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Planetary, volume 1: All Over the World and Other Stories
Written by Warren Ellis, art by John Cassaday, published by DC/Wildstorm
Overview
Delving into the secret history of the Wildstorm Universe (at least at first), the series incorporates all manner of pop culture into the back history of the universe, including Hong Kong action films, Japanese Kaiju, pulp heroes, and – of course – comic book characters like the Justice League of America and the Fantastic Four.
From Ellis’ original series proposal:
“I’m talking about a world in the superhero genre whose only known heroes, for the most part, are sourced in conspiracy theory and hallucinated lien histories. What if, underneath all that, there was an entire classic old superhero world? What if there were huge Jack Kirby temples underground built by old gods or new, and ghostly cowboys riding the highways of the West for justice, and superspies in natty suits and 360-degree-vision shades fighting cold wars in the dark, and strange laughing killers kept in old Lovecraftian asylums… what if you had a hundred years of superhero history just slowly leaking out into this young and modern superhero world of the Wildstorm Universe?”
The original publication run of Planetary was plagued with significant delays initially due to the writer’s illness; the entire run of #27 issues took almost 11 years before it was fully published. However, while frustrating at the time, the series is now complete and the book itself doesn’t really suffer for the delays.
Art
John Cassaday provides interiors, with colors by the always lovely Laura Martin (née Depuy). The art is fantastically well-rendered.
Of special note are the covers (which I’m going to make you track down for yourself) – the idea was that each cover should have a distinct design that changed each issue. Even the series logo changed for each one.
