I’ve been told by a close friend of mine several times that I’m the most loyal person she’s ever met. I’m not exactly sure what that entails but on closer inspection I find it hard to disagree with her. Taking a step back, it seems that I have a trouble disconnecting myself from friends, family, sports teams, writers, artists, bands, creators in general, abstract concepts that I feel at some point in time I was close to (and because of this, I still intensely close to even to this day). This was no more apparent than when I stepped into the comic store yesterday.
For the last several months I’ve known exactly what October 7th was to me and what exactly I was waiting on. If someone had told me back in March of 1999 that I would have this feeling, I’m not sure how I’d react. But there I was standing in front at the rather large stack of Planetary #27 issues with a look on my face that would seem quite foreign to almost anyone who has known me at any point in my life (probably because no one ever sees me at these moments). But I couldn’t even wait to buy the issue before I started to skim through it and then it took me all of five minutes to find a coffee shop to sit down and read it.
A little back tracking to when this started. Looking back, I find it funny that there are certain things that I classify as my favorite…whatever, and most of them extend back to my sophomore year in high school. My three favorite albums come from that year (Alkaline Trio’s Goddamnit, Refused’s The Shape of Punk To Come, and The Get Up Kids’ Something To Write Homes About), my favorite film (Rushmore), and as it turns out my favorite comic (Planetary). I remember being absolutely psyched at the time to be picking up the first issue of Planetary (although I sort of remember being more excited about buying The Authority, I think I had a bigger attachment to Bryan Hitch at the time). For whatever reason, the previews just led me to believe that this is exactly what I wanted out of a vaguely super hero comic. Of course I didn’t realize how correct the statement was.I have a belief that something can’t really be considered your favorite…whatever, unless you experience it in real time. What I mean by that is that you don’t quite have the same emotional attachment if you discover it awhile after it was first produced. It’s just not same connection if you’re not involved with something the moment it’s actually happening (you know, within reason). That’s not to say you can’t love something that was before your time, I just think there’s a disconnect there that doesn’t allow you to attach to it the same way as you would if it had just come out.
Planetary was that comic for me. It wasn’t recommended to me by anyone. It was just something that I was instinctively drawn to. Other comics that usually make it into my top 5 are Starman, Justice League International, Lucifer and Akira. With the exception of Akira (where I was denied access and was chomping at the bit to get my hands on the reissues), all of them were comics I’d heard about being great and decided to check them out. Lo and behold, I did like them. Planetary was different though.
The first couple of issues were released on time (which was originally supposed to be on a bi-monthly schedule) but then the delays started. Warren Ellis (the writer) became ill and his father passed away sometime in 2000 or 2001 (maybe not in that order, but they occurred one right after the other) which sent the comic into delay nightmares. At the same time John Cassaday (the artist), began taking on other projects because he had to support himself. When Ellis got back on his horse, Planetary was coming out whenever the two of them got the time to complete an issue. That never really deterred me. I bought every issue as it came out, sometimes waiting years between issues. It didn’t occur to me how much the comic meant to me until issue 16 came out (which at the time was the longest delay the comic had incurred). It had been well over a year since issue 15 had been released and when I got word that issue 16 had a release date, I went back and reread the back issues. I started picking up on all the subtleties again and how the art and words effortlessly painted a greater picture than either could do on their own. It didn’t hurt that issue 16 absolutely blew me out of the water with wire-fu pastiche. Ellis and Cassaday deftly went several wordless panels in one of the most breathtaking fight scenes I’d ever seen in a comic and they captured the final scene between two recurring characters’, Anna Hark and James Wilder, reunion lovingly and perfectly. It reminded me what was great about the comic and why I’d stuck with it and why that was going to continue for however long it took to finish the series (and there was a definitive end to the series, even at that point).This brings me to the present. After ten years and seven months, Planetary has wrapped up its run at 27 issues (for those paying attention that’s 2.7 issues a year, much less than their originally planned bi-monthly schedule) and you know what, the wait and trip was absolutely worth it. The main story had been tied up in issue 26 and this was basically just an epilogue tying up the major loose end (which the characters had been actively mentioning for the last few issues anyway). But because this is Planetary it didn’t just tie up a loose end up also throws in several big ideas about a corner of science fiction they’d yet to cover: time travel. I had to read some of the pages a few times just to grasp the concepts that were being thrown out, but it’s all in depth and is nuanced enough that it never feels like a chore to get through. Despite what Ellis says, this comic means far too much to him to turn out an issue that hasn’t been held up to his highest standards. This could’ve been easily been tossed aside but the level of detail in the writing is there as it’s always been. And of course there’s John Cassaday’s art (and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Laura Martin’s coloring, which is stellar), who always seems to bring his “A” game. There isn’t much action in this story (and the series as a whole doesn’t have as much action as is commonly associated with super hero comics, but that’s just another aspect of its uniqueness), but the body language and facial expressions are used to perfection. In essence, it was exactly what I wanted out of the comic. Plus it ends on a pitch perfect note that sums up what this comic that is in and of itself a comic about comics and genre fiction is all about.
I know I haven’t been too descriptive about what this particular issue or the series as a whole is about, but that wasn’t really the point. To me this is absolutely what I wanted out of a comic and I can’t really imagine anything being better (granted, that’s completely subjective). Basically I just wanted to express my joy in something being completed and sticking with it, knowing that the end result was worth it. I would love for everyone to read Planetary, it’s not for everyone, but hopefully that my enjoyment is expressed over this and allows someone to take a chance on it (or rather to take a chance on something they know very little about it in general in the off chance that you might love it).
