 18.11.04
Okay, I’ll bite : could you elaborate, please ? I’m genuinely curious.
Is it connected to Ellis’s period of illness and personal problems pushing things back, and thus ‘losing’ the artists (howsoever temporarily) to other projects ?
 
 
The Falcon
16:39 / 18.11.04
Someone described this as a great big Mary Sue story of Ellis v. Marvel, and noted the alteration of attichood towards revised icons and timing as he 'whores' hisself there.

Which made a degree of sense.

I quite liked this on first read; it's all stuff we'd seen before (hey, Haus, you forgot the DMT world of Dark Blue, possibly 'cos you'd not read that - quite good, actually,) half of Pinchbeck's Breaking Open the Head but I love all that guff.

I find Ellis a little suspect discussing both occultism and hallucinogens though, mainly 'cos I doubt the extensivity of his field-research.
 
  
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