[A modified version of what would have been a Pop Mechanics! column for Renderwrx. Dedicated to Gene Colan, who died as I was writing this.]
"Since most people who cite a "convoluted mess" in regards to Grant [Morrison]'s work turn out not to be able to pass a high school English comprehension test, said citation tends to be viewed as comedy." - Warren Ellis
Comics people seemed trained to accept only direct, truthful statements, usually reinforced or reiterated at least once more beyond the initial. Better prominent people than me, from Tim Callahan to Grant Morrison, have addressed the gist of this, but I find their coverage often wanting or misdirected, though certainly serving their purpose of their moment.
"Schizophrenics can't process metaphor" has become a joke phrase, a meme to bust out and kill a conversation with a laugh. As with Mark Millar's "My God has a hammer" the phrase has no connection to comics for a number of folks who use it, and even when it does, no connection to its creator. Morrison used the phrase to describe a lack of reading skills beyond the literal, to indict readers who claimed there was nothing beyond the "literal" representations of a dead talking flying tuna with a cigar named Chubby who acts as the animus of a guy vying desperately for a girl with a beard who could, by just standing with him, help him seem like he belonged.
Here is where we have to careful in making clarifications. Failure to see strongly implied metaphors or to notice even in retrospect when a character was wrong, intentionally (lying) or unintentionally (misinformed, confused), is not the same as not enjoying it despite acknowledging those elements, nor is it the same as believing those to be poorly done. It is not a judgment on what anyone enjoys, to point out when a major factor of a work has been missed by a criticizing or lauding audience.
We all miss something, sometimes we are meant to not recognize what is in front of us, in terms of narrative, characterization, or metaphor, until we look back with knowledge we will find on another page. And, none of us enjoy being reminded of a lapse in our critical faculties, in our ignorance, though we are all ignorant of something.
I once saw a guy fall into a rage because he was sure someone was making fun of him when at the end of From Dusk Till Dawn, in the bar in Mexico where our characters have just spent the night, Cheech Marin says he has both kinds of beer, "Mexican and domestic." See, this angry fellow had seen the movie before, and it only now registered to him that domestic beer in Mexico, is Mexican. He didn't see a quick joke, he didn't see a moment in a scene that requires a dialogue beat for pacing, he saw the cast and crew of a major motion picture fucking with him.
Don't be that guy. Especially if you are talking to people who caught it before you. And, don't be the gal who, when she still doesn't get it, insists anyone who does is lying to make themselves seem smart. Humanity as a whole, and most human beings, have never benefitted from these responses, and I can make up imaginary statistics to demonstrate the truth of that. We are all ignorant of something, ignorance need only ever be temporary, and the goal of entertainment is most often not to insult you when it fools you, but to entertain you when you realize you were taken in.
Let us keep back from metaphor and themes for now, and focus on the objectives of characterization, particularly, the subjective element(s) of the individual character. One of the refreshing things about the changeup in the X-books when Joe Quesada was first Editor in Chief at Marvel, was that writers like Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan allowed characters to lie without clueing in the reader, and more, they wrote characters who believed and acted in ignorance.
One of the earliest scenes in New X-Men (Morrison & Quitely) was a dentist who has educated, documentary evidence what he is being told and shown by the villain Cassandra Nova is wrong, but all she has to do is belittle his education and play to his desire to believe things were negative and violent. When Nova and this dentist act on the "knowledge" expressed, she is lying and he is misinformed, and this is left implicit. The reader who is swayed by her misanthropic ploy, who is more comfortable with a negative, violent, selfish truth than a more pleasant one, is left with that truth. The X-Men themselves come to see Nova in the same terms, as negatively as possible (she does commit genocidal acts and generally play the horrible villain, but there is no real evidence she is an evolutionary mechanism for extincting species). Only Charles Xavier, ever the optimist decides she is designed to motivate everyone out of stalemate. And, he too is wrong.
But, because there is never a panel of someone declaring "I was wrong!" or "She lied to me!" you still get people on message boards discussing the ins and outs as if the writer dropped the ball, as though Morrison must have forgot "his" previous position when another fictional character in the story has a different conclusion, almost as if individuals have their own perspectives. Because there is never a simple, declarative "Cassandra is Ernst" we have at least two respected, intelligent writers get it wrong in follow ups?
The most frequent way to cover yourself, in a comic, is to make sure the visual and the text elements say the same thing clear and direct, which Scott McCloud calls "duo-specific." Claremont was often duo-specific, describing a superhuman attack as we see it or captioning in details for a relationship as we see the visual actuation of the same. But, if he wanted something to sail by without everyone catching on, we get "leman" deployed without accompanying verification or support.
And, when you want something to be memorable, duo-specificity can be your friend. Studies show most people do retain information better when taking it in as text and as visual, hence most instructional pamphlets. But, at some point a level of sophistication may be justly expected, perhaps, in that objectivity becomes an unnecessary affectation or the reader can infer an authorial morality behind the structure of a character's voice; perhaps the reader's morality or experience can be trusted enough for an absence of authorial voice (as best can be managed).
It is anticipated by some in entertainment, that this level of sophistication should always be presumed missing or rare. Vladimir Nabokov uses the first chapter of his novel, Ada or Ardor, to dissuade children and lazy readers from sticking it out just for the dirty bits, Steven Spielberg has yet to direct an adaptation that can't refit the men as bad-parent types, and dozens of childrens activity books will still indulge in ethnic dress up games so long as the ethnicities parodied are sociopolitically still safe for it.
But, comics? Comics are for kids. Probably why, when free speech won out in the Seduction of the Innocent case, comics got a self-elected regulating board and a set of rules stricter than those of any other medium in American history - and everyone behaved as if it were law and not just marketing. Crime must be punished at the end of every story, vampires and zombies are a no, violence is grand but no representative of law must ever be injured, passion must never stir the "baser emotions" and respect for parents and law-enforcement officials must be paramount. Regulations for all comics, not only those aimed at children, at virtually the same time was the Hays Code was being revised in acknowledgment of how detrimental heavy regulations were socially (and economically). Because, comics are for kids and even if they are not, the audience will be treated as children and learn to like it!
Not to disagree with Alan Moore, in his observation that Stan Lee introduced the two-dimensional characterization and the first deliberate symbolism into comics, but is that true? A lot of EC stories seem to have characters as developed as those of Marvel in the early Sixties. Wonder Woman has great symbolic relevance conscientiously applied in her early comics. So, is it that Lee reintroduced these elements after the Code and times bled them away? Blondie had gone from comics where things happened and had relevance, almost in reflection of the whole of the American aspect of the medium, to a dull, staid sequence of safe repeating gags by the Fifties (as it has remained, looped, since). Spider-Man reads not entirely unlike Blondie did back when they still made movies about her and her sandwich-enthusiast of a fellow.
Romance comics as well as paranoia comics (same fish with less bug-eyes and sweat?) required at least two-dimensional protagonists long before the Marvel revolution, so perhaps it is only that from Fantastic Four forward, Stan Lee and the Marvel writers to follow applied these innovatively to superhero comics. Moving as those comics could be, they still kept to considerably more adolescent material than the admittedly pretty adolescent EC crime and horror books or the comedy romances like the magnificent Millie the Model or Patsy & Hedy. I would not be the first to suggest it took a low opinion of the readership (accurate though it may have been) for Roy Thomas to take the awesome that is the early Black Panther and strip him of his culture, his political clout, genius, social standing, super-technology, and FF-whupping level of badassery... to make him safe enough to feature regularly in The Avengers. (And, when Panther leaves the Avengers, for Jungle Action, the first thing he does is remind them he's fantastically rich, has mad supertech, and can leave. Go fig.)
It may not have been a too-low call, sadly, depending on what readership is being pursued. Let's assume someone out there does need DC's Mr. Terrific, say, to be "the third smartest man in the world." Did they need to bill the white Mr. Terrific as such? But, this hypothetical audience DC is courting do need it of a black Mr. Terrific. Well, there is another audience that can handle "the smartest man on Earth." Beyond, there is an audience, myself included, who believes that if the selling point begins "smartest" that changing that up synchronous (if not consciously connected) to other changes, such as race, is a bad plan and counter to the ethos superhero comics taught me.
Batgirl can't get past brown belt. Mr. Terrific is the third smartest. But, no matter who is actually faster or equal to the Flash, he is always "the world's fastest man." Sometimes, we the readers and we the critical aspect of comics culture - the academics, analysts, and speculators - sometimes we act in ways that encourage treating us to these gestures placatory to heteronormative and homogenous artifice.
From Anarchy for the Masses: "Robin's autocritique acknowledges that she is undermined by her appearance. She stands for revolution but is instead only seen as a sex object. Note that despite this realization she doesnt stop dressing like a hooker." That was written by two smart, savvy individuals, Patrick Neighly and Kereth Cowe-Spigai. They don't seem to notice what they have done, there, and neither do the people who call Wonder Woman's jacket whorish or say a version of Cyborg looks thuggish, muscle-brained, or gangsta, particularly the one for the upcoming JLA relaunch, where he is, in terms of body and body language no different from any other man on the team except in that he is black.
Taken from a different angle, the same problem of presumptive judging turns into a lack of emotional affect (to be PKD about it). Readers do it enough, and you get writers and artists playing to it, editors prescribing not relational emotions from characters, coming causally from the events and dynamics of their lives, but emotions as a sell. Why else do you think Aquaman is ecstatic while his life, marriage, and political position fall to bits during Erik Larsen's run? There is an editor who knew a readership existed who would see a smile and believe it, regardless of context. An audience does exist who read Robert Crumb's My Troubles With Women and believe the bravado, who are still distressed not by the rape of DC's Nightwing, but because he stopped smiling for awhile after the rape. Kurt Busiek or Mark Waid can write wildly modern work, from dialogue to character tics and plotting, and there will be cries from the Neo Silver Agers of "Seen it! Recycled from 1967!" while Grant Morrison lifts point for point at Agatha Cristie plot or entire passages of an old Batman comic as with Joe Chill in Hell and it's "Too new! Too difficult!"
See also the people who criticize Devin Grayson as inappropriately pushing her personal fantasies into a corporate comic in the same breath as lamenting Jim Balent not drawing Catwoman comics these days. Or, who get put off by how contrived a cast mostly not of white American men is, but not any nearly all-white, all-male, all-American one. Concoct reasons manga isnt comics. Erase Ramona Fredon or Marie Javins from comics history to maintain a "no women" illusion. Who feel Alan Grant was wrong for telling an audience of fans that the Vice President at DC was outright lying to them. This is who is at fault when comics get done, get published in ways that treat any reader as a subnormal child.
As a collective audience, our reading comprehension, our analytical and judging faculties are at fault. Any one of us who opens a new comic and declares any answers not on page one are nonexistent, that deny the metaphors or themes the author and/or six thousand other readers have found, who believe a flashback or a non-narrative illustration are violations of the natural order only fit for mediums other than comics. Readers who don't let comics be grown up or ever mature are at fault whenever a critic, a country, a printer or colorist decide we, the hypothetical audience, the hoped for pre-actuation audience are not to be trusted as sane, aware, self-governing adults, but must be coddled, kept from dangerous stories, kept from dangerous ideas or ideas unpleasant to us even if that unpleasant feeling is rooted in bigotry or idiocy.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is currently raising money to defend Americans who brought illegal comics to Canada. Canada - and to a lesser degree, the United States of America - many nations around the world believe we are not mature enough to handle some kinds of fiction. Censorship of entirely fictional things always means the people the fictions are being kept from are thought to be incapable of handling them maturely. And, it's our fault, because we dont decry censorship enough and because some of us, a very vocal some, read a comic by Kevin Smith and put it down believing Smith wrote Batman wetting himself.
They read a comic wherein Batman tells someone he had an involuntary bladder spasm years before the telling, due to an explosion. In the comic they read, Batman tells - tells - a story. A story someone tells inside a story is discussed as if it were the story, as if it were witnessed firsthand by the reader. That's how lazy it gets.
There is no shame in getting swept up and realizing you were a lazy reader, that your analytical faculties were put on stall for awhile. I have been there believe it. Whether the affable justified-homocidal grandfatherly scientist in Cannon God Exaxxion (Kenichi Sonoda) was meant to be taken straight, accepted positively, marinated in my concerns every new chapter I imbibed, and still today, I just do not know. Planetary, which I have the gall to annotate, was nearly complete before I added one two three and realized that Jakita Wagner has Superman's origin. As a kid, I thought Dan DeCarlo did not know when he was being dirty. There is no shame in realizing your analysis engines were not firing on all cylinders, but there is in not self-correcting at the realization.
Are you a reader who saw no symbolism in Seaguy? You don't have to enjoy the comic, but please, read it again so you can see the symbolism this time and judge it with that fuller picture. A critic calling comics art "dross" while reviewing Kenneth Koch's anthology of "comics mostly without pictures" who admits to not reading comics? Go to the appropriate shelf at a convenient bookstore and start opening different comics, just to take in the breadth and walk away with learned scope and not the inference of memory. An editor, writer, artist, flatter or any other kind of comics-maker, who has seen the ugly, the dumb or disappointing in comics readers or comics press? Do not let that encourage you to make comics you would be insulted to read, that garner you even massive sales if the sales come from an audience you cannot be proud of or relate to.
Showing posts with label Warren Ellis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warren Ellis. Show all posts
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
If You Don't Weaken
[Note, this would have been the next Pop Mechanics! column to run, if Renderwrx had not gone on extreme hiatus. Due to developments since then, a postscript/addendum will follow.]
The inestimably cool James Baker wrote the other day, that "X-Men: Prelude to Schism has that wonderful 'We Who Are About To Die' feel that almost all stories ruin by going on to have an ending." And we are talking ongoing X-Men, here, not a standalone, not a non-canon or alternate universe tale, but "to be followed by another twenty plus years of narrative on a regular release schedule" X-Men. And, that is sad, that the feeling of "now, everything changes" and apocalyptic shit hitting the fan is inevitably muted by awareness that it will all get patched up and staid soon enough. Who wants to stay in the water if you know you are riding the last wave of the season?
Even in standalone works, the idea that everything settles in the third act can be disappointing, and that the world will return to normal after the end of the story seems, between Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and social extrapolation, a cheat. It is a cheat, only it is a comforting cheat, so we often enjoy it despite the nag of its irreality. I was disappointed when I recently learned the massive launch post Brightest Day at DC was intended to come after Final Crisis, while the Milestone stuff was being integrated and relaunched. But, Final Crisis did something better than that wave of new titles, for my money, ending with public acknowledgment of alternate realities. It ends with a news broadcast that will alter consensual reality and tells the audience at home that "This is one story that is only beginning."
Fiction is traditionally unkind to the public. If everyone gets a jetpack or a torrid romance, they are no longer so special, is the reasoning. As You Like It, is often maligned opposite other Shakespeare plays because every character, even passerby, have crazy epic shit going on in their lives. I love Ophelia and Laertes, but they are undoubtedly at service to _the important people_ and nothing in Hamlet trickles down to the commoners.
The implication of public hows and whys is rare by the end of almost any fantastical story; Zardoz to Alien, the fantastic element is most often isolated by the end and as unexplained as can be managed. When something posits vampires as a disease, for example, it doesn't mean anything but the semantic prosody of "disease." Xenomorphs must be isolated in each film (the fourth Alien might have bucked this), by the end, just as Frankenstein's creation must have a castle dropped on him or be frozen in ice by the end of each of those stories. Followthrough, should be avoided as it takes their culture away from ours, which never changes.
You see the flaw? That idea of a suspended, immutable reality may be comforting - You want to live in a pre Civil Rights Movement United States, though? How about pre vaccination France? But suspended in an era/culture under regulations of fantasy logic, dream or hope logic, it can be comforting. And, while fiction is comfort fiction, not everyone can feel the special case apart from the common public.
In a previous Pop Mechanics, I mentioned a Wolverine comic where the hero was prevented from stopping an act of domestic abuse. The X-Men can't go fixing real things like a husband terrorizing his family, that's a "real" thing, different from liberating nations conquered by Magneto or having tantric frenzies with Apocalypse. So, too, Superman cannot gift the public with amazing Kryptonian technologies, not even some simple ones like the coolest Kryptonian poetry or their best musical instrument.
Superman does not walk in the commoners world, and as a recent way-too-wrongheaded story, Grounded, demonstrates, when he does choose to enmesh himself in _us_, Supes does so by pretending away his special talents and knowledge. He walks, instead of flies. Now, I am for reasons medical and social a walker, I don't drive, and right now I live somewhere with atrocious public transit. Most people do not walk, in America - it is unamerican. They drive. They take buses, airplanes, trains and if they aren't driving their own vehicle, they are riding in someone else's. They do not walk across the country only using their talents to harangue poor communities for their plights and physically intimidating journalists for asking them why they are walking across the country. Why don't we walk across the country if it could be enlightening? Not being able to afford it, is probably a big easy answer. Because leaving our friends, families, lovers and local community for extended periods of rumination and self-examination could be considered selfish. Because we do not need to. Pick one, you will be unlikely to be wrong.
A king who dresses as a pauper to walk the streets indulgently for a weekend is still a king. Right? There is a Pulp song about this. It's really mean and William Shatner covered it. But it is not required that Superman be a king who dresses down feel "real life." I believe, when Warren Ellis wrote (in Terra Occulta) a non-Superman Clark Kent saying "I'm a newspaperman, I'll take a vacation when I die," that he means it, he gives a damn and feel a part of the world. Same when Louise Simonson writes the character, either as Kent or Superman.
A criticism of the Daredevil movie - and I think they lifted this from when Annie Nocenti wrote the title - was when the hero is going to bed and can sense people in danger, people dying, and goes to sleep anyway. The hero can't! But, what is he going to do? He is beat up, he is tired, probably hungry and PTSD already. Exhausted. And he is just a guy in red leather punching folks in the street. The same complaint was levied against Alan Moore and Kevin O'Niel's Black Dossier, when Alan and Mina, two brave but not rich, not powerful, and terminally disenfranchised people did not even try to overthrow the post Big Brother culture and government of their Britain.
Also from Terra Occulta, from the first page: "This is a fast world I live in now." And that is from a forced expat, their version of Wonder Woman, who follows it up with, "I want to go home," having, of course, no home to go back to. Like most of us, she has only this world, the job and the local mall and the jogger who runs by every day around ten with the same music faintly detectable on their earbuds as they pass, politicians we may not have elected in office, traffic jams we cannot control, neighbors we cannot choose and cultural judgments that continue whether we care for them or not.
The couple from Black Dossier are the family the X-Men stop Wolverine from helping. Warren Ellis' Clark Kent is the guy J Michael Staczynski's Superman physically intimidates or browbeats with inaccurate history rather than respond to as another competent adult of equal cognizance. Louise Simonson's Superman drinks Soder Cola and Mark Waid's sees animal life as all so close, he won't eat meat but does not begrudge it of others. The Sookie Stackhouses and Robyn Slingers of fantasticka. The woman who finds listening to seven seconds of a Prince song better ten times a day than the MEEP MEEP or RING RING of a traditional phone ring, not Prince, who can afford to live without a phone and does not appreciate musical ringtones.
To carry the Common People comparison, when Grounded ends, Superman will have learned nothing not superficial, any growth will barely be referenced and the world he inhabits will appear absolutely the same was before. When the groups represented by the protagonists of Hellboy or Ghost in the Shell do their job right, or those of X-Files and Fantastic Four (Future Foundation, natch) do their job halfway, the public is spared the fantastic. Or, as Planetary spelled it out, _deprive_ the public. The fun toys are for our betters.
A great move by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee with Fantastic Four was that the public wanted them to keep all this new (and newly-apparent) wonder to themselves. The people who live in the Fantastic Four's neighborhood want the FF to keep themselves locked up and quiet. Alan Moore, together with Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, inverted this about ten years ago, by ghettoizing the amazing literally, moving all the superheroes, robots, monsters and magic to a single city for ensemble police dramedy Top 10. Isolating the fantasy is also the business of the sell from the protagonist of Doktor Sleepless, "Where's My Fucking Jetpack?"
Eventually you get the jetpack, or you see the other guy with his jetpack, and jetpack technology is extrapolated in non-jetpack directions, there are styles and brands, there are related myths and cultures and symbolic relevance that changes because of a prevalance or avoidance of that piece of the fantastic that has entered the world.
And, maybe Lee and Kirby got it right with the inference in Fantastic Four, and inference that grew in early X-Men to become the defining thematic factor of the X-media empire. Maybe, we do - as a public, as a culture - prefer to isolate the different, the elements whose existence, the acknowledgment of which put the lie to consensus reality. They were right about something else, too. Nothing stays ghettoized, censored art gets experienced, silenced people find ways to talk. Attempts at genocide can be horrendously successful, but they fail.
To paraphrase another X-Men comic, getting back to Grant Morrison, "Nothing ever stays buried."
Especially in serial narratives, but in all fiction, there should be denouements but never endings. If you put out there a set of memes, a frame of ideas, and then try to put the fullstop on it, what is that? Were your ideas too weak to keep up? Are you implying you are stalling out or scaling back because the audience needs that, wants that? Conflict generates refinement, so do not dissolve the conflict - Dissolution of the conflict and ghettoizing of the hypergolic elements is what ends a story.
Grant Morrison managed a beautifully romantic denouement to X-Men with Marc Silvestri, called Here Comes Tomorrow and the issues that immediately followed felt entirely like spinning wheels and desperate bids for nostalgia. Nostalgia is not gas, nostalgia is smelling the gasoline that is gone and remembering what the fuel was like. Chuck Austen spending two issues solving a mystery that had already been dealt with and Chris Claremont wrote baseball. Like he was shouting "Baseball!" to distract us, almost. He could have just had the characters yelling "Mother!" and "America!" a lot for all it fumed of nostalgia and desperate security.
Warren Ellis had some experience writing worlds alternate to a baseline fictional world from his time as Excalibur's writer (during which, he spent four issues or so doing the Age of Apocalypse horrorshow of global genocide, slavery, and blues bars), but when he looks at alternate worlds in his Stormwatch story, The Bleed, he has his regular cast see the alternate and be directly motivated by it, while also giving a gorgeous happy nonending, in a man on a cane walking arm in arm with a beautiful girl to lead an army of superhumans up a staircase into the sky to save us all. His alternate Justice League from the aforementioned Terra Occulta or the Batman of its sister story, Night on Earth, keep the idea complexes of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman using different conflicts to prove the vigor of the memes. Age of Apocalypse, though? He wrote some of it, was not in charge of it, and when it ended and "real"/"right" reality was reasserted, pretty much every interesting idea it brought to light faded immediately away.
Chris Claremont kept things moving forward for a long part of his initial X-Men run, though he found some comfortable spots of maintained ignorance, like the pretense of a reasonable or understandable Magneto. When he dipped into an alternate world or possible future, it fueled the main reality, ideas and people and things leaked in, from the dystopian Days of Future Past to the wholly imaginary Kitty's Fairytale. His returns were all competent but good at defanging all the ideas, at stalling progress... except when he wrote outside the canon for The End. X-Men: The End moved things forward faster, put the conflicting elements against each other harder, and tested and adapted and retested ideas more vigorously than any canon X-story Claremont has written in most of my lifetime. It had to get to the "end," the future, and his canon work seemed designed to avoid that, to keep a today with no tomorrow, no "and then what?" because asking for the "and next" means things would have to change.
"And-Next Fiction" is a jargon term to devalorize some fiction but it is, as a technique, honest to life. Life is and-next. Nocenti's Daredevil run was almost entirely and-next and mostly things that the prevailing concept of Daredevil dictated he had no business being involved with, such as wandering PTSD and grieving through Hell come to Earth and the Devil's son messing with his head. Life bleeds over, it seeps through, it keeps being there, though, and if Daredevil is going to live in the Marvel Universe, a world of monsters, gods, aliens and reality-rewriting gold cubes, then all that is as real and present as hunger, pop songs, and pavement.
Warren Ellis' trinity of post-superhuman comics from Avatar (No Hero, Black Summer, and Supergod) approached and-next in different scenarios, but each of them has a denoument, each sets up not only a new today but a different tomorrow. It is not only that the present and future are different in those stories because of the fantastic element generating dramatic changes, but because one day was Tuesday and the next is Wednesday, and Thursday will get there.
I hope when Schism rolls up it does feel of denouements and not endings. The fullstop end, the out of gas and unmoving is a let down. It's cool when comics feel like Wednesday with Thursday coming hard and fast, but never when we see Thursday in the wings and get an anemic last Tuesday instead. And-next or detourne, retell, follow up, respond or parody or satirize or homage, but like the title of an awesome comic by Seth, a fictional autiobiographical bit of astonishing, spells it out, it's a good life, if you don't weaken.
***
When I wrote this, the DC relaunch had completely escaped me, or at least, the breadth of it. Not only did the annoying Superman and Wonder Woman stories (despite some good work by some of the talent involved) come to nothing, it was pointless, then, with a vengeance. And, Prelude ended up being a fun read while actual Schism was something I only finished to be fair in my assessment. Schism was wheelspinning at its most frustrating, as it tried to convince the reader it had excess of gravitas and relevance where it essentially had none.
I recently reread Supergod. It remains very cool, intelligent, moving and relevant. And, has a good line where someone's deity tells them they are, in truth, their stash. And, that's why they love them.
The inestimably cool James Baker wrote the other day, that "X-Men: Prelude to Schism has that wonderful 'We Who Are About To Die' feel that almost all stories ruin by going on to have an ending." And we are talking ongoing X-Men, here, not a standalone, not a non-canon or alternate universe tale, but "to be followed by another twenty plus years of narrative on a regular release schedule" X-Men. And, that is sad, that the feeling of "now, everything changes" and apocalyptic shit hitting the fan is inevitably muted by awareness that it will all get patched up and staid soon enough. Who wants to stay in the water if you know you are riding the last wave of the season?
Even in standalone works, the idea that everything settles in the third act can be disappointing, and that the world will return to normal after the end of the story seems, between Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and social extrapolation, a cheat. It is a cheat, only it is a comforting cheat, so we often enjoy it despite the nag of its irreality. I was disappointed when I recently learned the massive launch post Brightest Day at DC was intended to come after Final Crisis, while the Milestone stuff was being integrated and relaunched. But, Final Crisis did something better than that wave of new titles, for my money, ending with public acknowledgment of alternate realities. It ends with a news broadcast that will alter consensual reality and tells the audience at home that "This is one story that is only beginning."
Fiction is traditionally unkind to the public. If everyone gets a jetpack or a torrid romance, they are no longer so special, is the reasoning. As You Like It, is often maligned opposite other Shakespeare plays because every character, even passerby, have crazy epic shit going on in their lives. I love Ophelia and Laertes, but they are undoubtedly at service to _the important people_ and nothing in Hamlet trickles down to the commoners.
The implication of public hows and whys is rare by the end of almost any fantastical story; Zardoz to Alien, the fantastic element is most often isolated by the end and as unexplained as can be managed. When something posits vampires as a disease, for example, it doesn't mean anything but the semantic prosody of "disease." Xenomorphs must be isolated in each film (the fourth Alien might have bucked this), by the end, just as Frankenstein's creation must have a castle dropped on him or be frozen in ice by the end of each of those stories. Followthrough, should be avoided as it takes their culture away from ours, which never changes.
You see the flaw? That idea of a suspended, immutable reality may be comforting - You want to live in a pre Civil Rights Movement United States, though? How about pre vaccination France? But suspended in an era/culture under regulations of fantasy logic, dream or hope logic, it can be comforting. And, while fiction is comfort fiction, not everyone can feel the special case apart from the common public.
In a previous Pop Mechanics, I mentioned a Wolverine comic where the hero was prevented from stopping an act of domestic abuse. The X-Men can't go fixing real things like a husband terrorizing his family, that's a "real" thing, different from liberating nations conquered by Magneto or having tantric frenzies with Apocalypse. So, too, Superman cannot gift the public with amazing Kryptonian technologies, not even some simple ones like the coolest Kryptonian poetry or their best musical instrument.
Superman does not walk in the commoners world, and as a recent way-too-wrongheaded story, Grounded, demonstrates, when he does choose to enmesh himself in _us_, Supes does so by pretending away his special talents and knowledge. He walks, instead of flies. Now, I am for reasons medical and social a walker, I don't drive, and right now I live somewhere with atrocious public transit. Most people do not walk, in America - it is unamerican. They drive. They take buses, airplanes, trains and if they aren't driving their own vehicle, they are riding in someone else's. They do not walk across the country only using their talents to harangue poor communities for their plights and physically intimidating journalists for asking them why they are walking across the country. Why don't we walk across the country if it could be enlightening? Not being able to afford it, is probably a big easy answer. Because leaving our friends, families, lovers and local community for extended periods of rumination and self-examination could be considered selfish. Because we do not need to. Pick one, you will be unlikely to be wrong.
A king who dresses as a pauper to walk the streets indulgently for a weekend is still a king. Right? There is a Pulp song about this. It's really mean and William Shatner covered it. But it is not required that Superman be a king who dresses down feel "real life." I believe, when Warren Ellis wrote (in Terra Occulta) a non-Superman Clark Kent saying "I'm a newspaperman, I'll take a vacation when I die," that he means it, he gives a damn and feel a part of the world. Same when Louise Simonson writes the character, either as Kent or Superman.
A criticism of the Daredevil movie - and I think they lifted this from when Annie Nocenti wrote the title - was when the hero is going to bed and can sense people in danger, people dying, and goes to sleep anyway. The hero can't! But, what is he going to do? He is beat up, he is tired, probably hungry and PTSD already. Exhausted. And he is just a guy in red leather punching folks in the street. The same complaint was levied against Alan Moore and Kevin O'Niel's Black Dossier, when Alan and Mina, two brave but not rich, not powerful, and terminally disenfranchised people did not even try to overthrow the post Big Brother culture and government of their Britain.
Also from Terra Occulta, from the first page: "This is a fast world I live in now." And that is from a forced expat, their version of Wonder Woman, who follows it up with, "I want to go home," having, of course, no home to go back to. Like most of us, she has only this world, the job and the local mall and the jogger who runs by every day around ten with the same music faintly detectable on their earbuds as they pass, politicians we may not have elected in office, traffic jams we cannot control, neighbors we cannot choose and cultural judgments that continue whether we care for them or not.
The couple from Black Dossier are the family the X-Men stop Wolverine from helping. Warren Ellis' Clark Kent is the guy J Michael Staczynski's Superman physically intimidates or browbeats with inaccurate history rather than respond to as another competent adult of equal cognizance. Louise Simonson's Superman drinks Soder Cola and Mark Waid's sees animal life as all so close, he won't eat meat but does not begrudge it of others. The Sookie Stackhouses and Robyn Slingers of fantasticka. The woman who finds listening to seven seconds of a Prince song better ten times a day than the MEEP MEEP or RING RING of a traditional phone ring, not Prince, who can afford to live without a phone and does not appreciate musical ringtones.
To carry the Common People comparison, when Grounded ends, Superman will have learned nothing not superficial, any growth will barely be referenced and the world he inhabits will appear absolutely the same was before. When the groups represented by the protagonists of Hellboy or Ghost in the Shell do their job right, or those of X-Files and Fantastic Four (Future Foundation, natch) do their job halfway, the public is spared the fantastic. Or, as Planetary spelled it out, _deprive_ the public. The fun toys are for our betters.
A great move by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee with Fantastic Four was that the public wanted them to keep all this new (and newly-apparent) wonder to themselves. The people who live in the Fantastic Four's neighborhood want the FF to keep themselves locked up and quiet. Alan Moore, together with Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, inverted this about ten years ago, by ghettoizing the amazing literally, moving all the superheroes, robots, monsters and magic to a single city for ensemble police dramedy Top 10. Isolating the fantasy is also the business of the sell from the protagonist of Doktor Sleepless, "Where's My Fucking Jetpack?"
Eventually you get the jetpack, or you see the other guy with his jetpack, and jetpack technology is extrapolated in non-jetpack directions, there are styles and brands, there are related myths and cultures and symbolic relevance that changes because of a prevalance or avoidance of that piece of the fantastic that has entered the world.
And, maybe Lee and Kirby got it right with the inference in Fantastic Four, and inference that grew in early X-Men to become the defining thematic factor of the X-media empire. Maybe, we do - as a public, as a culture - prefer to isolate the different, the elements whose existence, the acknowledgment of which put the lie to consensus reality. They were right about something else, too. Nothing stays ghettoized, censored art gets experienced, silenced people find ways to talk. Attempts at genocide can be horrendously successful, but they fail.
To paraphrase another X-Men comic, getting back to Grant Morrison, "Nothing ever stays buried."
Especially in serial narratives, but in all fiction, there should be denouements but never endings. If you put out there a set of memes, a frame of ideas, and then try to put the fullstop on it, what is that? Were your ideas too weak to keep up? Are you implying you are stalling out or scaling back because the audience needs that, wants that? Conflict generates refinement, so do not dissolve the conflict - Dissolution of the conflict and ghettoizing of the hypergolic elements is what ends a story.
Grant Morrison managed a beautifully romantic denouement to X-Men with Marc Silvestri, called Here Comes Tomorrow and the issues that immediately followed felt entirely like spinning wheels and desperate bids for nostalgia. Nostalgia is not gas, nostalgia is smelling the gasoline that is gone and remembering what the fuel was like. Chuck Austen spending two issues solving a mystery that had already been dealt with and Chris Claremont wrote baseball. Like he was shouting "Baseball!" to distract us, almost. He could have just had the characters yelling "Mother!" and "America!" a lot for all it fumed of nostalgia and desperate security.
Warren Ellis had some experience writing worlds alternate to a baseline fictional world from his time as Excalibur's writer (during which, he spent four issues or so doing the Age of Apocalypse horrorshow of global genocide, slavery, and blues bars), but when he looks at alternate worlds in his Stormwatch story, The Bleed, he has his regular cast see the alternate and be directly motivated by it, while also giving a gorgeous happy nonending, in a man on a cane walking arm in arm with a beautiful girl to lead an army of superhumans up a staircase into the sky to save us all. His alternate Justice League from the aforementioned Terra Occulta or the Batman of its sister story, Night on Earth, keep the idea complexes of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman using different conflicts to prove the vigor of the memes. Age of Apocalypse, though? He wrote some of it, was not in charge of it, and when it ended and "real"/"right" reality was reasserted, pretty much every interesting idea it brought to light faded immediately away.
Chris Claremont kept things moving forward for a long part of his initial X-Men run, though he found some comfortable spots of maintained ignorance, like the pretense of a reasonable or understandable Magneto. When he dipped into an alternate world or possible future, it fueled the main reality, ideas and people and things leaked in, from the dystopian Days of Future Past to the wholly imaginary Kitty's Fairytale. His returns were all competent but good at defanging all the ideas, at stalling progress... except when he wrote outside the canon for The End. X-Men: The End moved things forward faster, put the conflicting elements against each other harder, and tested and adapted and retested ideas more vigorously than any canon X-story Claremont has written in most of my lifetime. It had to get to the "end," the future, and his canon work seemed designed to avoid that, to keep a today with no tomorrow, no "and then what?" because asking for the "and next" means things would have to change.
"And-Next Fiction" is a jargon term to devalorize some fiction but it is, as a technique, honest to life. Life is and-next. Nocenti's Daredevil run was almost entirely and-next and mostly things that the prevailing concept of Daredevil dictated he had no business being involved with, such as wandering PTSD and grieving through Hell come to Earth and the Devil's son messing with his head. Life bleeds over, it seeps through, it keeps being there, though, and if Daredevil is going to live in the Marvel Universe, a world of monsters, gods, aliens and reality-rewriting gold cubes, then all that is as real and present as hunger, pop songs, and pavement.
Warren Ellis' trinity of post-superhuman comics from Avatar (No Hero, Black Summer, and Supergod) approached and-next in different scenarios, but each of them has a denoument, each sets up not only a new today but a different tomorrow. It is not only that the present and future are different in those stories because of the fantastic element generating dramatic changes, but because one day was Tuesday and the next is Wednesday, and Thursday will get there.
I hope when Schism rolls up it does feel of denouements and not endings. The fullstop end, the out of gas and unmoving is a let down. It's cool when comics feel like Wednesday with Thursday coming hard and fast, but never when we see Thursday in the wings and get an anemic last Tuesday instead. And-next or detourne, retell, follow up, respond or parody or satirize or homage, but like the title of an awesome comic by Seth, a fictional autiobiographical bit of astonishing, spells it out, it's a good life, if you don't weaken.
***
When I wrote this, the DC relaunch had completely escaped me, or at least, the breadth of it. Not only did the annoying Superman and Wonder Woman stories (despite some good work by some of the talent involved) come to nothing, it was pointless, then, with a vengeance. And, Prelude ended up being a fun read while actual Schism was something I only finished to be fair in my assessment. Schism was wheelspinning at its most frustrating, as it tried to convince the reader it had excess of gravitas and relevance where it essentially had none.
I recently reread Supergod. It remains very cool, intelligent, moving and relevant. And, has a good line where someone's deity tells them they are, in truth, their stash. And, that's why they love them.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Special Bat-Friend
“Special Bat-Friend”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The twelfth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at. If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
The best Batman, to me, is the one Warren Ellis and John Cassaday leave us with here, the good parent. The best parent. Maybe that has to do with never knowing my father. Perhaps, it is a side effect of an innate conviction I am not good enough to be responsible for children. Could be I want to belong to a crimefighting family and see my mother kick muggers in the face. Let's leave that to the biographers and psychoanalysts, if any ever surface for the job.
It's an awesome take on Batman. The best parent version removes any concern with the contradictions of various versions by making the contradictions actually the definition. Batman is a cop and a vigilante, he is an anarchist company man, he can help you up out of the muck and he can hit you with his car to stop you. And, statistically and by all observances, he is less likely to kill you than just about anyone. He's the goddammed Batman, even failing he is kinda better than you or me but we can be as good as him, if not as efficient and accomplished as he is, if we put the effort in.
The sell of Batman is often that we, especially as kids, could be Batman if we tried. No, we can't. For one thing, reality wouldn't even allow Batman to be Batman. For another, we don't have the money, the R&D department, or the field surgeon gentleman's gentleman. We can be as good as Batman, though, as decent. We should.
***
[From PLANETARY/BATMAN: NIGHT ON EARTH
00 The Planetary field team are in the "shadow of the Bat."
01 Red skies because they are experiencing a Crisis event. Meaning, in the context of the DC Comics shared universe, that different realities are collapsing together.
01.01 This panel and the final of the comic mirror one another, with a "what is that against the moon" motif. May also be a reference to this mirroring technique being employed in famous Batman comic, The Killing Joke.
01.02 Enough grotesques for one building? That is Gotham-y.
02.01 As are the neo-Modernist architectural feats here. This, the WildStorm Universe version of Gotham City is very Anton Furst, designer of the 1989 Batman movie.
03.01 This is the WildStorm version of Richard Grayson and the Joker.
03.02 Their schlubby visual, unshaven, awkward posture, indicates the level of difference between these two and their DC universe versions, due to the absence of a Batman in their lives.
The Joker, here named Jasper (presumably in reference to Marvel Comics' Mad Jim Jaspers), is not only not visibly going around killing people or laughing his head off, he is holding down a real job.
03.03 When Dick opens his mouth, we see how bad it is. Without Batman, the orphaned boy grew into a stuttering, insecure mess, who can't dress himself properly. But, he is still trying to do good, participating in the functioning and for the curious Planetary Organization.
04.02 "It all looks like this" is more or less true. Little of Gotham's streets and layout is ever represented as less than seedy.
05.05 GCPD is Gotham City Police Department. (Pr'y don't need to point that out, do I?)
06.01 Crime Alley in the DC Universe's Gotham is actually Park Row, it's just called Crime Alley because that's very descriptive of it. Notable events on that Crime Alley (and not this one for obvious reasons) include the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents and a young boy, Jason Todd, trying to steal the hubcaps off a parked Batmobile years later.
07.01-04 1986 is the year Crisis on Infinite Earths was published, a comic about a multiversal collapse taking place across the whole DC Comics line and shared world.
08.02 The lamppost is visually similar to the one sometimes represented as being above a young Bruce Wayne and his just murdered parents. All the posts in the area would, hypothetically look the same, but this may be meant to be exactly that one.
08.03 Jasper's behavior here is an indicator that the homicidal and sadistic tendencies of the Joker are not entirely based on a presence of a Batman, only - apparently - his motivation to go do something about them more than touch himself looking at crime scene photographs.
09.02 Evert street in Gotham has porn or prostitutes or both.
Finger Street is a street in the DC Gotham as well, named for Bill Finger, co-creator and writer of Batman and many related characters.
09.03 The Conquerors of the Uncanny are a team from Alan Moore and Rob Liefeld's Judgement Day that takes place in the Awesome shared universe. The comic was a rebooting of various concepts to separate them from the Image shared universe they previously existed as part of, when Liefeld split with Image. This comic is a DC publication under the WildStorm imprint, WildStorm having previously been a part of the Image shared universe and since bought by DC Comics.
10.01 John Black, the WildStorm universe's Bruce Wayne. Bruce, without Batman, is a damaged, lip-biting, incidental murderer and wandering vagrant.
11 This bubble emanating from John Black is a variation on the multiversal snowflake seen elsewhere in Planetary. This pattern will reappear alongside elements from the other crossover oneshots, Terra Occulta and Ruling the World in the final chapter of Planetary during the rescue of Ambrose Chase.
12.01 The cityscape as changed, here, and is photorealist in nature.
12-13 The entire scene has become littered with carefully represented details including exaggerated weathering of walls, pipes, water damage, and litter on pavement. Early indicators that we are in the Alex Ross version of Gotham City.
14 The Batman, in the style and wearing a costume designed by Alex Ross, painter and comics writer.
15.04 Typically, we never see what a batrope is suspended by, but this being a "realistic" world, we do.
17.0305 Every street in Gotham has fetishwear and prostitutes. Jakita is simply seeing Batman in the context of his city as she knows it. And, also, implicating her own leathers.
18.01-03 I know Ross has painted these absurdly big bat-weapons before, but where?
27.01 A Batman in the style of the 1960's television show. The eyes have been darkened and the symbol on his chest relieved of its yellow oval by DC's legal department, as a matter of likeness rights.
The buildings are simpler than either version previously seen, in solid colors.
28.01 Bat-Female-Villain-Repellant is in line with the absurd fix-its that Batman of this television series could produce from his belt, most specifically, Bat-Shark-Repellant.
28.04 This costume shred easily, implying the previous was armored (hence standing up to Jakita's superhuman punch).
29.01 Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns Batman. There are now minimalist backgrounds, mostly of the same muddy dark colors.
31.01 "Mr. Freeze" is a Batman villain, appearing in comics as well as film and television versions of the property.
35.03 A Neal Adams version of Batman.
36.01 And, a Neal Adams style Batmobile.
36.02 Normative handcuffs and not a stylized set of bat-cuffs fit with the semi-realist ambience of Neal Adams usual Batman work.
37.03 The downturned corners of Batman's mouth are very Adams.
38-39 The recurrent panel of Batman seen here resembles a similar arrangement in "There is No Hope in Crime Alley" by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams.
40.01 This is the original-era Batman, complete with purple gloves and set in a city that is era-appropriate. And, he's wielding a gun, as earliest Batman is the only canon version to do so readily.
Batman is also framed, here, by the moon, although only his head and no a full-body framing as elsewhere.
41 This is the death of the Waynes in front of their son, Bruce.
42 Batman of the future. This is Cassaday's own design. Batman's head is again haloed by the full moon.
43.02-04 If you have not sussed that John Black is an alternate Bruce Wayne, this ought to make everything click.
44.04-05 "How do you cope?" By doing what he does here, in letting Black go into the custody of the Planetary team. By doing right.
45-46 And, by doing, as he explains here: You give safety and comfort to other people, show them they are not alone.
48.04 Similar to the first page, the shape on the moon that may or may not be a Batman.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The twelfth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
The best Batman, to me, is the one Warren Ellis and John Cassaday leave us with here, the good parent. The best parent. Maybe that has to do with never knowing my father. Perhaps, it is a side effect of an innate conviction I am not good enough to be responsible for children. Could be I want to belong to a crimefighting family and see my mother kick muggers in the face. Let's leave that to the biographers and psychoanalysts, if any ever surface for the job.
It's an awesome take on Batman. The best parent version removes any concern with the contradictions of various versions by making the contradictions actually the definition. Batman is a cop and a vigilante, he is an anarchist company man, he can help you up out of the muck and he can hit you with his car to stop you. And, statistically and by all observances, he is less likely to kill you than just about anyone. He's the goddammed Batman, even failing he is kinda better than you or me but we can be as good as him, if not as efficient and accomplished as he is, if we put the effort in.
The sell of Batman is often that we, especially as kids, could be Batman if we tried. No, we can't. For one thing, reality wouldn't even allow Batman to be Batman. For another, we don't have the money, the R&D department, or the field surgeon gentleman's gentleman. We can be as good as Batman, though, as decent. We should.
***
[From PLANETARY/BATMAN: NIGHT ON EARTH
00 The Planetary field team are in the "shadow of the Bat."
01 Red skies because they are experiencing a Crisis event. Meaning, in the context of the DC Comics shared universe, that different realities are collapsing together.
01.01 This panel and the final of the comic mirror one another, with a "what is that against the moon" motif. May also be a reference to this mirroring technique being employed in famous Batman comic, The Killing Joke.
01.02 Enough grotesques for one building? That is Gotham-y.
02.01 As are the neo-Modernist architectural feats here. This, the WildStorm Universe version of Gotham City is very Anton Furst, designer of the 1989 Batman movie.
03.01 This is the WildStorm version of Richard Grayson and the Joker.
03.02 Their schlubby visual, unshaven, awkward posture, indicates the level of difference between these two and their DC universe versions, due to the absence of a Batman in their lives.
The Joker, here named Jasper (presumably in reference to Marvel Comics' Mad Jim Jaspers), is not only not visibly going around killing people or laughing his head off, he is holding down a real job.
03.03 When Dick opens his mouth, we see how bad it is. Without Batman, the orphaned boy grew into a stuttering, insecure mess, who can't dress himself properly. But, he is still trying to do good, participating in the functioning and for the curious Planetary Organization.
04.02 "It all looks like this" is more or less true. Little of Gotham's streets and layout is ever represented as less than seedy.
05.05 GCPD is Gotham City Police Department. (Pr'y don't need to point that out, do I?)
06.01 Crime Alley in the DC Universe's Gotham is actually Park Row, it's just called Crime Alley because that's very descriptive of it. Notable events on that Crime Alley (and not this one for obvious reasons) include the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents and a young boy, Jason Todd, trying to steal the hubcaps off a parked Batmobile years later.
07.01-04 1986 is the year Crisis on Infinite Earths was published, a comic about a multiversal collapse taking place across the whole DC Comics line and shared world.
08.02 The lamppost is visually similar to the one sometimes represented as being above a young Bruce Wayne and his just murdered parents. All the posts in the area would, hypothetically look the same, but this may be meant to be exactly that one.
08.03 Jasper's behavior here is an indicator that the homicidal and sadistic tendencies of the Joker are not entirely based on a presence of a Batman, only - apparently - his motivation to go do something about them more than touch himself looking at crime scene photographs.
09.02 Evert street in Gotham has porn or prostitutes or both.
Finger Street is a street in the DC Gotham as well, named for Bill Finger, co-creator and writer of Batman and many related characters.
09.03 The Conquerors of the Uncanny are a team from Alan Moore and Rob Liefeld's Judgement Day that takes place in the Awesome shared universe. The comic was a rebooting of various concepts to separate them from the Image shared universe they previously existed as part of, when Liefeld split with Image. This comic is a DC publication under the WildStorm imprint, WildStorm having previously been a part of the Image shared universe and since bought by DC Comics.
10.01 John Black, the WildStorm universe's Bruce Wayne. Bruce, without Batman, is a damaged, lip-biting, incidental murderer and wandering vagrant.
11 This bubble emanating from John Black is a variation on the multiversal snowflake seen elsewhere in Planetary. This pattern will reappear alongside elements from the other crossover oneshots, Terra Occulta and Ruling the World in the final chapter of Planetary during the rescue of Ambrose Chase.
12.01 The cityscape as changed, here, and is photorealist in nature.
12-13 The entire scene has become littered with carefully represented details including exaggerated weathering of walls, pipes, water damage, and litter on pavement. Early indicators that we are in the Alex Ross version of Gotham City.
14 The Batman, in the style and wearing a costume designed by Alex Ross, painter and comics writer.
15.04 Typically, we never see what a batrope is suspended by, but this being a "realistic" world, we do.
17.0305 Every street in Gotham has fetishwear and prostitutes. Jakita is simply seeing Batman in the context of his city as she knows it. And, also, implicating her own leathers.
18.01-03 I know Ross has painted these absurdly big bat-weapons before, but where?
27.01 A Batman in the style of the 1960's television show. The eyes have been darkened and the symbol on his chest relieved of its yellow oval by DC's legal department, as a matter of likeness rights.
The buildings are simpler than either version previously seen, in solid colors.
28.01 Bat-Female-Villain-Repellant is in line with the absurd fix-its that Batman of this television series could produce from his belt, most specifically, Bat-Shark-Repellant.
28.04 This costume shred easily, implying the previous was armored (hence standing up to Jakita's superhuman punch).
29.01 Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns Batman. There are now minimalist backgrounds, mostly of the same muddy dark colors.
31.01 "Mr. Freeze" is a Batman villain, appearing in comics as well as film and television versions of the property.
35.03 A Neal Adams version of Batman.
36.01 And, a Neal Adams style Batmobile.
36.02 Normative handcuffs and not a stylized set of bat-cuffs fit with the semi-realist ambience of Neal Adams usual Batman work.
37.03 The downturned corners of Batman's mouth are very Adams.
38-39 The recurrent panel of Batman seen here resembles a similar arrangement in "There is No Hope in Crime Alley" by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams.
40.01 This is the original-era Batman, complete with purple gloves and set in a city that is era-appropriate. And, he's wielding a gun, as earliest Batman is the only canon version to do so readily.
Batman is also framed, here, by the moon, although only his head and no a full-body framing as elsewhere.
41 This is the death of the Waynes in front of their son, Bruce.
42 Batman of the future. This is Cassaday's own design. Batman's head is again haloed by the full moon.
43.02-04 If you have not sussed that John Black is an alternate Bruce Wayne, this ought to make everything click.
44.04-05 "How do you cope?" By doing what he does here, in letting Black go into the custody of the Planetary team. By doing right.
45-46 And, by doing, as he explains here: You give safety and comfort to other people, show them they are not alone.
48.04 Similar to the first page, the shape on the moon that may or may not be a Batman.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Very Elegant Job
“Very Elegant Job”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The eleventh in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at. If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
Detective vs Spy!
John le Carré once said something like, the difference between a spy and a spymaster, was that a spy who was not a spymaster was a poor spy. Detectives (such as Snow) break down, the distinguish and analyze and simplify down to the elements to deduce a truth. Spies, spymasters in particular, aggregate and accumulate and overcomplicate to obscure or delay a truth. At least, that is their traditional MOs in fiction, and this is Planetary, it's all about fiction. We can see Snow, in this chapter, putting the pieces together like a good detective, but do we see as clearly John Stone being the consummate spymaster and working everyone as his agents, his tools, playing his games?
It burns like hell when you realize you've thanked someone for screwing you over, doesn't it? We have all been there and that kind of betrayal, the smiling shake your hand buy you another drink betrayal, is something we are never really trained to handle. There is no educational short to show in ninth grade Social Studies for that. Why is that?
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
11.00 The cover evokes Jim Steranko's SHIELD covers and Sixties spy movies, but also has a good deal of story resonance, including the circuits and eye. Particularly evocative of Nick Fury of SHIELD issue #4.
11.01.01 The squiggly and receding type for "1969" evokes a wobblier and more stylish era.
The Bride is shooting a man who looks like Marvel Comics' Nick Fury, one of the characters (and types) whom John Stone represents, as indicated by the cigar, eyepatch, and stubble.
11.01.01-03 That's a helluva flash from the discharging of the Bride's weapon.
The widescreen-mimicking panels evoke a theatrical film.
11.01.02-03 More SHIELD character lookalikes, including a Dumdum Dugan (with the mustache), being held by her Best Men.
The sunglasses and baldness of the Best Men resemble two design elements favored during the late Sixties and Seventies by Jack Kirby (though, there, it's usually blank, oversized eyes, rather than sunglases). Their uniformity visually cues us to their lack of individuality/personality, before it can be explained in dialogue.
11.01.02 S.T.O.R.M. is the precursor of international police force Stormwatch. Planetary is not only the secret history of a century of pop fiction, it is also the secret history of the WildStorm shared universe.
11.02.01 A quintessential illustration of the James Bond as badass. Completely outnumbered, staring at the business end of a gun barrel (several, here), and you know he is going to come out winning.
11.02.02 "Cold World" evokes both the Cold War, which half of this issue takes place during, but also that the world of Planetary is a cold war, mostly, both in the title/comic directly, with the Four vs the Planetary organization, but also that this Earth has, until recently, been fighting and stalemating a silent war between two alien empires that was, in actuality (thank you Alan Moore!), won a long time ago.
11.03 The Bride's agenda is one of stalemate, of stability. She does not want to change the world, but suspend it in a way she enjoys.
11.03.02 Referring to Hark and his daughter, Anna.
11.04.01-02 The Blitzen Suit is in the tradition of superspy gimmicks as favored by the two biggest influences on John Stone, Nicky Fury and James Bond. It uses magnetics to the ends of teleportation, bringing to mind the traditional view of the so-called Philadelphia Experiment. The "blitzen" in its name both indicates electromagnetism and lightning-speed, while also being a call to the lightning-represented speedsters of the DC Universe, most of whom are identified with the name Flash and bear lightning motifs on their costumes.
11.04.02 The Equalizer Disc resembles the lethal ricocheting disc used by an alien in the movie I Come in Peace. Except, I'm not sure it is cutting the Best Men, or if it is firing those red beams at them.
11.04.05 Stone bears the same light scar as the original James Bond of the novels, and Planetary's Jimmy, the Operator.
11.05.01 The red pattern here identified as "the universal border" is more traditionally known as the Bleed and indicates the arterial walls between alternate realities.
Of course the Sixties spy villain has a Polynesian base.
11.05.02 The Bride saying "decouple" is one thing, that both fuel (hot) and coolant (you see where this is going) are involved is another. It isn't a Sixties spy story if everyone isn't being witty.
11.05.04 And having special gimmick weapons, of course, like this saw-toothed bullet. (A regular round would not do the same, oh no.)
11.06.02 If the friction of the round won't do it, surely a flamethrower built into the same gun will?
11.07.05 An example of James Bondian wit. And, of Steranko-style abstract background to highlight the figure.
11.08 There is something classic about the villain midway up the ladder to escape.
11.09.01 More abstract background shapes.
11.09-07 The widescreen-simulating panels give a filmic ambience to Snow's arrival.
11.09.02-03 Furthering the hot/cold dichotomy, the Bride dies here as ice while her Best Men burned.
11.010.01 Is Marrakesh, here, a reference to the film Bang! Bang! You're Dead! or the I Spy episode "Honorable Assassins? Or, simply to a famous portrait of Mick Jagger, whose '67 style the contemporaneous Snow is not a thousand miles away from?
11.10.05 The form of introduction is the same form traditional for the introduction of James Bond.
11.11.01 The straight lines and balance of the "2000" indicate the shift between that year and 1969.
11.11-20 This bar, The Last Shot, has been seen before in an issue of Stormwatch written by Warren Ellis and was part of a superhuman bar culture movement along with fellow WildStorm writer Alan Moore.
11.12.01-03 This concept of souls and Heaven and Hell is, as noted by Warren Ellis, appropriated from William Burroughs, though perhaps only the electromagnetic and nuclear-erasure aspects are original to Burroughs (in terms of publication).
11.12.02 The photos on the wall recall, in their chiaroscuro, the use of photography in Jim Steranko's SHIELD work and other late-Sixties comics, including those by Jack Kirby.
11.13.02-03 The Nautilus here is the one from Verne's fiction, not our "real world" Nautilus of the same year, 1959.
John Stone appears not to know of the woman onboard with Leather and Snow, or at least he does not mention her.
11.13.03 The flashback/memory is embedded behind the contemporary scene, which is a nice visual reinforcement.
11.14.02 Snow unwittingly disrupted a cold war.
11.15.03 "Who benefits from [Snow's] lack of memory?" Well, right here, Stone does.
11.15.05 Which, is why, in part, Stone is honest about his playing mindgames such as this for decades.
11.16.01 Unreal Sanction Force alludes to the mindgaming going on in this very issue as well as throughout Planetary. The acronym also brings to mind the United States Forces, military operations of a primarily non-militant nature in foreign countries (USFJ for Japan, USF-I for Iraq, and so). Further, it may allude to Gerry Anderson's television series, UFO about an organization called S.H.A.D.O., which was an alien-invasion fighting organization run under the cover of being a televisions studio. The aliens of UFO were the organ-abducting type, though never seen clearly without disguising elements, or named, similar to how the Four will be shown to masquerade as extraplanetary aliens to perform terrorist actions, abduct people, and harvest organs.
11.16.04 The Four are playing with Snow because they profit from his general actions and the behavior of his organization, but also, it is the nature of fictional villains to execute protracted sequences of playing with their victims. If they only killed their opponents straightaway, the victim might never turn the tables and win.
11.17 This page utilizes backgrounds of abstract solid shapes in every panel.
11.17.02 John Stone being so concerned that Snow's allies not know of him or his involvement should flag Snow, but does not. This is still superspy business.
11.17.03 Has Stone spiked that cigarette? Snow has thought about the mental blockage before without it collapsing. Eye-opening cig or simply time?
11.18.01 Are those stalactites or teeth?
11.18.02 A Murder Colonel, as seen earlier in Brass' group's trophy room. The mask's bug-eyes and tendril-mouth give a cthuloid or Innsmouth look to him.
11.18.03 Snow is beating on wolfmen with a cane, just as the silver-topped cane in The Wolfman has an implement that can seriously injure a such a creature. Note also, naturally, a full moon above.
11.18.01-03 Note that in the first panel, Snow's pistol is missing from the holster, then in the second, a pistol is dislodged from the Murder Colonel's hand by Snow's punch, then in the third he has a pistol tucked into his belt. Possibly unconnected, but nice.
11.19.02 This is Jakita Wagner's mother in the lost city of Opak-Re.
11.19.04 Sherlock Holmes. And, as we learn, Snow found him at the address most often associated with Holmes, so, really, not the greatest detective work ever but effective.
11.20.03 "It's a game" and the red circles here remind me of Grant Morrison and particularly, The Invisibles, in which, "Try to remember it's only a game" was a recurring phrase and an explanation of fiction and reality.
11.21.05 Stone's eye-rolling and smirk prefigure the reveal of his betrayal here.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The eleventh in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
Detective vs Spy!
John le Carré once said something like, the difference between a spy and a spymaster, was that a spy who was not a spymaster was a poor spy. Detectives (such as Snow) break down, the distinguish and analyze and simplify down to the elements to deduce a truth. Spies, spymasters in particular, aggregate and accumulate and overcomplicate to obscure or delay a truth. At least, that is their traditional MOs in fiction, and this is Planetary, it's all about fiction. We can see Snow, in this chapter, putting the pieces together like a good detective, but do we see as clearly John Stone being the consummate spymaster and working everyone as his agents, his tools, playing his games?
It burns like hell when you realize you've thanked someone for screwing you over, doesn't it? We have all been there and that kind of betrayal, the smiling shake your hand buy you another drink betrayal, is something we are never really trained to handle. There is no educational short to show in ninth grade Social Studies for that. Why is that?
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
11.00 The cover evokes Jim Steranko's SHIELD covers and Sixties spy movies, but also has a good deal of story resonance, including the circuits and eye. Particularly evocative of Nick Fury of SHIELD issue #4.
11.01.01 The squiggly and receding type for "1969" evokes a wobblier and more stylish era.
The Bride is shooting a man who looks like Marvel Comics' Nick Fury, one of the characters (and types) whom John Stone represents, as indicated by the cigar, eyepatch, and stubble.
11.01.01-03 That's a helluva flash from the discharging of the Bride's weapon.
The widescreen-mimicking panels evoke a theatrical film.
11.01.02-03 More SHIELD character lookalikes, including a Dumdum Dugan (with the mustache), being held by her Best Men.
The sunglasses and baldness of the Best Men resemble two design elements favored during the late Sixties and Seventies by Jack Kirby (though, there, it's usually blank, oversized eyes, rather than sunglases). Their uniformity visually cues us to their lack of individuality/personality, before it can be explained in dialogue.
11.01.02 S.T.O.R.M. is the precursor of international police force Stormwatch. Planetary is not only the secret history of a century of pop fiction, it is also the secret history of the WildStorm shared universe.
11.02.01 A quintessential illustration of the James Bond as badass. Completely outnumbered, staring at the business end of a gun barrel (several, here), and you know he is going to come out winning.
11.02.02 "Cold World" evokes both the Cold War, which half of this issue takes place during, but also that the world of Planetary is a cold war, mostly, both in the title/comic directly, with the Four vs the Planetary organization, but also that this Earth has, until recently, been fighting and stalemating a silent war between two alien empires that was, in actuality (thank you Alan Moore!), won a long time ago.
11.03 The Bride's agenda is one of stalemate, of stability. She does not want to change the world, but suspend it in a way she enjoys.
11.03.02 Referring to Hark and his daughter, Anna.
11.04.01-02 The Blitzen Suit is in the tradition of superspy gimmicks as favored by the two biggest influences on John Stone, Nicky Fury and James Bond. It uses magnetics to the ends of teleportation, bringing to mind the traditional view of the so-called Philadelphia Experiment. The "blitzen" in its name both indicates electromagnetism and lightning-speed, while also being a call to the lightning-represented speedsters of the DC Universe, most of whom are identified with the name Flash and bear lightning motifs on their costumes.
11.04.02 The Equalizer Disc resembles the lethal ricocheting disc used by an alien in the movie I Come in Peace. Except, I'm not sure it is cutting the Best Men, or if it is firing those red beams at them.
11.04.05 Stone bears the same light scar as the original James Bond of the novels, and Planetary's Jimmy, the Operator.
11.05.01 The red pattern here identified as "the universal border" is more traditionally known as the Bleed and indicates the arterial walls between alternate realities.
Of course the Sixties spy villain has a Polynesian base.
11.05.02 The Bride saying "decouple" is one thing, that both fuel (hot) and coolant (you see where this is going) are involved is another. It isn't a Sixties spy story if everyone isn't being witty.
11.05.04 And having special gimmick weapons, of course, like this saw-toothed bullet. (A regular round would not do the same, oh no.)
11.06.02 If the friction of the round won't do it, surely a flamethrower built into the same gun will?
11.07.05 An example of James Bondian wit. And, of Steranko-style abstract background to highlight the figure.
11.08 There is something classic about the villain midway up the ladder to escape.
11.09.01 More abstract background shapes.
11.09-07 The widescreen-simulating panels give a filmic ambience to Snow's arrival.
11.09.02-03 Furthering the hot/cold dichotomy, the Bride dies here as ice while her Best Men burned.
11.010.01 Is Marrakesh, here, a reference to the film Bang! Bang! You're Dead! or the I Spy episode "Honorable Assassins? Or, simply to a famous portrait of Mick Jagger, whose '67 style the contemporaneous Snow is not a thousand miles away from?
11.10.05 The form of introduction is the same form traditional for the introduction of James Bond.
11.11.01 The straight lines and balance of the "2000" indicate the shift between that year and 1969.
11.11-20 This bar, The Last Shot, has been seen before in an issue of Stormwatch written by Warren Ellis and was part of a superhuman bar culture movement along with fellow WildStorm writer Alan Moore.
11.12.01-03 This concept of souls and Heaven and Hell is, as noted by Warren Ellis, appropriated from William Burroughs, though perhaps only the electromagnetic and nuclear-erasure aspects are original to Burroughs (in terms of publication).
11.12.02 The photos on the wall recall, in their chiaroscuro, the use of photography in Jim Steranko's SHIELD work and other late-Sixties comics, including those by Jack Kirby.
11.13.02-03 The Nautilus here is the one from Verne's fiction, not our "real world" Nautilus of the same year, 1959.
John Stone appears not to know of the woman onboard with Leather and Snow, or at least he does not mention her.
11.13.03 The flashback/memory is embedded behind the contemporary scene, which is a nice visual reinforcement.
11.14.02 Snow unwittingly disrupted a cold war.
11.15.03 "Who benefits from [Snow's] lack of memory?" Well, right here, Stone does.
11.15.05 Which, is why, in part, Stone is honest about his playing mindgames such as this for decades.
11.16.01 Unreal Sanction Force alludes to the mindgaming going on in this very issue as well as throughout Planetary. The acronym also brings to mind the United States Forces, military operations of a primarily non-militant nature in foreign countries (USFJ for Japan, USF-I for Iraq, and so). Further, it may allude to Gerry Anderson's television series, UFO about an organization called S.H.A.D.O., which was an alien-invasion fighting organization run under the cover of being a televisions studio. The aliens of UFO were the organ-abducting type, though never seen clearly without disguising elements, or named, similar to how the Four will be shown to masquerade as extraplanetary aliens to perform terrorist actions, abduct people, and harvest organs.
11.16.04 The Four are playing with Snow because they profit from his general actions and the behavior of his organization, but also, it is the nature of fictional villains to execute protracted sequences of playing with their victims. If they only killed their opponents straightaway, the victim might never turn the tables and win.
11.17 This page utilizes backgrounds of abstract solid shapes in every panel.
11.17.02 John Stone being so concerned that Snow's allies not know of him or his involvement should flag Snow, but does not. This is still superspy business.
11.17.03 Has Stone spiked that cigarette? Snow has thought about the mental blockage before without it collapsing. Eye-opening cig or simply time?
11.18.01 Are those stalactites or teeth?
11.18.02 A Murder Colonel, as seen earlier in Brass' group's trophy room. The mask's bug-eyes and tendril-mouth give a cthuloid or Innsmouth look to him.
11.18.03 Snow is beating on wolfmen with a cane, just as the silver-topped cane in The Wolfman has an implement that can seriously injure a such a creature. Note also, naturally, a full moon above.
11.18.01-03 Note that in the first panel, Snow's pistol is missing from the holster, then in the second, a pistol is dislodged from the Murder Colonel's hand by Snow's punch, then in the third he has a pistol tucked into his belt. Possibly unconnected, but nice.
11.19.02 This is Jakita Wagner's mother in the lost city of Opak-Re.
11.19.04 Sherlock Holmes. And, as we learn, Snow found him at the address most often associated with Holmes, so, really, not the greatest detective work ever but effective.
11.20.03 "It's a game" and the red circles here remind me of Grant Morrison and particularly, The Invisibles, in which, "Try to remember it's only a game" was a recurring phrase and an explanation of fiction and reality.
11.21.05 Stone's eye-rolling and smirk prefigure the reveal of his betrayal here.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Their Ingenuity and Passion Will Be Missed
“Their Ingenuity and Passion Will Be Missed”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The tenth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at. If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
Eulogy for fiction is not their end. In life, you talk about the passed and you kind of know you aren't getting them back, even believing in an afterlife or resurrection you fear you do not get to see them again, to see someone's brilliance or presence. When you do it in fiction for fiction, you make it live again in that fictional realm. Because the idea, as proved by its absence or removal, is the same shape and strength as the idea by its presence, if not better.
"MAGIC AND LOSS" is no more intended to be the final Superman story than "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" It shows why there should be Superman stories. It demonstrates what we get out of Green Lantern stories, mostly without ever noticing that those elements are there, the space police element has been in Green Lantern a long time, the oath even longer, but how often do actual Green Lantern stories demonstrate why that means something as this chapter of Planetary does? Had any story before this one linked the lantern to the policework (which is historically culturally accurate for several locales/communities throughout history)? And, Wonder Woman? This chapter, this portrayal puts the lie to the idea that feminism is about proving women are better than men. She is not going to go to the multi-gendered United States and announce herself superior, she is only going to go and present herself and her culture.
Is this Wonder Woman about erasure, then? Probably, intentionally or not. Presence means something. Always.
The Help is out right now, and it's sort of eulogizing housecleaners and maids struggles during the era often called the Civil Rights Movement (as if there was one movement in a small period of years). Fair enough. It's through the eyes of what in that situation is the overclass, white perspective, though still an underclass (women). Okeh, fair... yeah, fair enough, too. And it's yet another example of the rare role available to black actors even today: the help. Porters and maids. You know what's interesting to me, about this? During the era the film is set in, nonwhite actors were unionizing, particularly black women, resulting in many of those same housecleaner and mammy roles being cast with white actors in blackface to avoid casting the black unionized actors. And, you have a huge movement, watershed being Sidney Poitier, towards refusing to take those roles to make a point of how rare any non-servile role was for a black performer. If you make that movie, though, you have to show nonwhite people doing for themselves, standing up confidently and - not being aggressive, but - being insistently present. And getting erased by blackface for it.
Has that got too much to do with this issue? Reaching too far? I don't know. Is Frances Williams a superhero?
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
This issue's title is most likely a reference to the Lou Reed song of the same name.
10.01.01 The blanket of the issue's Superman analog.
10.01.02 The lantern of the Green Lantern analog, unlit and empty-looking.
10.01.03 Bracelets of the Wonder Woman analog.
10.02.01 Presumably this is Four Voyagers Plaza, last seen in chapter six.
10.03.03 The winged rig is analogous to the kind traditionally used by DC Comics' Hawk characters, Hawkman/woman/gil. These artifacts, the bracelets, the rig, blanket, are lifeless remains of those concepts.
10.05-9 A replay of the pre-Earth origins of Superman, stripped of familiar iconography
10.06.04 The child is launched from a field named for a(n old) sun god. Superman, powered by the yellow sun, is nothing if not solar-centric and impregnated with a sense of old alien culture and history.
10.08 Superman purified down the The Last Son.
10.10.01 The speaking alien is drawn in a very angular, snaky style, similar to sometime Green Lantern artist Kevin O'Neil's basic style.
10.10.02 Narration and visual boil down the Green Lantern Corps concept to "space's first policeman" with a lamp lighting the way.
10.10.03 A policeman whose badge and tool was "the light of reason" and not, say, a gun.
Is the alien growing those lanterns from its tendrils?
10.11 Here a corps of space cops analogous to the Green Lantern Corps.
10.12.02 The command, the invocation here, is similar to the Green Lantern's oath, which is a rhyming statement of intent usually modified from Lantern to Lantern. Here it is strongly connected to a request/reminder to be "the best kind of policeman."
10.14.03 A Wonder Woman analog and her mother, with a city behind them analogous to Wonder Woman's nation-city of origin, Themyscira.
10.15.04 "And they won't go back" to the Moon, is an indictment of the same magic and loss seen with these superhero concepts and their removal during the course of the story.
10.15.05 The Wonder Woman here is purified not to an ambassadorial role, but also a teacher, a messenger whose message is, essentially (the medium is the message) her existence.
10.16.04 She has "tamed" her bracelets, playing into the use of bondage, freedom, and play-bondage to define pretty much everything, as seen in the earliest Wonder Woman comics.
10.19.04-6 William Leather's powers appear to be analogous, visually, to the Human Torch of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, but they are not temperature related, as seen here where they are a magicky skeleton key. As we will see throughout Planetary, the Planetary field team's superhuman abilities are more in line with the Fantastic Four than the analogs of the Four.
10.20.01 Baby Superman, complete with indestructable blanket bearing a gold standard/shield. Yes, Superman's cape, as an adult, is his baby blanket.
10.20.04 Leather can generate intense heat, however else his powers work.
10.21 A very Jim Steranko page layout. And, here, Doctor Randall Dowling of the Four is posed bending over or in extreme projection to give the semblance of stretching, cuing to mind that he is analogous to Marvel Comics' Mr. Fantastic.
10.21.02 The space cop has been shot in the face, similar to the shot-in-the-head stuffed and mounted Green Lanterns displayed in the Four's outerspace headquarters in the Terra Occulta crossover with the Justice League.
10.21.03 The Wonder Woman analog is explicitly referred to as an "ambassador."
10.21.04 Henry Bendix is the later head of an international superhuman police force, Stormwatch, and a bad man. He will use this artifact to produce a soldier who ends up dead on his first mission in the Stormwatch story "A Finer World" also written by Warren Ellis.
10.22.01 The severe black border given to this panel reinforces how much is left out when all the potential we saw throughout this chapter are reduced to the artifacts.
10.22.01-02 The lightning-like shapes throughout this issue are a nice touch, bringing to mind silently the Flash characters of DC, one of the staples of that company's shared world not given much consideration in Planetary.
10.22.04 All that lost potential that is implied reminds Snow to act not to wait for action. That's nicely done.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The tenth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
Eulogy for fiction is not their end. In life, you talk about the passed and you kind of know you aren't getting them back, even believing in an afterlife or resurrection you fear you do not get to see them again, to see someone's brilliance or presence. When you do it in fiction for fiction, you make it live again in that fictional realm. Because the idea, as proved by its absence or removal, is the same shape and strength as the idea by its presence, if not better.
"MAGIC AND LOSS" is no more intended to be the final Superman story than "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" It shows why there should be Superman stories. It demonstrates what we get out of Green Lantern stories, mostly without ever noticing that those elements are there, the space police element has been in Green Lantern a long time, the oath even longer, but how often do actual Green Lantern stories demonstrate why that means something as this chapter of Planetary does? Had any story before this one linked the lantern to the policework (which is historically culturally accurate for several locales/communities throughout history)? And, Wonder Woman? This chapter, this portrayal puts the lie to the idea that feminism is about proving women are better than men. She is not going to go to the multi-gendered United States and announce herself superior, she is only going to go and present herself and her culture.
Is this Wonder Woman about erasure, then? Probably, intentionally or not. Presence means something. Always.
The Help is out right now, and it's sort of eulogizing housecleaners and maids struggles during the era often called the Civil Rights Movement (as if there was one movement in a small period of years). Fair enough. It's through the eyes of what in that situation is the overclass, white perspective, though still an underclass (women). Okeh, fair... yeah, fair enough, too. And it's yet another example of the rare role available to black actors even today: the help. Porters and maids. You know what's interesting to me, about this? During the era the film is set in, nonwhite actors were unionizing, particularly black women, resulting in many of those same housecleaner and mammy roles being cast with white actors in blackface to avoid casting the black unionized actors. And, you have a huge movement, watershed being Sidney Poitier, towards refusing to take those roles to make a point of how rare any non-servile role was for a black performer. If you make that movie, though, you have to show nonwhite people doing for themselves, standing up confidently and - not being aggressive, but - being insistently present. And getting erased by blackface for it.
Has that got too much to do with this issue? Reaching too far? I don't know. Is Frances Williams a superhero?
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
This issue's title is most likely a reference to the Lou Reed song of the same name.
10.01.01 The blanket of the issue's Superman analog.
10.01.02 The lantern of the Green Lantern analog, unlit and empty-looking.
10.01.03 Bracelets of the Wonder Woman analog.
10.02.01 Presumably this is Four Voyagers Plaza, last seen in chapter six.
10.03.03 The winged rig is analogous to the kind traditionally used by DC Comics' Hawk characters, Hawkman/woman/gil. These artifacts, the bracelets, the rig, blanket, are lifeless remains of those concepts.
10.05-9 A replay of the pre-Earth origins of Superman, stripped of familiar iconography
10.06.04 The child is launched from a field named for a(n old) sun god. Superman, powered by the yellow sun, is nothing if not solar-centric and impregnated with a sense of old alien culture and history.
10.08 Superman purified down the The Last Son.
10.10.01 The speaking alien is drawn in a very angular, snaky style, similar to sometime Green Lantern artist Kevin O'Neil's basic style.
10.10.02 Narration and visual boil down the Green Lantern Corps concept to "space's first policeman" with a lamp lighting the way.
10.10.03 A policeman whose badge and tool was "the light of reason" and not, say, a gun.
Is the alien growing those lanterns from its tendrils?
10.11 Here a corps of space cops analogous to the Green Lantern Corps.
10.12.02 The command, the invocation here, is similar to the Green Lantern's oath, which is a rhyming statement of intent usually modified from Lantern to Lantern. Here it is strongly connected to a request/reminder to be "the best kind of policeman."
10.14.03 A Wonder Woman analog and her mother, with a city behind them analogous to Wonder Woman's nation-city of origin, Themyscira.
10.15.04 "And they won't go back" to the Moon, is an indictment of the same magic and loss seen with these superhero concepts and their removal during the course of the story.
10.15.05 The Wonder Woman here is purified not to an ambassadorial role, but also a teacher, a messenger whose message is, essentially (the medium is the message) her existence.
10.16.04 She has "tamed" her bracelets, playing into the use of bondage, freedom, and play-bondage to define pretty much everything, as seen in the earliest Wonder Woman comics.
10.19.04-6 William Leather's powers appear to be analogous, visually, to the Human Torch of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, but they are not temperature related, as seen here where they are a magicky skeleton key. As we will see throughout Planetary, the Planetary field team's superhuman abilities are more in line with the Fantastic Four than the analogs of the Four.
10.20.01 Baby Superman, complete with indestructable blanket bearing a gold standard/shield. Yes, Superman's cape, as an adult, is his baby blanket.
10.20.04 Leather can generate intense heat, however else his powers work.
10.21 A very Jim Steranko page layout. And, here, Doctor Randall Dowling of the Four is posed bending over or in extreme projection to give the semblance of stretching, cuing to mind that he is analogous to Marvel Comics' Mr. Fantastic.
10.21.02 The space cop has been shot in the face, similar to the shot-in-the-head stuffed and mounted Green Lanterns displayed in the Four's outerspace headquarters in the Terra Occulta crossover with the Justice League.
10.21.03 The Wonder Woman analog is explicitly referred to as an "ambassador."
10.21.04 Henry Bendix is the later head of an international superhuman police force, Stormwatch, and a bad man. He will use this artifact to produce a soldier who ends up dead on his first mission in the Stormwatch story "A Finer World" also written by Warren Ellis.
10.22.01 The severe black border given to this panel reinforces how much is left out when all the potential we saw throughout this chapter are reduced to the artifacts.
10.22.01-02 The lightning-like shapes throughout this issue are a nice touch, bringing to mind silently the Flash characters of DC, one of the staples of that company's shared world not given much consideration in Planetary.
10.22.04 All that lost potential that is implied reminds Snow to act not to wait for action. That's nicely done.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
"The World That's Warped"
“The World That's Warped”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The ninth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at. If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
Most of Planetary is taken from other fictions and utilized to a cumulative and purified end, but four things seem to be all over this series more than almost anything, and those are Superman, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Fantastic Four, and Grant Morrison. You could shoot a window of those four things and the shrapnel of glass might fall in the shape of this chapter, "Planet Fiction", which is, in fact, dedicated to Morrison. What's funny is that, when you combine those things and leave out thinking too hard about anything, you basically get The Matrix, which also figures heavily into this issue's techniques and ambience.
We do look at ourselves in our fiction. We look at our fiction as if it is us. We hold a bendy mirror up to reality.
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
09.01 Is the ship crashed into the farmhouse a Superman allusion? There are at least two other definite references to farmhouse rescues of the extraordinary in Planetary later to come.
The red skies may connect with the fictions bleeding together, in reference to the red skies of the DC Comics' Crisis events. Crisis on Infinite Earths will see reference elsewhere in Planetary.
Dedicated to Grant Morrison, writer, artist, and musician and friend and colleague of Warren Ellis. Morrison has done a lot of work (and thinking) dealing with the interaction of fiction and reality.
09.02.05 The bloodspattered baby and teddy bear are not a direct reference to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, but to Warren Ellis' homage to that comic in WildStorm's Stormwatch.
09.03.01 Of course they are "sensors," but that tells us nothing specific, does it? It's the sort of shorthand that works great in fiction to keep us from having to worry about specifics.
09.04.02 All those beautiful-looking bridges to nowhere!
09.05.03 The project leader does enjoy saying (and playing?) God. He is also very Bernard Quatermass, as this experiment is very Quatermass-y.
09.05.04 Rocket, exploration, and four people including a blond woman and a gruff, military-esque second = Marvel's Fantastic Four?
09.05.05 The project brought a group of scientists and artists together to generate a fiction in our world. Shades of Ozymandias' final operation in Watchmen.
09.05.05-06 The imprinting of early experiences on the fiction that is crafted, as well as the stab at immortality through fiction have metatextual oomph as well as practical for the story/world at hand.
09.06.01 Green for "go" is simple enough, but with this chapter being dedicated to Morrison, we must assume his prevalence for stoplight terminology/coding plays.
09.06.02 Also, Morrison's enjoyment of the 23 trope.
09.07.02 More speaking in unnecessary, unlikely infodump with Ambrose Chase introducing himself and the organization by name.
09.08.02 Ambrose's physics-altering powers actually make him a better Invisible Woman than Suskind of The Four. Her invisibles shapes appear to be subject to gravity and velocity, while Ambrose flouts physical laws.
09.09.01 "Too easy" is too stereotypical, especially since we discover it is being staged for them, it is too easy.
09.09.03 If you're going to be movie chic, a handgun in each hand is the way to go. Long coat, too.
09.10.01 More green.
09.11.01 Underground base, alienesque entity, and pushing an electrically-powered door with shoulder-power - I know Warren Ellis was in part influenced by Neon Genesis Evangelion with Planetary, but I honestly cannot tell if that comes to play here or this is more Quatermass.
09.11.02 Jakita's "shit" being cut off by the panel border allows the language-restrcitions of the series to remain intact but also plays into a developing series of demonstrations that the borders do limit or can be surpassed, from the bloodspatter (09.10.05) and previous dialogue by off-panel speakers.
09.11.05 More infodump, this time for Drums, and of course, nothing they don't know.
09.12 Fully-powered allusion to the wire-fu, gun porn, and more specifically, The Matrix.
09.13-14 The question of "Why did you create me?" and the answer, here, play into Grant Morrison's belief that when he was visited by higher-dimensional beings who showed him the shape of reality, they also demonstrated that fictions, well-made enough, may be real worlds.
09.14.01 The illuminated (blown out) floor and blood seems so anime, but I can't place a particular example.
09.14.02 Jakita is very absurd kung fu here, a blow with every limb!
09.15.01 An "infodump" is outright asked for.
09.17.04 The hairpiece on the Quatermass stand-in is progressively skewed. Fictions.
09.20.01 More living in fiction. Life as fiction, fiction defining life.
09.21 For all the "green" talk, there are a lot of yellow circles (in a story about a man suspending himself in time).
09.22.01 "I'm the villain" and so self-labeled, he acts the part and excuses it.
09.22.03 Jakita reaching out towards the reader is a technique Morrison has employed more than once.
"The end" is one more piece of self-reference.
09.22.04 The story, at the coda, is reduced to text, inverted from the black on white norm, and formed in short synopsized notes.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The ninth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
Most of Planetary is taken from other fictions and utilized to a cumulative and purified end, but four things seem to be all over this series more than almost anything, and those are Superman, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Fantastic Four, and Grant Morrison. You could shoot a window of those four things and the shrapnel of glass might fall in the shape of this chapter, "Planet Fiction", which is, in fact, dedicated to Morrison. What's funny is that, when you combine those things and leave out thinking too hard about anything, you basically get The Matrix, which also figures heavily into this issue's techniques and ambience.
We do look at ourselves in our fiction. We look at our fiction as if it is us. We hold a bendy mirror up to reality.
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
09.01 Is the ship crashed into the farmhouse a Superman allusion? There are at least two other definite references to farmhouse rescues of the extraordinary in Planetary later to come.
The red skies may connect with the fictions bleeding together, in reference to the red skies of the DC Comics' Crisis events. Crisis on Infinite Earths will see reference elsewhere in Planetary.
Dedicated to Grant Morrison, writer, artist, and musician and friend and colleague of Warren Ellis. Morrison has done a lot of work (and thinking) dealing with the interaction of fiction and reality.
09.02.05 The bloodspattered baby and teddy bear are not a direct reference to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, but to Warren Ellis' homage to that comic in WildStorm's Stormwatch.
09.03.01 Of course they are "sensors," but that tells us nothing specific, does it? It's the sort of shorthand that works great in fiction to keep us from having to worry about specifics.
09.04.02 All those beautiful-looking bridges to nowhere!
09.05.03 The project leader does enjoy saying (and playing?) God. He is also very Bernard Quatermass, as this experiment is very Quatermass-y.
09.05.04 Rocket, exploration, and four people including a blond woman and a gruff, military-esque second = Marvel's Fantastic Four?
09.05.05 The project brought a group of scientists and artists together to generate a fiction in our world. Shades of Ozymandias' final operation in Watchmen.
09.05.05-06 The imprinting of early experiences on the fiction that is crafted, as well as the stab at immortality through fiction have metatextual oomph as well as practical for the story/world at hand.
09.06.01 Green for "go" is simple enough, but with this chapter being dedicated to Morrison, we must assume his prevalence for stoplight terminology/coding plays.
09.06.02 Also, Morrison's enjoyment of the 23 trope.
09.07.02 More speaking in unnecessary, unlikely infodump with Ambrose Chase introducing himself and the organization by name.
09.08.02 Ambrose's physics-altering powers actually make him a better Invisible Woman than Suskind of The Four. Her invisibles shapes appear to be subject to gravity and velocity, while Ambrose flouts physical laws.
09.09.01 "Too easy" is too stereotypical, especially since we discover it is being staged for them, it is too easy.
09.09.03 If you're going to be movie chic, a handgun in each hand is the way to go. Long coat, too.
09.10.01 More green.
09.11.01 Underground base, alienesque entity, and pushing an electrically-powered door with shoulder-power - I know Warren Ellis was in part influenced by Neon Genesis Evangelion with Planetary, but I honestly cannot tell if that comes to play here or this is more Quatermass.
09.11.02 Jakita's "shit" being cut off by the panel border allows the language-restrcitions of the series to remain intact but also plays into a developing series of demonstrations that the borders do limit or can be surpassed, from the bloodspatter (09.10.05) and previous dialogue by off-panel speakers.
09.11.05 More infodump, this time for Drums, and of course, nothing they don't know.
09.12 Fully-powered allusion to the wire-fu, gun porn, and more specifically, The Matrix.
09.13-14 The question of "Why did you create me?" and the answer, here, play into Grant Morrison's belief that when he was visited by higher-dimensional beings who showed him the shape of reality, they also demonstrated that fictions, well-made enough, may be real worlds.
09.14.01 The illuminated (blown out) floor and blood seems so anime, but I can't place a particular example.
09.14.02 Jakita is very absurd kung fu here, a blow with every limb!
09.15.01 An "infodump" is outright asked for.
09.17.04 The hairpiece on the Quatermass stand-in is progressively skewed. Fictions.
09.20.01 More living in fiction. Life as fiction, fiction defining life.
09.21 For all the "green" talk, there are a lot of yellow circles (in a story about a man suspending himself in time).
09.22.01 "I'm the villain" and so self-labeled, he acts the part and excuses it.
09.22.03 Jakita reaching out towards the reader is a technique Morrison has employed more than once.
"The end" is one more piece of self-reference.
09.22.04 The story, at the coda, is reduced to text, inverted from the black on white norm, and formed in short synopsized notes.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Thursday, March 24, 2011
"The Devil's Empty House"
“The Devil’s Empty House”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The eighth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at. If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
When Planetary started up, the main characters all seemed short-sighted and cavalier, they were cynical except for small bursts of earnest enjoyment at things like surviving monsters on Island Zero. Life was cheap, people were selfish, and missions and mysteries could be entered into and abandoned when finished. The pitch document that many of us saw fairly early on seemed to validate this as the full breadth of the series remit. Many critics, reviewers, and Wikipedia updaters seemed sure that any change in this status quo was a last minute revision or the result of a serialization gone on longer than intended by several years.
I don’t buy it. Wagner was grieving (for the apparently dead, Jack Carter, but also for her amnesiac boss and father figure, Snow) in the chapter previous to this one, and here, as with the sixth chapter, 4, Snow is offended by the cruelty and loss demonstrated by the situations at hand. Snow’s way to be offended is, frequently (post the shiftship visit, after reading documents on the Four) to get productively angry, but he can also be crippled by his inability to save. Beat in mind, we don’t even know his purpose in existing, in walking the Earth, right now, is to save, but here in this chapter, he is unable to rescue Allison; the best he can do his help her die as unburdened as possible.
Death is unfair.
In the end, this will perhaps be the ultimate statement or the primary driving force of the comic. “Right now, I want my friend back,” says Snow in the final chapter, and it validates a whole helluva lot. And, maybe it is true that everything Warren Ellis and everyone else working on Planetary experienced over the years of its serialization had an effect on the comic culminating to that point, but the seeds are here and in every issue. The affected coolness of Snow, of Wagner and Drums, fades pretty quick after the first chapter, and it to no end surprises me how many readers seemed offended when they realized at about chapter twenty-five that this was not only a series of genre investigations where the primary characters remained detached, but about getting immersed in life and doing right. “But,” say some of these readers, “it says right in the pitch document…” And, maybe it does, but it is never demonstrated in Planetary.
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
08.00 The cover is practically a collage of Fifties and Sixties pop culture monsters, including visual references to Attack of the 50 Ft Woman, the giant ants of Them, a Mars Attacks Martian, and the military counterstrike against them, in the form of tanks, planes, missiles and armed soldiers.
08.01 Similar to previous film-centric chapters, the opening page mimics the widescreen ratio. This is also the first of a number of careful transitionals in this chapter, demonstrating minor changes that alter an otherwise static scene.
The title, "THE DAY THE EARTH TURNED SLOWER” is a reference to the film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed by Robert Wise.
08.02.01 Allison is in part a reference to actress and activist Allison Hayes, star of The Attack of the 50 Ft Woman and other films, who died of leukemia, lead poisoning, and other health complications, many of which were enhanced by ill-treatment during her acting days.
08.03.03-04 Another transition between two succinct (unlit; lit) moments.
08.06.03 In 1960, Hayes appeared as Justine (for you Sade fans) in The Hypnotic Eye, about brutalized women and mind control, whose production was connected to Caryl Chessman, convicted of multiple rapes, robberies, and assaults, who claimed to have been set up by a government conspiracy. Further, the screenwriter has said, “Most hypnotists -- if you ever get talking to them -- tell you that the reason they got into hypnosis was to be able to control women. That's the fact of it. So once you know that, and once you've talked to a few hypnotists, you realize that they are basically masturbators who have a way of getting their rocks off without having charm or anything!” (I can’t say that this has any bearing on the date chosen, but it seems synchronous.)
08.07.02 Giant atomic ants are a reference to, along with the cover image, the film, Them, directed by Gordon Douglas.
08.11.05 Does Allison know more about Planetary than she is letting on, or is this “strange world” mention only coincidental?
08.13.02 The Fifties flashbacks are presented in black and white to echo films of the era, particularly, of the genre examined in this chapter.
08.15.04 Back in the second chapter, Jakita Wagner suggests blaming physical mutation and Fifties/Sixties-style monsters on radiation is “retarded,” but here we are, with “atomics” and “atomic projection” being cited as responsible for a whole array of similar effects.
“Atomic projection” could have a lot of long-haired science (or, as Ellis prefers, drunken science) extrapolations, including deformation retracts, which involve continually shrinking spaces, and Category Theory. It may not mean what it implies.
08.16.01 The (here backlit) lamps (perhaps unintentionally) resemble both a blowup of Kirby Dots and also the DMT machine elves to be seen later, in Death Machine Telemetry.
08.16.03 Dowling’s dialogue here, reminds of the era-specific movies’ tendency of scientist-characters delivering very simple information while sounding as if they expect neither other characters nor audience to fully understand.
08.17.04 Note that her half-life here, and that she dies after fifty years may not be related. Her actual whole life, resurrection included, is a reasonable human lifespan, while her body could easily remain radioactive.
08.18.03 Were these experiments, in part, Dowling testing how best to make himself (and his associates) superhuman?
08.18.03-04 Reference to the TV crimesolving version of The Invisible Man, perhaps, and to Ralph Ellis’ novel, Invisible Man, which echoes Planetary in multiple moments, including, “We the machines inside the machine.”
08.18.05-06 Reference to The Indestructable Man.
08.19.01-02 Reference to the P-Funk song Atomic Dog.
08.19.04 “Atomic snowflake field” gives credence to the treatment of “atomic” as meaning spatial and not necessarily related to nuclear research as commonly considered.
08.20.01 Reference to Attack of the 50 Ft Woman.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The eighth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. The annotations are primarily speculation, with no hard evidence to back them up. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
When Planetary started up, the main characters all seemed short-sighted and cavalier, they were cynical except for small bursts of earnest enjoyment at things like surviving monsters on Island Zero. Life was cheap, people were selfish, and missions and mysteries could be entered into and abandoned when finished. The pitch document that many of us saw fairly early on seemed to validate this as the full breadth of the series remit. Many critics, reviewers, and Wikipedia updaters seemed sure that any change in this status quo was a last minute revision or the result of a serialization gone on longer than intended by several years.
I don’t buy it. Wagner was grieving (for the apparently dead, Jack Carter, but also for her amnesiac boss and father figure, Snow) in the chapter previous to this one, and here, as with the sixth chapter, 4, Snow is offended by the cruelty and loss demonstrated by the situations at hand. Snow’s way to be offended is, frequently (post the shiftship visit, after reading documents on the Four) to get productively angry, but he can also be crippled by his inability to save. Beat in mind, we don’t even know his purpose in existing, in walking the Earth, right now, is to save, but here in this chapter, he is unable to rescue Allison; the best he can do his help her die as unburdened as possible.
Death is unfair.
In the end, this will perhaps be the ultimate statement or the primary driving force of the comic. “Right now, I want my friend back,” says Snow in the final chapter, and it validates a whole helluva lot. And, maybe it is true that everything Warren Ellis and everyone else working on Planetary experienced over the years of its serialization had an effect on the comic culminating to that point, but the seeds are here and in every issue. The affected coolness of Snow, of Wagner and Drums, fades pretty quick after the first chapter, and it to no end surprises me how many readers seemed offended when they realized at about chapter twenty-five that this was not only a series of genre investigations where the primary characters remained detached, but about getting immersed in life and doing right. “But,” say some of these readers, “it says right in the pitch document…” And, maybe it does, but it is never demonstrated in Planetary.
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
08.00 The cover is practically a collage of Fifties and Sixties pop culture monsters, including visual references to Attack of the 50 Ft Woman, the giant ants of Them, a Mars Attacks Martian, and the military counterstrike against them, in the form of tanks, planes, missiles and armed soldiers.
08.01 Similar to previous film-centric chapters, the opening page mimics the widescreen ratio. This is also the first of a number of careful transitionals in this chapter, demonstrating minor changes that alter an otherwise static scene.
The title, "THE DAY THE EARTH TURNED SLOWER” is a reference to the film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed by Robert Wise.
08.02.01 Allison is in part a reference to actress and activist Allison Hayes, star of The Attack of the 50 Ft Woman and other films, who died of leukemia, lead poisoning, and other health complications, many of which were enhanced by ill-treatment during her acting days.
08.03.03-04 Another transition between two succinct (unlit; lit) moments.
08.06.03 In 1960, Hayes appeared as Justine (for you Sade fans) in The Hypnotic Eye, about brutalized women and mind control, whose production was connected to Caryl Chessman, convicted of multiple rapes, robberies, and assaults, who claimed to have been set up by a government conspiracy. Further, the screenwriter has said, “Most hypnotists -- if you ever get talking to them -- tell you that the reason they got into hypnosis was to be able to control women. That's the fact of it. So once you know that, and once you've talked to a few hypnotists, you realize that they are basically masturbators who have a way of getting their rocks off without having charm or anything!” (I can’t say that this has any bearing on the date chosen, but it seems synchronous.)
08.07.02 Giant atomic ants are a reference to, along with the cover image, the film, Them, directed by Gordon Douglas.
08.11.05 Does Allison know more about Planetary than she is letting on, or is this “strange world” mention only coincidental?
08.13.02 The Fifties flashbacks are presented in black and white to echo films of the era, particularly, of the genre examined in this chapter.
08.15.04 Back in the second chapter, Jakita Wagner suggests blaming physical mutation and Fifties/Sixties-style monsters on radiation is “retarded,” but here we are, with “atomics” and “atomic projection” being cited as responsible for a whole array of similar effects.
“Atomic projection” could have a lot of long-haired science (or, as Ellis prefers, drunken science) extrapolations, including deformation retracts, which involve continually shrinking spaces, and Category Theory. It may not mean what it implies.
08.16.01 The (here backlit) lamps (perhaps unintentionally) resemble both a blowup of Kirby Dots and also the DMT machine elves to be seen later, in Death Machine Telemetry.
08.16.03 Dowling’s dialogue here, reminds of the era-specific movies’ tendency of scientist-characters delivering very simple information while sounding as if they expect neither other characters nor audience to fully understand.
08.17.04 Note that her half-life here, and that she dies after fifty years may not be related. Her actual whole life, resurrection included, is a reasonable human lifespan, while her body could easily remain radioactive.
08.18.03 Were these experiments, in part, Dowling testing how best to make himself (and his associates) superhuman?
08.18.03-04 Reference to the TV crimesolving version of The Invisible Man, perhaps, and to Ralph Ellis’ novel, Invisible Man, which echoes Planetary in multiple moments, including, “We the machines inside the machine.”
08.18.05-06 Reference to The Indestructable Man.
08.19.01-02 Reference to the P-Funk song Atomic Dog.
08.19.04 “Atomic snowflake field” gives credence to the treatment of “atomic” as meaning spatial and not necessarily related to nuclear research as commonly considered.
08.20.01 Reference to Attack of the 50 Ft Woman.
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Friday, January 14, 2011
Properly Dark
“Properly Dark”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The seventh in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at. If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
”To Be In England, In The Summertime” has a lot of embedded information and a whole mess of giving a damn more than is obvious. This is also true of the British Invasion of American comics, a thing too easily forgotten amidst the accusations that the bitterness and detournement were all poses to look cool. And, yes, there is some looking cool in those comics and in this one, but when you actually sit down and read early issues of Jamie Delano’s Hellblaze or Alan Moore’s Eighties works, you can only deny that the author – and their characters, their fictional world – cares a great deal. There is real moral revulsion in Hellblazer and Sandman, the death of the title character’s family at the hands of his writer, in Animal Man. Not all of the autopsying of live superheroes, deconstructing patriotic paradigms, and examining the ruins of brutalized human beings was for laughs; you are meant to cry for people in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, to be nauseous reading the desolation or ripeness of various John Constatine tales, and to be cold when reading Neil Gaiman’s take on him, in Hold Me.
It seems significant that this issue came out amidst the so-called Neo Silver Age, a thing that no one could define to everyone else’s satisfaction and which more than half of the supposed contributors at the fore refuted. What was meant, mostly, to be a return to brighter, gungho values of the Thirties through Sixties was also meant to be a call to stop looking at the horrible bits of those same decades, to willfully ignore the everyday tragedies and cruelties of human politics, households, and confusions. For the most part, the British Invasion did not lack the wonder and brightness, though. It only had it’s fair dose of the wicked stuff right up front and not whitewashed away, not ignored.
If giant space squids over the city fail to be as impressive in the face of a fourth term Nixon, rape, murder, and betrayal, that is because of the power of these other, by superhero standards mundane things, not because the squid is lacking. When the big heroic superfellah dies a the beginning of Zenith fighting a Nazi in tights, it is not that the hero is useless or unimpressive, he’s a big guy, he’s tough and forward and… dead. Because – and you may not have heard this – the Nazis were pretty good at killing people. This was just a good way to remind of that (and it helps that it sets up the extradimensional dark overlordy beasties for the rest of the story). On the rise demons in an early issue of Hellblazer have big teeth and drippy tongues and all, but they are horrible because they are heartless fucking yuppies.
If this were a different sort of comic, if this were a Neo Silver Age comic (perhaps), the Superhero would have been justified in running after Jack Carter to beat him to a pulp, if not dead, for the same reasons DC has a team called The Elite to job it for Superman, for the same reason every two superheroes who meet, practically, have to hit each other for awhile before they can be friends. Why DC, again – and DC published the WildStorm titles like Planetary, remember, and Vertigo – had Black Canary, not too long ago, hit her husband to prove she was morally right. And he took it. And hardly a reader batted an eyelash. To prove she’s right, the moral beacon of the story struck her husband during a conversation. Punched him right in the face. Because that’s what superheroes do, it’s the default and it is the default because we ignore the consequences of such actions and move on to the next spectacle.
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
07.00 An homage to Dave McKean covers that exemplify the early Vertigo line from DC Comics. Similar elements include the use of textured wood, photographs, atmospheric text overlays, even space down the left side for the Vertigo imprint’s banner to go.
07.01.01 Jack Carter is analogous to DC’s John Constantine, marked by the initials, the use of magick, the seedy conman presentation, and the innate dogooding despite it. The name “Jack Carter” is the same as the criminal protagonist of three Ted Lewis novels, including Get Carter, which has been adapted to film, twice. This is, undoubtedly, intentional, and similarities will become apparent.
07.02.01 The title comes, possibly, from the Art of Noise song Close (to the Edit).
07.03.02 In the dark, lighting his cigarette, is a common introduction to John Constantine in his stories.
07.03.04 The moon/sun dichotomy between Carter and the Superhero begins here, as well as the motif of introducing Carter with his head haloed by the moon.
07.04.05 These superhero teams were seen, briefly, in Stormwatch, also written by Warren Ellis.
07.05.02 The Superhero is framed by a dim sun, here, continuing the sun/moon motif between him and Carter.
07.05.04 Reference to Dream and his sister Death feeding pigeons in Sandman #8, The Sound of Her Wings, written by Vertigo superstar Neil Gaiman.
07.06.02 Visual references for the characters at the funeral include Etrigan, the Demon (created by Jack Kirby and written in the early Nineties by Garth Ennis), the Demons Three (who appeared in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing), the Metal Men (who were dysfunctional and tragic long before their early Nineties mini, which actually made things less messed up), The Specter, Swamp Thing and Abigail Arcane/Holland, Dorothy Spinner from Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s Doom Patrol (according to Ben Rawluk, who knows better than I), Animal Man and The Writer (from Grant Morrison’s Animal Man), Black Orchid, and in silhouette, Shade, the Changing Man (written for Vertigo by Peter Milligan, created by Steve Ditko). Richard Hunt also identifies in the crowd, Brendan McCarthy's Mirkin the Magician and Nick Abadzis' Hugo Tate.
07.07.01 Shifting Man = Shade, the Changing Man. Forest Deity/Robin Hood = Swamp Thing, nailing down the connection through the unmentioned concept of the Green Man.
07.07.05 The jacket with the circles is reminiscent of similar clothes worn by the Milligan version of Shade.
07.09.02 Carter, again introduced with the moon behind him.
07.10.03 Peter Milligan would write a series for Vertigo called Greek Street, years after this was published. The reference here is to the actual street, however, as presaged by the mention of the Coach and Horses. Films and other fictions have mentioned the presence of prostitutes there. Greek St is where the Ancient Grand Lodge of England was organized, and where the London sewage system was developed.
07.16.03 Reference to Michael Moorcock, who has dealt fictionally and nonfictionally, both with London and with the Eighties culture thereof (and much, much else).
07.17.04 The Superhero is a reference to many superheroes – and indeed the concept of the superhero, as it was – perverted for new, cynical uses during the birth of the “Vertigo Era,” aka Alan Moore’s Bad Mood and Its Influences, most specifically Moore’s own Miracle Man work and Grant Morrison’s Zenith.
07.19.02 Moon-halo motif for the final time. And there’s the shotgun to reinforce the Get Carter connection.
07.21.03-04 Visual reference with the shaved head and tattoos is to Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan that Warren Ellis created (with Darick Robertson), published by Vertigo. Ellis had famously quit Hellblazer, whose title character Jack Carter is mostly a riff on, due to a shelved issue and different standards of content and portrayal. Ellis has said the following about this visual transformation: “John and I had talked about "his version" of John Constantine, who would have a shaven head and weird tattoos and/or brands. When scripting that scene, I said, John, here you can do "your" Constantine/Jack Carter, but, you know, with the bald head and the tats, you could just make him Spider for laughs... Which was, you know, a joke. I was a little mortified when the finished comic came back with Jack AS Spider...!”
07.22.05 Is that an upside down question mark in the smoke?
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The seventh in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
”To Be In England, In The Summertime” has a lot of embedded information and a whole mess of giving a damn more than is obvious. This is also true of the British Invasion of American comics, a thing too easily forgotten amidst the accusations that the bitterness and detournement were all poses to look cool. And, yes, there is some looking cool in those comics and in this one, but when you actually sit down and read early issues of Jamie Delano’s Hellblaze or Alan Moore’s Eighties works, you can only deny that the author – and their characters, their fictional world – cares a great deal. There is real moral revulsion in Hellblazer and Sandman, the death of the title character’s family at the hands of his writer, in Animal Man. Not all of the autopsying of live superheroes, deconstructing patriotic paradigms, and examining the ruins of brutalized human beings was for laughs; you are meant to cry for people in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, to be nauseous reading the desolation or ripeness of various John Constatine tales, and to be cold when reading Neil Gaiman’s take on him, in Hold Me.
It seems significant that this issue came out amidst the so-called Neo Silver Age, a thing that no one could define to everyone else’s satisfaction and which more than half of the supposed contributors at the fore refuted. What was meant, mostly, to be a return to brighter, gungho values of the Thirties through Sixties was also meant to be a call to stop looking at the horrible bits of those same decades, to willfully ignore the everyday tragedies and cruelties of human politics, households, and confusions. For the most part, the British Invasion did not lack the wonder and brightness, though. It only had it’s fair dose of the wicked stuff right up front and not whitewashed away, not ignored.
If giant space squids over the city fail to be as impressive in the face of a fourth term Nixon, rape, murder, and betrayal, that is because of the power of these other, by superhero standards mundane things, not because the squid is lacking. When the big heroic superfellah dies a the beginning of Zenith fighting a Nazi in tights, it is not that the hero is useless or unimpressive, he’s a big guy, he’s tough and forward and… dead. Because – and you may not have heard this – the Nazis were pretty good at killing people. This was just a good way to remind of that (and it helps that it sets up the extradimensional dark overlordy beasties for the rest of the story). On the rise demons in an early issue of Hellblazer have big teeth and drippy tongues and all, but they are horrible because they are heartless fucking yuppies.
If this were a different sort of comic, if this were a Neo Silver Age comic (perhaps), the Superhero would have been justified in running after Jack Carter to beat him to a pulp, if not dead, for the same reasons DC has a team called The Elite to job it for Superman, for the same reason every two superheroes who meet, practically, have to hit each other for awhile before they can be friends. Why DC, again – and DC published the WildStorm titles like Planetary, remember, and Vertigo – had Black Canary, not too long ago, hit her husband to prove she was morally right. And he took it. And hardly a reader batted an eyelash. To prove she’s right, the moral beacon of the story struck her husband during a conversation. Punched him right in the face. Because that’s what superheroes do, it’s the default and it is the default because we ignore the consequences of such actions and move on to the next spectacle.
***
[From Volume Two, The Fourth Man
07.00 An homage to Dave McKean covers that exemplify the early Vertigo line from DC Comics. Similar elements include the use of textured wood, photographs, atmospheric text overlays, even space down the left side for the Vertigo imprint’s banner to go.
07.01.01 Jack Carter is analogous to DC’s John Constantine, marked by the initials, the use of magick, the seedy conman presentation, and the innate dogooding despite it. The name “Jack Carter” is the same as the criminal protagonist of three Ted Lewis novels, including Get Carter, which has been adapted to film, twice. This is, undoubtedly, intentional, and similarities will become apparent.
07.02.01 The title comes, possibly, from the Art of Noise song Close (to the Edit).
07.03.02 In the dark, lighting his cigarette, is a common introduction to John Constantine in his stories.
07.03.04 The moon/sun dichotomy between Carter and the Superhero begins here, as well as the motif of introducing Carter with his head haloed by the moon.
07.04.05 These superhero teams were seen, briefly, in Stormwatch, also written by Warren Ellis.
07.05.02 The Superhero is framed by a dim sun, here, continuing the sun/moon motif between him and Carter.
07.05.04 Reference to Dream and his sister Death feeding pigeons in Sandman #8, The Sound of Her Wings, written by Vertigo superstar Neil Gaiman.
07.06.02 Visual references for the characters at the funeral include Etrigan, the Demon (created by Jack Kirby and written in the early Nineties by Garth Ennis), the Demons Three (who appeared in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing), the Metal Men (who were dysfunctional and tragic long before their early Nineties mini, which actually made things less messed up), The Specter, Swamp Thing and Abigail Arcane/Holland, Dorothy Spinner from Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s Doom Patrol (according to Ben Rawluk, who knows better than I), Animal Man and The Writer (from Grant Morrison’s Animal Man), Black Orchid, and in silhouette, Shade, the Changing Man (written for Vertigo by Peter Milligan, created by Steve Ditko). Richard Hunt also identifies in the crowd, Brendan McCarthy's Mirkin the Magician and Nick Abadzis' Hugo Tate.
07.07.01 Shifting Man = Shade, the Changing Man. Forest Deity/Robin Hood = Swamp Thing, nailing down the connection through the unmentioned concept of the Green Man.
07.07.05 The jacket with the circles is reminiscent of similar clothes worn by the Milligan version of Shade.
07.09.02 Carter, again introduced with the moon behind him.
07.10.03 Peter Milligan would write a series for Vertigo called Greek Street, years after this was published. The reference here is to the actual street, however, as presaged by the mention of the Coach and Horses. Films and other fictions have mentioned the presence of prostitutes there. Greek St is where the Ancient Grand Lodge of England was organized, and where the London sewage system was developed.
07.16.03 Reference to Michael Moorcock, who has dealt fictionally and nonfictionally, both with London and with the Eighties culture thereof (and much, much else).
07.17.04 The Superhero is a reference to many superheroes – and indeed the concept of the superhero, as it was – perverted for new, cynical uses during the birth of the “Vertigo Era,” aka Alan Moore’s Bad Mood and Its Influences, most specifically Moore’s own Miracle Man work and Grant Morrison’s Zenith.
07.19.02 Moon-halo motif for the final time. And there’s the shotgun to reinforce the Get Carter connection.
07.21.03-04 Visual reference with the shaved head and tattoos is to Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan that Warren Ellis created (with Darick Robertson), published by Vertigo. Ellis had famously quit Hellblazer, whose title character Jack Carter is mostly a riff on, due to a shelved issue and different standards of content and portrayal. Ellis has said the following about this visual transformation: “John and I had talked about "his version" of John Constantine, who would have a shaven head and weird tattoos and/or brands. When scripting that scene, I said, John, here you can do "your" Constantine/Jack Carter, but, you know, with the bald head and the tats, you could just make him Spider for laughs... Which was, you know, a joke. I was a little mortified when the finished comic came back with Jack AS Spider...!”
07.22.05 Is that an upside down question mark in the smoke?
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
The Word is Bastards
“The Word is Bastards”
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The sixth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at. If I include an annotation derived from someone else, from this point on, I will gladly credit the provider. If I don’t credit an annotation, it means I derived the conclusion myself, or I simply cannot recall where I got the information first.
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
There’s something in Warren Ellis’ old City of Silence about real people not having origins, but only births, lives, and deaths. That is, in some very serious ways, what is wrong with the perspective of the Four. They want to have - they pursue - origins, because their births and lives feel unsatisfactory. It is not as if you don’t see people in actual life do the same thing. People who feel denied a birthright or cheated out of glories others achieve or have handed to them, and they go running at things they think will do that for them. Often, like the Four, they do not want anyone – much less, everyone – along for the ride, because that would make them less special. It is said, in the comics, that the Four have condemned the Earth, and really, this refusal to let everyone on the Great Adventure, it is damnation, isn’t it? It’s what generates the concept of eternal damnation, of permanent – deserved – residence in Hell.
Now, I wasn’t raised with Hell, I don’t like the idea of eternal punishment or denial, and we don’t have it culturally. But, I went to Catholic school (Saint Catherine’s Indian School, which used to be in Santa Fe and now is nowhere). I understand the idea, if only academically. I understand its parameters, and it’s still shit. Hell, the perpetual punishment and denial (of pleasure, aid, God, et cetera), is something people choose to believe in because they want to feel special. There is a reason why, when nonbelievers represent Hell, or even casual believers, it’s often Hitler taking a pineapple up the rear or the seventeen worst people in history, not a whole mess of normal decent folks who simply failed one or more of the myriad qualifiers, depending on what you believe the rules are. Not everyone avoids the issue, and we have Pierrot stories and Richard Matheson novels to acknowledge the unjustness of this system of damned and saved, but on the whole, it is unpleasant to think about unless you feel like getting on the highest horse available and looking down on everyone.
Now, there may not be such a thing as a free lunch, but we can certainly work towards the cheapest lunch for everyone possible, can’t we? We can reduce costs and expand production until everyone has the opportunity to have what we want, like vaccines and dinner, good movies and warm blankets. The selfishness that makes some people stop at their gaining some of these aids and privileges in life, is the same selfishness that allows someone to accept their personal transfer into Heaven while other people get damned to Hell forever for things that would not raise an eyebrow while they sat next to you on the subway. It’s entitlement. If you would be upset if something were denied to you, but don’t feel a wrongness in anyone else being denied the same, well, what would you call that? You getting upset because you don’t have running water suddenly, or you were never allowed to have a thought that was not ascribed to your genetics, your sex life, your hairstyle or place of birth, but not being as outraged when it happens to others? What is that if not damning?
***
[From Volume One, All Over the World and Other Stories
06.00 The Four framed by a fifth spacesuit helmet. Ultimately, this means nothing in-story, but it was fuel for theories of a fifth passenger on the rocket, and alternately/also that Snow was implanted in continuity as the fictonaut.
Note the insignia are the American flag and the Iron Cross, implying the US and Nazi Germany connections of the astronauts.
06.01 One of the Four’s eye, reflecting the Moon and the crack into the Bleed they entered through it.
06.03.02 The pyramid is often associated with so-called Illuminati or Masonic organizations thought by some to rule the United States or the entire modern world.
06.03.03 Four Voyagers Plaza is a play on Four Freedoms Plaza from Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four.
06.04.01-02 Note that Artemis’ rocket is more explicitly phallic.
1961 is the year that the first issue of Fantastic Four was published. The original story has the title characters attempting to reach the Moon via rocket, while later versions change this to intergalactic space or another dimension.
06.06.03 There is a face in the reflection on the right-hand side of the visor.
06.06.04 Dowling is analogous to the leader of the Fantastic Four Mr. Fantastic, except that he’s an ex-Nazi and evil.
06.07.03 Subterrans, as seen here in a display case, are analogous to the Molemen seen in the first issue of Fantastic Four and since.
06.08.01 Greene is an evil proxy for the Thing, the pilot of the Fantastic Four’s flight that gave them superpowers.
06.08.02 Leather is an evil version of Fantastic Four member, the Human Torch, as well as legal grandson of the Lone Range analog, the Dark Ranger, and the Green Hornet/Spider/Shadow analog first seen as part of Brass’ group in chapter one.
06.08.03 Suskind is an evil analog for the Invisible Woman, wife of Mr. Fantastic.
06.08.05 The Nautilus referred to here, is likely the vessel captained by Nemo in Jules Verne’s 20, 000 Leagues Beneath the Sea. The US submarine of the same name went active at the end of the year mentioned here, 1959, and as we later discover, characters invented in the Nineteenth Century are not given analogs in Planetary, but appear as themselves.
06.09 The stairs imply that this is an aperture to a different space, not a framed image.
06.11.01-06 This snowflake-like (and Snowflake-like) image is an aperture into the Bleed, as see on page one in reflection.
06.14.02 The Four, similar to the Fantastic Four, seem to have achieved superhuman powers via botched spaceflight.
06.15.01 The folder bears a stylized 4 that has been modified to a swastika.
06.16.01 Like the Human Torch, Leather has a distinctive flame-like aura, though his is bright blue.
06.16.03 Leather burns away his facial hair similar to how the Human Torch shaved an amnesiac Submariner in an early issue of Fantastic Four. Snow is, at this point, amnesiac, but unaware of the extent.
06.17.01 Broken Earth-A refers to the trap set by the Four involving a retrieval mission to a fictional Earth.
06.19.02 Leather apparently can generate enough heat to get natural temperature-lowering Snow to sweat.
If it has not become obvious by this point, Snow is also analogous to the Human Torch in that his powerset involves temperature manipulation. The Drummer and Jakita Wagner, as well as the as of yet unseen former third field team member, Ambrose Chase, also stand in, in terms of superhuman abilities, for members of the Fantastic Four. (Chase alters the local laws physics as the Invisible Woman must with her invisibility, force fields, and ability of the fields to act independent of gravity. Wagner is incredibly strong. And, Drums is superhumanly good with machines and data-processing.)
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Excavating, reappraising, and cataloging Planetary early in the 21st Century
[The sixth in what should be a comprehensive series, both these small essays and the related annotations are intended for someone who is already familiar with the series. Spoilers will be dropped as necessary, events and concepts discussed out of their order of first-appearance, and general summaries of stories will not be provided. All of these posts may be subject to severe and dramatic rewrites without notice, as new things occur to me, and of course, I welcome any further annotation suggestions or general feedback at
This project could not exist without the fine work of The Planetary Appreciation Page, the now defunct Warren Ellis Forum, the slowly-defuncting Barbelith messageboard, and the Planetary team of Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, John Layman, David Baron, Scott Dunbier, and the many letterers, designers, and other contributors.
This project is dedicated to mystery archeologists everywhere, of every walk and a myriad of tastes, habits, and ingenuities.]
There’s something in Warren Ellis’ old City of Silence about real people not having origins, but only births, lives, and deaths. That is, in some very serious ways, what is wrong with the perspective of the Four. They want to have - they pursue - origins, because their births and lives feel unsatisfactory. It is not as if you don’t see people in actual life do the same thing. People who feel denied a birthright or cheated out of glories others achieve or have handed to them, and they go running at things they think will do that for them. Often, like the Four, they do not want anyone – much less, everyone – along for the ride, because that would make them less special. It is said, in the comics, that the Four have condemned the Earth, and really, this refusal to let everyone on the Great Adventure, it is damnation, isn’t it? It’s what generates the concept of eternal damnation, of permanent – deserved – residence in Hell.
Now, I wasn’t raised with Hell, I don’t like the idea of eternal punishment or denial, and we don’t have it culturally. But, I went to Catholic school (Saint Catherine’s Indian School, which used to be in Santa Fe and now is nowhere). I understand the idea, if only academically. I understand its parameters, and it’s still shit. Hell, the perpetual punishment and denial (of pleasure, aid, God, et cetera), is something people choose to believe in because they want to feel special. There is a reason why, when nonbelievers represent Hell, or even casual believers, it’s often Hitler taking a pineapple up the rear or the seventeen worst people in history, not a whole mess of normal decent folks who simply failed one or more of the myriad qualifiers, depending on what you believe the rules are. Not everyone avoids the issue, and we have Pierrot stories and Richard Matheson novels to acknowledge the unjustness of this system of damned and saved, but on the whole, it is unpleasant to think about unless you feel like getting on the highest horse available and looking down on everyone.
Now, there may not be such a thing as a free lunch, but we can certainly work towards the cheapest lunch for everyone possible, can’t we? We can reduce costs and expand production until everyone has the opportunity to have what we want, like vaccines and dinner, good movies and warm blankets. The selfishness that makes some people stop at their gaining some of these aids and privileges in life, is the same selfishness that allows someone to accept their personal transfer into Heaven while other people get damned to Hell forever for things that would not raise an eyebrow while they sat next to you on the subway. It’s entitlement. If you would be upset if something were denied to you, but don’t feel a wrongness in anyone else being denied the same, well, what would you call that? You getting upset because you don’t have running water suddenly, or you were never allowed to have a thought that was not ascribed to your genetics, your sex life, your hairstyle or place of birth, but not being as outraged when it happens to others? What is that if not damning?
***
[From Volume One, All Over the World and Other Stories
06.00 The Four framed by a fifth spacesuit helmet. Ultimately, this means nothing in-story, but it was fuel for theories of a fifth passenger on the rocket, and alternately/also that Snow was implanted in continuity as the fictonaut.
Note the insignia are the American flag and the Iron Cross, implying the US and Nazi Germany connections of the astronauts.
06.01 One of the Four’s eye, reflecting the Moon and the crack into the Bleed they entered through it.
06.03.02 The pyramid is often associated with so-called Illuminati or Masonic organizations thought by some to rule the United States or the entire modern world.
06.03.03 Four Voyagers Plaza is a play on Four Freedoms Plaza from Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four.
06.04.01-02 Note that Artemis’ rocket is more explicitly phallic.
1961 is the year that the first issue of Fantastic Four was published. The original story has the title characters attempting to reach the Moon via rocket, while later versions change this to intergalactic space or another dimension.
06.06.03 There is a face in the reflection on the right-hand side of the visor.
06.06.04 Dowling is analogous to the leader of the Fantastic Four Mr. Fantastic, except that he’s an ex-Nazi and evil.
06.07.03 Subterrans, as seen here in a display case, are analogous to the Molemen seen in the first issue of Fantastic Four and since.
06.08.01 Greene is an evil proxy for the Thing, the pilot of the Fantastic Four’s flight that gave them superpowers.
06.08.02 Leather is an evil version of Fantastic Four member, the Human Torch, as well as legal grandson of the Lone Range analog, the Dark Ranger, and the Green Hornet/Spider/Shadow analog first seen as part of Brass’ group in chapter one.
06.08.03 Suskind is an evil analog for the Invisible Woman, wife of Mr. Fantastic.
06.08.05 The Nautilus referred to here, is likely the vessel captained by Nemo in Jules Verne’s 20, 000 Leagues Beneath the Sea. The US submarine of the same name went active at the end of the year mentioned here, 1959, and as we later discover, characters invented in the Nineteenth Century are not given analogs in Planetary, but appear as themselves.
06.09 The stairs imply that this is an aperture to a different space, not a framed image.
06.11.01-06 This snowflake-like (and Snowflake-like) image is an aperture into the Bleed, as see on page one in reflection.
06.14.02 The Four, similar to the Fantastic Four, seem to have achieved superhuman powers via botched spaceflight.
06.15.01 The folder bears a stylized 4 that has been modified to a swastika.
06.16.01 Like the Human Torch, Leather has a distinctive flame-like aura, though his is bright blue.
06.16.03 Leather burns away his facial hair similar to how the Human Torch shaved an amnesiac Submariner in an early issue of Fantastic Four. Snow is, at this point, amnesiac, but unaware of the extent.
06.17.01 Broken Earth-A refers to the trap set by the Four involving a retrieval mission to a fictional Earth.
06.19.02 Leather apparently can generate enough heat to get natural temperature-lowering Snow to sweat.
If it has not become obvious by this point, Snow is also analogous to the Human Torch in that his powerset involves temperature manipulation. The Drummer and Jakita Wagner, as well as the as of yet unseen former third field team member, Ambrose Chase, also stand in, in terms of superhuman abilities, for members of the Fantastic Four. (Chase alters the local laws physics as the Invisible Woman must with her invisibility, force fields, and ability of the fields to act independent of gravity. Wagner is incredibly strong. And, Drums is superhumanly good with machines and data-processing.)
[Click here to see further annotations for Planetary]
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Planetary Annotations
Below are links to any of my annotations for Planetary, the Wildstorm comic by Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy/Martin, Scott Dunbier, et al.
01 "All Over the World"
02 "Island"
03 "Dead Gunfighters"
04 "Strange Harbours"
05 "The Good Doctor"
06 "4"
07 "To Be In England, In The Summertime"
08 "The Day the Earth Turned Slower"
09 "Planet Fiction"
10 "MAGIC AND LOSS"
11 "Cold World"
Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth
01 "All Over the World"
02 "Island"
03 "Dead Gunfighters"
04 "Strange Harbours"
05 "The Good Doctor"
06 "4"
07 "To Be In England, In The Summertime"
08 "The Day the Earth Turned Slower"
09 "Planet Fiction"
10 "MAGIC AND LOSS"
11 "Cold World"
Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth
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