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Planetary #22

We're The Great Old Ones Now

16:50 / 01.02.05

So I'm a little bewildered by Planetary #22 because I can't find my copy of #21, which maybe because I got grumpy and threw it out. But:

1. Ew!

2. Cool Lone Ranger stuff.

3. I think maybe I'm going to have to buy the TPB and read it all at once.

4. Eeeew!

5. Great artwork.

6. I'm really not sure I understand the new Elijah as a character. He's frankly rather evil.

7. Ew.

17:05 / 01.02.05

that last scene of W. Leather in his new shades seemed like a visual reference to something can't quite place it but did anyone else get that sence?

17:43 / 01.02.05

I had the exact same sense about those spiky shades... like I should get the connotation, but tip of the tongue type thing.

Still, nice art, as always, and looks like it's a small world after all.

Does this mean the parents of the Century Babies all had drugged microverse experiences? And that Anna Hark and Jakita Wagner lack souls like thier parents?

17:52 / 01.02.05

Jakita Wagner lack a soul? I think I missed mention of that.

18:12 / 01.02.05

Okay, ish 21 says that the Century Babies: Snow, Sparks, Mr. Hark, Blackstock, (Bret) Leather, etc... they are constructs, that they do not "belong" in the system.

Now, we're told that Dowling, pre-cosmic ray Dowling, knew that Century Baby kids were powerful and functionally immortal. Anna herself says that she must take the long view, and estimates her life at 300 years. Jakita is the daughter of Blackstock, and is over 70, I think.

Unless the girls took after their mothers in the whole "soul" business, they may be unnatural constructs like thier dads.

01:44 / 02.02.05

I really enjoyed this but I had forgotten just about everything in this series, who the fourth man was even. So I bought the Fourth Man trade and read it today, and it really reads a lot better this way. I have to say, I've long forgotten how good Ellis can be. I'll have to buy the third and fourth one now.

03:22 / 02.02.05

my main beef with this issue is that issue 21's ayahuasca revelation seems not to have happened. i know Snow mentions it, but it doesn't seem to have taken root.

Snow, Sparks, Mr. Hark, Blackstock, (Bret) Leather, etc.

could we make a list of all known Century Babies?

- Elijah Snow
- Jenny Sparks
- Lord Blackstock
- Bret Leather, the Spider
- the elder Hark (i forget his full name but i'm sure it's in the Doc Brass issue)
- Doc Brass (iirc)

who else?

lonely as a cloud...

12:22 / 02.02.05

Should Jenny Sparks be included in that list? OK, she is a century baby, but is she not something completely different from Mr Snow and the rest, being the Spirit of the 20th Century? Also - were we ever given an explanation as to why the century babies had all this power...?

13:10 / 02.02.05

The art in this issue was especially beautiful - loved the idea that his 'mask' is made of cinders, the tie-in/explanation for the silver bullets, etc. ....really good stuff. Though the overall plot of Planetary with the Four is getting a bit boring to me, maybe it's cause the book comes out so infrequently, not sure...

lonely as a cloud...

13:51 / 02.02.05

I do think that the infrequency kinda makes Planetary seem kinda boring and even infuriating. I reckon when it's all over, the trade's will makes a cracking read, though.

22:58 / 02.02.05

could we make a list of all known Century Babies?

- Elijah Snow
- Jenny Sparks
- Lord Blackstock
- Bret Leather, the Spider
- the elder Hark (i forget his full name but i'm sure it's in the Doc Brass issue)
- Doc Brass (iirc)

who else?

Also the High from the stormwatch run (who is killed splatting against a forcefield) - But is Planetary still connected to the wildstorm Universe? It seems to have drifted quite a bit away from it as far as I can tell...

And I'm with Nick on his point 6. Elijah seems to be acting quite 'evil'. Sending the Thing analogue to deep space, those spike glasses... There is a ruthlessness to his behaviour that wasn't present in the earlier issues.

04:14 / 03.02.05

"my main beef with this issue is that issue 21's ayahuasca revelation seems not to have happened. i know Snow mentions it, but it doesn't seem to have taken root."

I think that the new ish is actually a flashback, as Leather seems to have been in captivity for quite some time. For reasons that will become clear later, Ellis has gone all non-linear. Maybe he's been hanging with Grant.

08:14 / 03.02.05

well his 'counselling' did ivolve a load of aliens shouting 'you have no soul' at him. not too much of a shock he turns a bit more callous after that. good though, want to see snow get a proper pasting now. his grumpy ellis thing was punchable enough, but now he's taken that step too far and the laws of the universe he inhabits demand a nasty death.

this issue was good - the flashbacks and pulp reworkings are what this title is about, the silly 'plot' that it often pretends to have gets nowhere but in the way. the shadow and western comics in general, nice to see the link being made, the simplistic ballistic justice thing that the pulps and westerns share.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:52 / 03.02.05

The High - well, yes and no. John Cumberland was born on an alternate Earth. John Stone, on the other hand, most definitely is one of the turn-of-the-century babies. So, possibly, is Ambrose Chase's father, who is a surivivor of City Zero. I also wonder about the Wonder Woman analogue from issue ten (Magic & Loss) and the captain of the Nautilus from issue eleven (Cold World). The latter might well be from the previous century, like Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, but it's impossible to say, because Elijah was on the Nautilus in 1959.

Porn Star Justice

14:16 / 03.02.05

Most of the major players in the Planetary universe have analogues in mainstream comics or pulps. Doc Savage, Lone Ranger, Nick Fury, Fantastic Four, et al.

Who is Elijah Snow supposed to be? Or are the main characters (Snow, Jakita, Drummer) all "new"?

14:26 / 03.02.05

I think the 3 main characters are their own special selves, though Jakita is clearly the archetype of the superstrong ass kicking babe.

14:28 / 03.02.05

he's 'the ghost of the twentieth century'. like , i spose, the hdden variable or unifying principle, like the suspension of belief required to bother engaging with the funnybooks in the first place. he's the extra bit, the system's fulcrum, hidden beneath the layers of cogs and gears. more metaphors to the mix?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

14:38 / 03.02.05

Well, up to a point, I suppose Elijah is a Mister Freeze analogue - there have been references in that direction. It's pretty tenuous... though if Elijah gets more evil, I suppose it gets more plausible. Tom suggested (I'm bastardising a complex notion) that superheros preserve the status quo, and supervillains are unsatisfied by it and seek to reshape the world after their own perceptions. It's an interesting proposal in the light of the Planetary/Authority/Stormwatch timeline of Ellis's writing. In this case, with the Four representing an eeeeevil status quo, Elijah would be an anti-supervillain. Rather different from a superhero.

14:46 / 03.02.05

that gives him motivation too - it could have been mrs. snow who died on the nautilus.

he's still being too down on marvel for my liking - elly's just looking like a big brown humbug for the fun and light of the migty marvel sixties. where's the kid driven mad and mutated by the bite from the radioactive insect, and the mysterious disabled millionaire with a secret army of omnipotent pacifists in upstate new york?

14:53 / 03.02.05

In the pages of RUINS.

14:57 / 03.02.05

i never read issue two of that, but, well if dmt can make your kids immortal and superpowered then radiation can be a bit more funky in its effects than 'everyone got cancer! that's right, CANCER! can you handle that fanboy?! GRRR'. planetary isn't actual hard sf, it just dresses up like it.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

16:35 / 03.02.05

There was a wheelchair-bound bald bloke in issue fourteen - he was the chap who helped Elijah get to the Four's ammo dump on the dead world. We know nothing about him except that he appears to work with high tech, although he presumably can't move objects with his mind because he has a special gauntlet for holding the weapon to activate it. Now that I think about it, the weapon was Thor's hammer, wasn't it?

18:24 / 03.02.05

And don't forget, the first-ever PLANETARY story (an eight-page backup feature, reprinted in ALL OVER THE WORLD) is an Incredible Hulk story.

I kind of like the idea that the start of Marvel's heroic age -- the Fantastic Four -- are the arch-nemeses in this universe. After all, it's published by DC.

20:17 / 03.02.05

Then when do we get to see Image? Will we investigate an analogue of Spawn™? One that frequents that strange little bar where Hell is only a seige engine? Will the forces of Planetary (DC) and the forces of the Four (Marvel) unite against the threat of homogenized battle of BIG and BIGGER GUNS?

20:20 / 03.02.05

I thought the century babies with super powers was a reference to Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

20:35 / 03.02.05

I'd be fascinated to see Planetary meet the Invisibles, too...

But actually, I just want a decent resolution to this wild ride, and maybe for the magazine to come out on a regular basis.

And now I have to read Midnight's Children, which I swore I would never do.

20:47 / 03.02.05

I'm a big Planetary fan, at least of the first fifteen issues. The later issues were a bit hit or miss for me, but I think there were some good points to them.

But now suddenly every character is a century baby, or the child of one. This bothers me a bit, I feel like it stretches the concept more than it needs.

Jenny Sparks is a century baby, and much like Snow she existed as part of the universal immune system (she existed to kill God in the Authority). However, as the "Spirit of the Twentieth Century" she was uniquely connected to it, and died when it did. Doc Brass is also a century baby, created to protect things (in this case the alternate-JLA that he himself unleashed with his snowflake computer). The Drummer makes mention of all of this in the Authority-Planetary teamup.

Hark calls Snow "the ghost of the Twentieth Century," I guess as a counterpart to Jenny Sparks being the spirit. I guess that this would mean that he occupies a counterpart position to her. However, since he has now survived the time that killed Sparks, it makes it all rather moot. Of course, if Planetary had come out in a timely manner like it was supposed to, it would have finished before 2000, as Ellis intended.

I guess we can assume that most of the characters in Doc Brass's group are century babies (once again, I personally think this is stupid). John Stone is another matter. He may or may not be one. Certainly he has the longevity. But as he is a Nick Fury analogue, he might have some sort of serum analogue as well (the name of Fury's serum escapes me at the moment). However, there are also hints that John Stone is also Jimmy, the spy character from the Adirondack group.

As for Snow becoming evil, he has always been a bit of a bastard (at least an Ellis-bastard). He has been willing to do whatever he needs, particularly where it concerns the Four. However, he might be going a bit more in that direction since he found out that he not a human, but rather a dimensional construct with no soul. Learning this might have let him feel disconnected from humanity, allowed him to go whole-hog crazy. Just a theory anyway.

20:57 / 03.02.05

Planetary started out directly in the Wildstorm Universe. But I would have to liken it to early Vertigo, straddling that line. Or something like Hypertime, where it begins, and then moves into a divergent universe. Many of the stories begin with Wildstorm U bits (Authority, Stormwatch) and then later completely ignore them.

Books of Magic was originally an examination of magic characters in the DCU, now it has nothing to do with it. Ditto to Swamp Thing and Sandman, Hellblazer too. Lucifer on the other hand, started as part of the Sandman Universe, and now has little to nothing to do with it, directly contradicting some of it, and only using characters when it is convenient. But the last issue of Lucifer was fucking great.

00:05 / 05.02.05

I thought it was cool that the blood from Leather's eyes looks a lot like the tracings the "scientist" made on page 4, panel 4 of the previous issue.

The Planetary Comic Appreciation Page has a review/analysis of the new issue here.

05:23 / 05.02.05

If the implications about Doc Brass on that site bear out, it's possible that Elijah's behavior is meant to draw him out.

13:43 / 05.02.05

I'm not sure exactly what those implications are (and I find that a bit annoying, given this is a fan site devoted to speculation) but near as I can figure, he's trying to say Brass IS Dowling.

17:05 / 05.02.05

He appears to be suggesting that Brass is not only Doc Savage, but also Doctor Doom.

18:04 / 05.02.05

Hrm...

Lord Blackstock = The Jungle Lord?

I immediately assumed they were separate characters -that in Ellis Wildstorm, there were two Tarzans. Africa's a big place... why not? The Brass team one had brown hair as I recall, while Jakita's dad has black hair and a predilection for either bisexuality or beastiality. Which is cool, I guess.

Anyone able to confirm or refute this?

19:46 / 05.02.05

It's assumed Tarzan = Black Stock = The Jungle Lord
This makes the most streamlined sense given the evidence available. However, I don't think Ellis knew the Jungle Lord would be Jakita's father when he wrote the pulp issue.

21:15 / 05.02.05

I'm not so sure about that. There are a lot of hints about Jakita's past in the early issues.