Post by Dizzy D on Jun 3, 2019 12:46:16 GMT -5
The Wildstorm #19 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: Jenny Sparks on board a spaceship (presumably the Mars Expedition of 1955, as her Mars Expedition lighter is floating in fron of her). Also floating around, a classic raygun and a glass of whisk(e)y. And as always, Jenny is smoking.
Page 1: Jenny tells the others about her history, arriving at the point of the 1955 Mars Expedition, mentioning that she had a bit of a hazy period before that, blaming either increased radio interference or Albert Hoffman's experiments on her. She also vaguely remembers sleeping with both Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles, though not at the same time. Angie is sceptical that the Skywatch saucers could make it to Mars. Jack is amazed that they are only at 1955, Jenny has been talking for 13 hours.
Not really a Wildstorm annotation, but the names Jenny drops are all real people. I think most people on this board will know them, but this is one for the kids:
Albert Hoffman is the scientist who discovered LSD. Rita Hayworth is of course one of the most famous Golden Age Hollywood actresses and Orson Welles is probably best known for (co-)writing, starring and directing Citizen Kane.
Page 2-8: Flashback to 1955, several large spacecraft arrive near Mars and release the Skywatch flying saucers. A trip back then took 39 days. Today their record is 41 hours. The Martian base needed to be build underground as protection against the radiation. Many people died off radiation during the building of the base and Jenny left Skywatch after returning to Earth, thinking that the whole organisation was filled with maniacs and that it got worse when Bendix took control. His plans to colonize the solar system are only halted by I.O. and the need for secrecy.
Page 9: Several news channels are seen: the Daily Planet has articles on Angie's Engineer suit being seen and disappearing, a serial killer called the Highway Ripper (with a picture of the car that Mark Slayton cut in half) and an interview with Voodoo about her influences, she claims that a voice in her head is her inspiration (something the Greeks called a Daemon). WGBS has articles on a freak meteorite stike that affects the weather (not sure if it's the effect of one of Bendix little sticks or Stephen Rainmaker) and an interview with a scientist that believes in a secret space program in parallel to the Apollo program.
Action News has an article on the urban legend of a girl ghost haunting billboards (Jenny Sparks) and a town being abducted (Skywatch work).
The parallel space program is obviously Skywatch, but in the original Wildstorm it's also the origin of the villains in Planetary, the Four. The abduction of the town is compared to a movie, "Infinite Crisis" (which is described as Darkseid's children go to Central City). I never read Infinite Crisis, but it was a DC Comics crossover. Darkseid is one of DC's major villains and Central City is home to the Flash in the DC universe. Oh and the Daily Planet is obviously a newspaper in the DC universe. Home to star reporter Lois Lane.
Page 10-11: Apollo and Midnighter, now fully visible, together in bed, watch the report on the abductions. Both immediately suspect Skywatch, though Midnighter does not think that they would be that obvious. Midnighter does not want to check it out, seeing it as too much of a threat, but Apollo is happily listing all the times Midnighter interfered while they should have been laying low. Midnighter does worry about the operation being at nighttime, Apollo being solar powered, but Apollo thinks that he just needs to charge the day before.
Apollo is a Superman analogue, but his dependency on sunlight has always been greater, so it makes sense that Midnighter is worried. This is the first time we see the two out of the shadows in this universe. Midnighter is a black man (in the original he's usually depicted as a blond, white man). Apollo has black hair, the original version had white hair. Personality-wise they are pretty much the same people they always were.
Page 12: Jackie is trying to figure out how Angie got all her equipment out of the building. She tells her team to prepare another attack on Skywatch.
Page 13-22: The Doctor asks the previous Doctors to tell her all about aliens living on Earth. Her body is asleep back on Earth in her bed. The same bed Jenny, Jack and Angie are sleeping in. One of the doctors, a Japanese woman, shows her how thousands of years ago an expedition from Khera was sent to Earth. She explains the Gaian Bottleneck to Shen (it was already mentioned earlier, but to recap: most forms of life die out rather than evolve. The Kherans want a slave race to help them escape this universe to a better one where life is easier and more plentiful. The Doctors don't know how exactly this is supposed to work, but it requires a planet full of sentient beings who willingly submit to the Kherans. The Japanese Doctor's source was John Colt and she shows what Earth would look like after the Kheran's succeed: a barren world with giant firepits.
Arriving on Earth, the Kherans discover that their antagonists, the Other (also known as Daemonites) are already on Earth. The Daemonites use a Shaper Engine to empower the indigenous species to protect the Earth (Jenny Sparks being an example). Emp turned against the Kherans and scuttled their vessel, his new mission to combine Kheran and human technology to uplift humanity as a species, becoming an equal to the Kherans instead of a subservient species. The Doctor thinks Emp's intentions are good, but there is information he lacks. The Japanese Doctor tells Shen that she's right that there are dark times approaching and reminds her of her task.
A whole lot of recap of the last 18 issues. Jenny's bedspread has the Wonder Woman icon on it.
The burned out Earth that the Doctor shows to Shen as the way the world would look after the Kherans were done with it, looks pretty much like Apokalips, Darkseid's world in the DC Universe. It can be unintended though, how many ways are there to show barren, burned out planets without making it look like Apokalips?
The Shaper Engines in the original Wildstorm universe where devices used by the Kheran's ancestors to seed planets with Kheran-like life to make colonization easier millions of years later. The device here seems to be a lot more benevolent.
The Cover: Jenny Sparks on board a spaceship (presumably the Mars Expedition of 1955, as her Mars Expedition lighter is floating in fron of her). Also floating around, a classic raygun and a glass of whisk(e)y. And as always, Jenny is smoking.
Page 1: Jenny tells the others about her history, arriving at the point of the 1955 Mars Expedition, mentioning that she had a bit of a hazy period before that, blaming either increased radio interference or Albert Hoffman's experiments on her. She also vaguely remembers sleeping with both Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles, though not at the same time. Angie is sceptical that the Skywatch saucers could make it to Mars. Jack is amazed that they are only at 1955, Jenny has been talking for 13 hours.
Not really a Wildstorm annotation, but the names Jenny drops are all real people. I think most people on this board will know them, but this is one for the kids:
Albert Hoffman is the scientist who discovered LSD. Rita Hayworth is of course one of the most famous Golden Age Hollywood actresses and Orson Welles is probably best known for (co-)writing, starring and directing Citizen Kane.
Page 2-8: Flashback to 1955, several large spacecraft arrive near Mars and release the Skywatch flying saucers. A trip back then took 39 days. Today their record is 41 hours. The Martian base needed to be build underground as protection against the radiation. Many people died off radiation during the building of the base and Jenny left Skywatch after returning to Earth, thinking that the whole organisation was filled with maniacs and that it got worse when Bendix took control. His plans to colonize the solar system are only halted by I.O. and the need for secrecy.
Page 9: Several news channels are seen: the Daily Planet has articles on Angie's Engineer suit being seen and disappearing, a serial killer called the Highway Ripper (with a picture of the car that Mark Slayton cut in half) and an interview with Voodoo about her influences, she claims that a voice in her head is her inspiration (something the Greeks called a Daemon). WGBS has articles on a freak meteorite stike that affects the weather (not sure if it's the effect of one of Bendix little sticks or Stephen Rainmaker) and an interview with a scientist that believes in a secret space program in parallel to the Apollo program.
Action News has an article on the urban legend of a girl ghost haunting billboards (Jenny Sparks) and a town being abducted (Skywatch work).
The parallel space program is obviously Skywatch, but in the original Wildstorm it's also the origin of the villains in Planetary, the Four. The abduction of the town is compared to a movie, "Infinite Crisis" (which is described as Darkseid's children go to Central City). I never read Infinite Crisis, but it was a DC Comics crossover. Darkseid is one of DC's major villains and Central City is home to the Flash in the DC universe. Oh and the Daily Planet is obviously a newspaper in the DC universe. Home to star reporter Lois Lane.
Page 10-11: Apollo and Midnighter, now fully visible, together in bed, watch the report on the abductions. Both immediately suspect Skywatch, though Midnighter does not think that they would be that obvious. Midnighter does not want to check it out, seeing it as too much of a threat, but Apollo is happily listing all the times Midnighter interfered while they should have been laying low. Midnighter does worry about the operation being at nighttime, Apollo being solar powered, but Apollo thinks that he just needs to charge the day before.
Apollo is a Superman analogue, but his dependency on sunlight has always been greater, so it makes sense that Midnighter is worried. This is the first time we see the two out of the shadows in this universe. Midnighter is a black man (in the original he's usually depicted as a blond, white man). Apollo has black hair, the original version had white hair. Personality-wise they are pretty much the same people they always were.
Page 12: Jackie is trying to figure out how Angie got all her equipment out of the building. She tells her team to prepare another attack on Skywatch.
Page 13-22: The Doctor asks the previous Doctors to tell her all about aliens living on Earth. Her body is asleep back on Earth in her bed. The same bed Jenny, Jack and Angie are sleeping in. One of the doctors, a Japanese woman, shows her how thousands of years ago an expedition from Khera was sent to Earth. She explains the Gaian Bottleneck to Shen (it was already mentioned earlier, but to recap: most forms of life die out rather than evolve. The Kherans want a slave race to help them escape this universe to a better one where life is easier and more plentiful. The Doctors don't know how exactly this is supposed to work, but it requires a planet full of sentient beings who willingly submit to the Kherans. The Japanese Doctor's source was John Colt and she shows what Earth would look like after the Kheran's succeed: a barren world with giant firepits.
Arriving on Earth, the Kherans discover that their antagonists, the Other (also known as Daemonites) are already on Earth. The Daemonites use a Shaper Engine to empower the indigenous species to protect the Earth (Jenny Sparks being an example). Emp turned against the Kherans and scuttled their vessel, his new mission to combine Kheran and human technology to uplift humanity as a species, becoming an equal to the Kherans instead of a subservient species. The Doctor thinks Emp's intentions are good, but there is information he lacks. The Japanese Doctor tells Shen that she's right that there are dark times approaching and reminds her of her task.
A whole lot of recap of the last 18 issues. Jenny's bedspread has the Wonder Woman icon on it.
The burned out Earth that the Doctor shows to Shen as the way the world would look after the Kherans were done with it, looks pretty much like Apokalips, Darkseid's world in the DC Universe. It can be unintended though, how many ways are there to show barren, burned out planets without making it look like Apokalips?
The Shaper Engines in the original Wildstorm universe where devices used by the Kheran's ancestors to seed planets with Kheran-like life to make colonization easier millions of years later. The device here seems to be a lot more benevolent.