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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 20, 2021 13:14:56 GMT -5
 Planetary #6 by Ellis and CassadayThe book is a treasure trove of Easter eggs for Fantastic Four fans some coming through the exposition from Drummer and some from what Snow and Wagner find through their infiltration of the tower. The Tower is apparently a ringer for Four Freedoms Plaza, which apparently took the place of The Baxter Building after I stopped reading (or maybe just remembering and paying attention to) the FF. I wasn't clear, within the logic of this story, why there was a Plaza commemorating The Four if they were a secret project. "Apollo Program" vs "Artemis Program" was a cute touch. So... the cover has that iron-cross looking flag opposite the American flag. Is that meant as a specifically German symbol, or as an Artemis thing in particular? I ask because of another Grant Morrison moment in Final Crisis: Superman Beyond where another character has that flag:  Speaking of Nazis, did anyone else notice the "4" logo becoming a swastika?  Probably meant as a reference to the German rocket scientists brought into the US space program, via Operation Paperclip, including Werner Von Braun. With that fight image, it looks like it is meant to invoke the Teutonic Knights, who the Nazis mythologized, as part of their German destiny propaganda. |
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 20, 2021 15:38:15 GMT -5
I think Ellis picked the Fantastic Four because it fit the theme of the whole Planetary series: Richards creates tons of inventions that he then keeps locked away in his lab and it never seemed to affect the world outside the Baxter Building. Other heroes have done some inventions, but I think Reed Richards is probably the most prolific inventor/superhero in comics that keeps creating these amazing inventions that only exist for a single story. So thematically you have somebody 'burying' amazing things vs. our archaeologists of the amazing. Yeah, I think that's part of it. It seemed to me that Ellis was slamming Reed Richards for being such a genius and inventing all these amazing things without doing anything to help humanity. |
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Post by berkley on Mar 20, 2021 22:03:28 GMT -5
The Hong Kong one was an homage to the action films of the 80s and early 90s, in HK Cinema. It's not just John Woo, but also Ringo Lam, the two most high profile. I got pretty heavily into that stuff in the early 90s, after reading some criticism of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, which remarked about scenes and characters he cribbed from City on Fire and A Better Tomorrow. City on Fire is directed by Ringo Lam and is a great action/character film about a robbery that goes wrong and ends up in a siege situation, while A Better Tomorrow is more of a character study about a criminal and his real brother, a cop, and his spiritual brother, another criminal, played by Chow Yun-Fat. Woo and Chow Yun-Fat were synonymous, as he also appeared in The Killer (as a hitman, largely inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, with Alain Delon) and Hard Boiled (as a cop). Those films got a lot of international attention, leading to Woo coming over to do Face Off and Hard Target, and CYF also came over and did The Replacement Killers and Bulletproof Monk. This period also saw a revival of the period kung fu films, with Jet Li as Wong Fei Hung, directed by Tsui Hark. Hark also directed Chinese Ghost Story, which mixed kung fu and the supernatural. Other filmmakers followed in their footsteps, with other action heroes, like Donnie Yen. So, Ellis is mixing a lot of that. Each of these has been an homage to specific genres or subgenres. Issue one deals with pulp heroes, the antecedents of the superheroes. Issue 2 has the kaiju of Godzilla and his buddies and rivals. 3 is the Honk Kong tribute, while 4 is Captain Marvel (the real one). 5 is more pulp, 6 is The Fantastic Four (and Challengers of the Unknown), 7 is the Vertigo bunch and their creators/writers. 8 is 50s sci-fi movies (atomic monsters and the like), 9 gets into the past of Planetary, while also mixing in Men in Black conspiracy theories and more vintage sci-fi. 10 is a sort of JLA homage and 11 is a spy romp, with homages to Steranko Nick Fury, Bond and other 60s icons. 12 serves as kind of a summary and answers to some questions that have been built up. Issue 13 is one of my favorites, as it explores the Victorian scientific romances, horror stories and other genre fictions that inspired modern SF/horro/pulp novels and comic books, with homages to Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and others of that world, much like Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Lot of meta-fiction stuff in this, like LOEG and Philip Jose Farmer's Would newton Universe. Hard part of all of this was how long a gap there could be between issues. I much preferred this to The Authority, both in the writing and the art. Cassaday is a bit more versatile an artist and storyteller than Hitch, for my money. Also, Ellis on the Authority had a tendency to repeat the same story beats, as the group would kick butt, then get their butt kicked, then suddenly defeat their enemy. It didn't always feel earned, to me. Planetary seemed to be better thought out, long term.
I don't think I've read The Authority, but could it be that it was meant to be more of a traditional superhero series, or at least a variation on that theme? As opposed to Planetary's meta (meta-meta) approach.
I had a similar experience to yours with HK movies: in my case it was Woo's The Killer that was my gateway. One of the things I liked about Tarantino was his admiration of HK film and his obvious film-fanaticism in general. |
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 22, 2021 5:25:35 GMT -5
 Planetary #7 by Ellis and CassadayAfter some significant world-building in the last couple of issues Ellis and Cassady come back with an homage issue that still manages to expand the Planetary milieu. The story opens with Jack Carter being dead. Carter was Planetary's window on England in the 80s. He was also Planetary's answer to John Constantine and his death and this story gives the creators an opportunity to look at the British Invasion of comics in the 1980s and into the 90s.  The trio head to Jack's funeral in London and it gives them, us and Ellis and Cassiday a chance to look at the results of British creators playing with our comic book toys...and creating a few of their own. The funeral is attended by a number of analogues of characters who were created or re-defined by British creators in the 80s and into the 90s.  Well some of them attend. Some are just feeding the pigeons.  Jakita tells Snow a story of Jack Carter. On Christmas Eve, following a nasty bit of business with an ex-girlfriend, Carter comes across an invisible assassin, known as a Herod, on his way to prevent the second-coming at the behest of the Prime Minister. It's a very Constantine kind of story with a very Constantine kind of ending that Ellis uses to demonstrate the feelings about these British creators toward the Thatcher administration.  Jakita wants to see where Carter died as closure. At the corner of Moorcock Rd. where he was beaten to death Drummer detects significant magic. Snow determines that Carter fakes his death, which brings out a very 90s looking superhero who "killed" Carter for exposing the parade of sins that kept him from being the boring pristine hero he had previously been. Carter appears and puts the poor sod out of his misery and we see that he's changed from Constantine to Spider Jerusalem.  There's just a ton of deeper meaning here. This was written about the time that Ellis quit his aborted run on Hellblazer after the censorship of his "Shoot" story. It's also significant that this issue was cover-dated Jan. 2000. Just as the previous wave of Brit-helmed comics ushered the transition from the 80s to the 90s and the birth of Vertigo, Ellis seems to be saying that the move from the 90s to the 2000s will involve creators doing their own work instead of playing in someone else's sandbox, with the transition of Constantine to Jerusalem. Ellis also spends a lot of time explaining the difference between the politics in the UK and the US in the 80s, something I think that a lot of US readers didn't and still don't understand. I think this also ties in with the very different class-consciousness that seems to make it very hard for American readers to understand the viewpoint and the sense of humor of Brit writers. I will, say as a fan of most of the books that Ellis poked at here, I loved it. "Magic is the cheat code of the Universe." - Drummer. This is another one, like the HK action flicks, where many of the references are lost on me. I pretty much missed out on the British Invasion of the 80s/90s. I did get right away that Jack Carter was supposed to be John Constantine, even though I've never read anything with John Constantine, and I recognized the Swamp Thing (and the Metal Men??) at the funeral, but I've never even heard of Siper Jeruselem. I'm glad I have you here to explain these things to me. I'll just have to enjoy the ride for these issues where I'm a little lost on certain things. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 22, 2021 9:18:51 GMT -5
Planetary #7 by Ellis and CassadayThere's just a ton of deeper meaning here. This was written about the time that Ellis quit his aborted run on Hellblazer after the censorship of his "Shoot" story. It's also significant that this issue was cover-dated Jan. 2000. Just as the previous wave of Brit-helmed comics ushered the transition from the 80s to the 90s and the birth of Vertigo, Ellis seems to be saying that the move from the 90s to the 2000s will involve creators doing their own work instead of playing in someone else's sandbox, with the transition of Constantine to Jerusalem. Ellis also spends a lot of time explaining the difference between the politics in the UK and the US in the 80s, something I think that a lot of US readers didn't and still don't understand. I think this also ties in with the very different class-consciousness that seems to make it very hard for American readers to understand the viewpoint and the sense of humor of Brit writers. I will, say as a fan of most of the books that Ellis poked at here, I loved it. "Magic is the cheat code of the Universe." - Drummer. This is another one, like the HK action flicks, where many of the references are lost on me. I pretty much missed out on the British Invasion of the 80s/90s. I did get right away that Jack Carter was supposed to be John Constantine, even though I've never read anything with John Constantine, and I recognized the Swamp Thing (and the Metal Men??) at the funeral, but I've never even heard of Siper Jeruselem. I'm glad I have you here to explain these things to me. I'll just have to enjoy the ride for these issues where I'm a little lost on certain things. The Metal Men are a bit of an anomaly in that while they got a re-boot in the time period I don't recall it being by a British creator. You can also see The Demon (who got a run by Garth Ennis), Animal Man & The Creator (Grant Morrison), a number of members of Doom Patrol and Shade, the Changing Man. Spider Jerusalem is the star of Ellis' own Transmetropolitan and is a thinly veiled SF version of Hunter S. Thompson. Allegedly it was supposed to be Morrison's King Mob that appeared at the end, but Cassaday gave him Jerusalem's tattoos instead. It's been a LONG time since I've read the appropriate interviews with Ellis to be able to confirm or deny that. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 22, 2021 11:19:20 GMT -5
The Demon really got a revival with the Matt Wagner mini-series, which set the tone for his use thereafter; so, while he was used by guys like Ennis and Gaiman, Wagner is the guy that showed the way.
The Smiley Faced guy is supposed to be Mr Smiley, from Prez, who appeared in Sandman, relating the events of his short-lived comic, while Gaiman added new layers.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 22, 2021 14:03:50 GMT -5
 Planetary #8 by Ellis & CassadayWe're back to a fairly straight-forward homage issue, with just a bit of world-building thrown in. Ellis and Cassaday give us an homage to the SF movies of the 1950s and a look at the Red Scare of the same time period (which underlay much of that movie making). The title of the story is even an homage to "The Day the Earth Stood Still." The team meets up with "Allison" (a Marilyn Monroe lookalike) at U.S. Science City Zero, a secret government city where "dissidents were subjected to Atomic experiments. The dissidents, in this case being writers, actors, etc. who may or may not have been actual reds, but faced a significantly worse fate than just a blacklist. Before being able to investigate, the team is set upon by giant ants...and who can blame Them!  Jakita defeats the ants and Allison gives the group a tour of the facility and a bit of history of the experiments conducted by Randall Dowling before the Artemis mission and possibly partly funded by Anna Hark. The results are a run-down of many of the monsters of 1950s SF movies, an invisible man, a 50-foot woman, a disgraced officer turned in to a gigantic oversized brute, a man with an atomic snowflake brain. Allison herself was executed by firing squad and then brought back to life by atomic means...with an atomic half-life of fifty years.   Ultimately, like all old stars and out-lived genres, Allison just fades away.  This was actually a fairly quiet issue. We do get a bit of back-story about Dowling and Hark and the world of Planetary. It's interesting that here we definitely have monsters that were created by atomic power (though possibly through the addition of the Snowflake) when in issue #2 Jakita poo-pooed the idea that the Kaiju could be the result of atomic testing. It's interesting that while Hollywood found ways around the censorship of content by use of subtext (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for example), comics embraced the Comics Code and infantilized the medium for at least a decade. Cassaday again uses cinematic iconography, particularly in the first few pages of the story. And the flashbacks are in black & white to evoke the SF movies they're homaging. "But the actual joke was even worse. There was no real "Red Threat." They were as afraid of us as we were of them." |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2021 19:02:17 GMT -5
The Demon really got a revival with the Matt Wagner mini-series, which set the tone for his use thereafter; so, while he was used by guys like Ennis and Gaiman, Wagner is the guy that showed the way. The Smiley Faced guy is supposed to be Mr Smiley, from Prez, who appeared in Sandman, relating the events of his short-lived comic, while Gaiman added new layers. I don't know, I think Alan Moore's use of the Demon in Swamp Thing and establishing the rhyming demon was a more significant factor in reviving the Demon and is what paved the way for Wagner being able to do a Demon mini. Without Moore's transformation of the character in the pages of Swamp Thing, Wagner's mini never gets the green light. -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 30, 2021 11:31:02 GMT -5
 Planetary #9 by Ellis & Cassaday This issue gives us the first really deep dig in to the history of Planetary with a look at the team pre-Elijah Snow. The story starts with a spaceship crashed in to a farmhouse. It is removed to a lab and we find that the ship left with three occupants and returned with four. We also learn that it was created by a team of "creatives" who have now been terminated under a kill order (shades of Watchmen). As the folk at the lab work to open the vessel and ascertain who is inside we get our first look at Ambrose Chase and the Planetary team that pre-dates Snow.  Chase projects a "reality distortion field" that allows him to, among other things, redirect the path of bullets. The Planetary team certainly knows what is going down in the lab as we find out that the ship has returned from "Planet Fiction." This team, or at least this mission, seems significantly more pro-active than the generally re-active Planetary that we've seen thus far. Ultimately we find out that the villain has created a fictional world and then sent three fictionauts in to it. They came back with someone...or something...from that world and it's loose in the Planetary world.  Chase's powers, and the issue in general, track along with The Matrix at least in the fight scenes and wire-fu. The movie was released in March of '99 and this issue hit the stands just about a year later. The Villain is able to shoot and presumably kill Chase which leads to a flashback that shows that his father was a survivor of Science City and that he was asked by The Fourth Man to be The Third Man along with a suggestion to wear white suits.  The villain indicates that there's some possibility that he knows that Planetary is fiction.  This is almost unquestionably my least favorite issue thus far. I hadn't re-read this one in a LONG time and had pretty well forgotten it. The initial re-read didn't work for me at all. I've now read it an additional two or three times and it's better, but still not really my cup. The story is dedicated to Grant Morrison, which makes some sense given Morrison's interest in the nature of fiction (though you can say the same about Gaiman). Ellis' story here is not straightforward in any way and you really have to pay attention to each panel and word balloon in this one. “We’re in a strange relationship with our fiction.. Sometimes we fear it’s taking us over, sometimes we beg to be taken over by it… Sometimes we want to see what’s inside of it.” |
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 30, 2021 12:10:10 GMT -5
This kind of brings up a pet peeve of mine, about Ellis' superhero work. He creates these characters with immense powers that make them pretty unbeatable, unless he suddenly needs them to be vulnerable and then they are all-powerful with the flick of a switch. Once in a while he gives a rationale; but, generally he doesn't. There is often no logic on how they could manifest said powers, aside from "comic book wonder science that just works, so shut up!" Yeah, it's a fault of most superhero comics, especially X-Men, where "mutant" just meant we don't have to concoct and origin for the power. How can Scarlet Witch alter reality? Mutant! Mutations come in response to stimuli; what stimuli causes that? How can Elijah Snow manipulate cold? Based on thermodynamics, there has to be an exchange of heat and cold; so, if he is creating intense cold, where is the immense heat?
Doesn't bug me enough not to enjoy the stories; but it does float through my head when I reread them.
ps The rocket coming back with an extra passenger sounds distinctly like The Quatermass Experiment.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 30, 2021 12:15:29 GMT -5
This kind of brings up a pet peeve of mine, about Ellis' superhero work. He creates these characters with immense powers that make them pretty unbeatable, unless he suddenly needs them to be vulnerable and then they are all-powerful with the flick of a switch. Once in a while he gives a rationale; but, generally he doesn't. There is often no logic on how they could manifest said powers, aside from "comic book wonder science that just works, so shut up!" Yeah, it's a fault of most superhero comics, especially X-Men, where "mutant" just meant we don't have to concoct and origin for the power. How can Scarlet Witch alter reality? Mutant! Mutations come in response to stimuli; what stimuli causes that? How can Elijah Snow manipulate cold? Based on thermodynamics, there has to be an exchange of heat and cold; so, if he is creating intense cold, where is the immense heat? Doesn't bug me enough not to enjoy the stories; but it does float through my head when I reread them. ps The rocket coming back with an extra passenger sounds distinctly like The Quatermass Experiment.I mostly tend to ignore the issue of how powers work because that way lies madness. Which is why "realistic superhero comics" is one of my bugaboos. They're inherently silly. Looking at a few different sources Quatermass and also Neon Genesis Evangelion are both cited as potential inspirations for parts of this issue. And both are complete blind-spots for me. Quatermass is the one of the two that is most likely to come out of the blind-spot, but there is so much content and so little time. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 30, 2021 15:00:12 GMT -5
This kind of brings up a pet peeve of mine, about Ellis' superhero work. He creates these characters with immense powers that make them pretty unbeatable, unless he suddenly needs them to be vulnerable and then they are all-powerful with the flick of a switch. Once in a while he gives a rationale; but, generally he doesn't. There is often no logic on how they could manifest said powers, aside from "comic book wonder science that just works, so shut up!" Yeah, it's a fault of most superhero comics, especially X-Men, where "mutant" just meant we don't have to concoct and origin for the power. How can Scarlet Witch alter reality? Mutant! Mutations come in response to stimuli; what stimuli causes that? How can Elijah Snow manipulate cold? Based on thermodynamics, there has to be an exchange of heat and cold; so, if he is creating intense cold, where is the immense heat? Doesn't bug me enough not to enjoy the stories; but it does float through my head when I reread them. ps The rocket coming back with an extra passenger sounds distinctly like The Quatermass Experiment.I mostly tend to ignore the issue of how powers work because that way lies madness. Which is why "realistic superhero comics" is one of my bugaboos. They're inherently silly. Looking at a few different sources Quatermass and also Neon Genesis Evangelion are both cited as potential inspirations for parts of this issue. And both are complete blind-spots for me. Quatermass is the one of the two that is most likely to come out of the blind-spot, but there is so much content and so little time. Well, given the Quatermass Experiment first appeared on the BBC in 1953, and the theatrical version in 1955; my money is on that. It spawned Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit, all done as BBC serials, then movies. It was a big inspiration for Dr Who and a pretty big deal in British sci-fi. Maeanwhile, Neon Genesis Evnagalion didn't debut until 1994. Given the Ellis age and cultural history, I would say Quatermass is a safe bet. In the original serial, a rocket returns to Earth after the first manned space flight, launched by the British Experimental Rocket group, which Prof Bernard Quatermass heads. All of the crew, except one, is dead and he is actually a host for an alien parasitic lifeform. The lifeform continues to mutate and grow, though Quatermass discovers a weakness to high voltage electricity. In the film version, it is destroyed by a massive blast of electricity, from a BBC transmitting power hook-up. In the serial version, Quatermass appeals to the human minds engulfed in side the entity and they turn against the entity and destroy it. In the second serial, Earth is bombarded by meteorites, which contain alien creatures. A nearby chemical plant contains a secret related to the meteors, as well as a township created for the workers. Quatermass has to work to destroy another growing alien lifeform. In the third, an alien ship is uncovered in a subway tunnel that is undergoing construction work. Tests release some kind of telepathic horror, which turns out to be linked to records of ancient evil. Here's the US trailer, under the title The Creeping Unknown... Bit of irony there, with Jack Hawkins as the police inspector, as Hawkins starred in the long running police series Dixon of Dock Green. Brian Donlevy stars as Quatermass in it and the sequel, Quatermas II, aka Enemy from Space. Andrew Keir would take over the role for Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Years to Earth). John Mills starred in a tv serial (edited together as a tv movie), in 1979, and Jason Fleyming starred in a 2005 BBC remake of the original serial. |
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Post by mikelmidnight on Mar 31, 2021 11:32:59 GMT -5
This kind of brings up a pet peeve of mine, about Ellis' superhero work. He creates these characters with immense powers that make them pretty unbeatable, unless he suddenly needs them to be vulnerable and then they are all-powerful with the flick of a switch.
I'm not concerned about scientific gobbledygook explanation for the powers. But yes, it did bother me that at times, Elijah Snow would take out incredibly powerful opponents easily, just for effect, but there's no explanation why he doesn't take out every opponent that way and seems hapless most of the time.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 29, 2021 10:33:19 GMT -5
 Planetary #10 by Ellis and CassadayThis time around Ellis & Cassaday give us a look at why the Planetary U. doesn't have analogues of DC's big guns. Snow is supervising a team that is cataloging the remains of the Four Voyagers Plaza. Everyone's attention is drawn to three artifacts, a blanket, an alien power battery and a pair of bracers.  In flashback we see an alien couple whose planet is in its death throes. They have combined their DNA into a new life and it is being rocketed to safety.  In another flashback we find an individual being welcomed into an intergalactic police force and some of the history of the force and the battery that lights their way. He gains their powers.  An ancient civilization that has been hidden for centuries is prepared to send their daughter and champion to the outer world to teach them peace. They know she will be hated.  We then learn their fate. At the hands of The Four.  Snow decides that it's time to take a more active hand in the world and its secrets.  In some ways there's not a lot going on in this issue. We find that The Four killed this universe's Superman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman analogues. It certainly goes a long way to showing their evil depravity, particularly William Leather killing an infant Superman in is birthing matrix. The historical analogue is fairly clear. The Fantastic Four were the first of the new blood. And while they didn't kill the DC heroes, they certainly knocked them off their throne at the pinnacle of super-hero-hood. It's increasingly clear that Snow is no longer willing to be a passive observer of the weird corners of the world. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 29, 2021 12:00:36 GMT -5
I really wish the Donner Superman hadn't started the nonsense of the S Symbol being a Kryptonian thing. Jonathan Kent created it....end of story!
This is definitely a more passive issue, relating a tale more than using it as background to the Planetary action. Next issue is a bit of a favorite, with the homage to Steranko and super-spies. Of course, Ellis trots out his little Soviet nuclear bar, from Stormwatch.
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