Planetary is an incredible exercise in uncovering and exploring—and occasionally exploding—the big narratives of comic and popular culture. Every issue / chapter is self-contained, taking a trope from the schlock culture of the past and interrogating it a bit. You could view it like a few volumes of short stories each one taking a code concept that we're familiar with and doing something wild and new and fascinating with it and you'd not be far wrong.Partly it's about adding human emotion and re...

I've been wanting to read these graphic novels for a VERY long time. I couldn't find them anywhere and I finally had to put in for an interlibrary loan for the compendium because they didn't have the single volumes. After reading Invincible, I missed the non DC/Marvel superhero/sci-fi story. When I found Planetary I was very excited! After reading the first volume, it's everything I've been missing! Planetary Volume 1 has a great range of characters. Some are still mysterious, but the others see...

Planetary consistently keeps showing up on my recommended feed, so on that alone I decided to pick this up. If Goodreads is insistent on the fact that I have to read this book, that's a good thing right? You couldn't be further from the truth. I was confused with this graphic novel, the storyline felt like it could have something special but ultimately didn't deliver. I really like Elijah Snow, everyone else I could do without. I really didn't develop a connection with them and in the end, I did...

I think the Planetary series by Ellis and Cassaday may be one of the most ambitious, and certainly most enjoyable, comics (excuse me, I mean graphic novels!) that I have ever read. It is yet another post-Watchmen, post-Dark Knight meta-textual exploration of the genre, but manages to be one that doesn’t lose its sense of humour or sense of wonder as it dissects some of the weird, wonderful, and even silly elements of the genre…no small feat! Also, Ellis does not restrict himself solely to an exa...

Planetary has always seemed to me to be a less than substantial series of Warren Ellis’. They’re a group that fit in between The Authority and Stormwatch and act as a sort of Vector-13 but with superpowers. Also, Ellis really lets go of any subtlety of concept here, he just goes for it. So there are stories of a group in the 40s who built a machine that created the world or can create the world and brought about the end of the world but the man who learned to not age survived and guarded the por...

That's been a whole lotta awesome. But hell if I know what's going on.It's almost like one of those TV shows where the clock is set to zero with every new episode and there's very little continuity.Well, it‘s almost like that. Because there were just enough recurring themes to at least make me wonder if I had missed something.Maybe it’s just that whole multiverse thing that made it sometimes a little confusing.Or it’s me being stupid. Though that’s unlikely. Amiright?!Am I right? *silence ensues...

Stop me if you've heard this one. An albino, a female version of The Flash, and a tech expert named The Drummer all walk into a bar... If you haven't heard this one it's probably because you haven't because its not funny. And this non-joke is just as mirthless as the aforementioned protagonists of Warren Ellis' Planetary.For a series that has received innumerous accolades its a little disheartening (to say the least) that such boring and uninspiring characters drive it. And the lackluster doesn'...

This great book by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday, you know that you are about to read something really good when you see that the introduction is by Alan Moore himself. This first tpb introduces you to the world of Planetary, a secret organization with the objective to discover the secret history of the world. Three exceptional members are always selected to form a field team and investigate what no one else even know that exist. Also, if you read The Authority, you will enjoy even more this wo...

It's hard to rate this book, because I can see where it's going and it looks pretty interesting. Unfortunately, these first 6 issues didn't really deliver. From what I've heard about this series, it's a pretty cool overarching journey. Although I was not completely hooked by this volume, I'd certainly consider checking out the rest.The series strikes me as a sort of Justice League meets X-Files. From what I can tell so far, this team of people with super powers travel around investigating myster...

I bought every issue of Planetary from 1999 to the last one in 2010 and decided to re-read the entire saga. The first 6 issues are a bit light and the stories seem to be done-in-one little short stories. We get introduced to the team of extraordinary archaeologists: Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner, and the Drummer. I think Elijah Snow is one of the best characters that Warren Ellis has ever created. He's cunning and takes no guff but Snow has a soft side. Pop culture junkies (like me) will love the r...

So far, I can't say I'm particularly impressed. The art is all right, but the characters are fairly shallow, and story is way out there and by the end of volume one leaves far too many questions than answers, too many loose threads and not nearly enough climaxes. I don't really know how much I'm looking forward to learning the answers for them, either.But it's been highly acclaimed, so there probably will be something great to look forward to in the end. I'll keep reading, see where it takes me....

This is a fun book, concerning an unusual trio who front a mysterious organization that investigates weird phenomena. There are many allusions to other fictional heroic characters throughout, and it's fun to pick out difference references. The six stories are mostly pretty well stand-alones, though larger connections and shadowy linkages abound. There are too many little references that are never explained to give a feeling of completeness or any sense of conclusion, but I enjoyed it anyway. The...

I just had a hard time being drawn into this. Some of that is its episodic nature, the first stories being more or less unrelated--that is, until they start being related, which did draw me in. Some of it is that I found the three main characters distant, hard to relate to. They're mysterious and have mysterious back stories, but...I don't know. It just didn't work for me. I was sufficiently interested by the end of the volume to think I might try the next one, though.

The description of the “quantum” computer commits the first fallacy of QC (that it is fast because it tries out all answers at once) and then turbocharges it, so that quantum computing creates and destroys umpteen universes when it answers queries about e.g. what are the parts of this big number.https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p...But it’s not the kind of work that merits that kind of snark: it is Pulp fiction, and a good thing too. Better than League of Extraordinary Gentlemen even.

Archeologists of the Impossible, trying to discover the world's hidden secrets of the 20th century? Sign me up.I love the concept and our three main characters are fantastic, grumpy, and mysterious (sometimes all at once).The art is not my preferred style but I really enjoyed it ('it's superhero comic lite') and some of the images (particularly of the multiverse snowflake thingy) were stunning.Be aware that because it was published in 1999 the comic does have some outdated and offensive terminol...

Earlier this year I went and reread some old Warren Ellis comics (NextWave) as a sort of antidote to some other stuff (X-Force), and even though all that I got out of it was realizing those old Ellis comics weren't as good as I remembered, here I am again. I just read the newest volume of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, and it was awful, and it made me think about other comics with mysterious supergroups exploring the uncharted unknown.So of course Planetary, a book I never really liked before,...