Planetary, Volume 1

Surprisingly great read

Still on this comics kick. This is a Warren Ellis joint, which puts it in the company of Transmetropolitan and The Authority.

Let me put this upfront: I liked this one a lot. I'm going to continue the series.

I think Planetary is a bit tricky to define, at least so far. Is it a superhero series? It's hard to say, although I've heard it described as a modern update of one. It isn't your customary superheroes-in-spandex-fight-crime deal. It isn't a black-and-white, 1950s good-versus-evil series either. The primary character – so far, anyway – seems to be basically an all right guy, but he isn't very friendly or charismatic, and neither are his colleagues. They all definitely have extrahuman abilities and are larger than life.

That primary character is Elijah Snow, who can do some temperature-related things as far as I've seen – that's one thing about at least this volume, there isn't actually all that much superpowering through things. His colleagues are Jakita Wagner, who does I don't know what apart from packing a punch and being very hard to hurt, and a guy known as “The Drummer,” who has some kind of weird electrical... thing going on. I don't know exactly what his deal is but it does seem to be percussion-based. All three are members of an organization called Planetary, who do a sort of clandestine traveling around the world keeping the stuff on the borders of human awareness on the right side of those borders. Motivations are as yet unclear, other than getting paid a bunch of money.

Speaking of Jakita, one gripe, and I know this is kind of a cliché complaint at this point. Elijah Snow typically wears all white: suit, shirt, tie, hair, you get the idea. The Drummer wears casualwear of some description. Jakita wears... close-fitting vinyl. The book doesn't generally feel like T&A, but come on, guys. You're continuing to perpetuate the reputation of the genre and of the community.

Issue #3 was my favorite section writing-wise. A lot of this volume is monster-of-the-week type stuff, but you can see the foundations for bigger stories being laid.

Reading others' reviews, it's clear that a lot of what's going on in Planetary is an examination of the history and tropes of past comics. For someone like me, with only a passing familiarity with the medium, the experience will necessarily be different than for a long-time comics reader who's better equipped to know what themes and references Ellis is playing on.