Planetary VOL 01: All Over the World and Other Stories

If you haven't picked up a comic because of what it became in the mid 90's, pick this one up. It's been about 3 years since I last dabbled in comic books. Now I find what I read to read is up to par with what I enjoy afterI leave a comic book store. I consider myself an avid reader and this was my first encounter with Warren Ellis. Some may compare him with Grant Morrison but he is completely his own being.I think that great writers complement each other's work and in this case, I concur. YOU SHOULD REALLY BUY THIS BOOK, if you like great storytelling and wonderful art.I regret not buying this book earlier and am now on a mission to buy every single issue of this series. You may have heard comparisons to this an other things but be warned.You cannot begin to describe how amazing Planetary is. The story is fluid and the charecters seem to have a sense of who they are.The creators of this series have an incredible imagination and the story has much foder to keep the reader in tune til the very end.YOU SHOULD REALLY PICK THIS ONE UP.

What makes All Over the World so cool? Warren Ellis is at the top of his game here, with dazzling ideas, deft characterization, and great dialogue all working together. Planetary is the story of the secret history of the twentieth century - or at least, the twentieth century as reflected in our fiction. Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner and the Drummer are the field team for the mysterious and extremely wealthy organization called Planetary; they are mystery archaeologists, travelling, well, all over the world to find the hidden wonders in Japanese monster islands, long buried alien spaceships, and the hidden lair of thirties pulp heroes. So what we have is a roaring adventure story that doubles as a commentary on the twentieth century's adventure fiction. What's important is that Planetary works on both levels. Each chapter of All Over the World seems like a stand alone story, full of wild action and carried by the interplay between Jakita, Drummer, and Elijah. The character interaction and inventive plots would be enough to carry the book, but through each chapter a deeper mystery - largely built around the identity and history of Elijah Snow, but also around the true nature of Planetary and its adversaries - gradually unfolds, and the book ends on a great little cliffhanger that had me eagerly anticipating new chapters.At the same time, Planetary is Ellis' chance to play with a lot of archetypes. Planetary's main adversaries are clear analogues of Marvel's Fantastic Four; Snow's hatred of them, and the reasons for it, should inspire readers to take another look at the assumptions that allow superhero universes to function. Planetary is a thrill to read, but it's a very intelligent thrill that proves that action stories don't need to check their brains at the door.Equal credit must go to artist John Cassaday and colorist Laura De Puy. This book looks great. Cassaday's design work is impeccable; the characters' wardrobes, for example, are highly reflective of their personality, and Cassaday makes the wondrous and strange things that Planetary encounters appear wondrous and strange. His faces convey emotion beautifully; there's a two-page conversation could be carried by the art alone. De Puy and her fellow colorists take Cassaday's drawings and make them shine with rich color work that immerses the reader even deeper in the world of Planetary.Everything about this book works. It's intelligent, accessible, fun, beautiful, and wonderful. Read it.

I'm not one to easily over-praise something I like. I mostly look at the things I enjoy as critical as possible to come to as much of an honest opinion as possible, so that my words really mean something instead of turning into a bold statement which helps nobody. With this title however I can do nothing else but expres how much I enjoy it. It's as close to "historical fiction" as a mainstream 'superhero'-title is ever going to be and it's done well. And the term "superhero-title" isn't exactly right either because it isn't a superhero title, but the main characters ARE supernatural.About the story: Elijah Snow, a mysterious man who was born on January 1st of the year 1900 encounters a woman called Jakita Wagner (who is accompagnied by another man called 'the Drummer') and she invites him to be part of a supernatural archaeologist group called 'Planetary'. She invites him to be the third member of their field-team who's goal it is to unravel the 'secret history of the world'. They try to map events in history how they REALLY took place, not how the common public was told it all happened. Elijah gets offered a salary of one million dollars a year for the rest of his life and all other professional expenses will also be taken care off by an anonymous financial aid only known as 'the fourth man', a man nobody knows. Elijah accepts and goes on his way to see things common man has never known was there.The great thing bout this title is that each detail, as little as it looks at first, turns into a mystery of his own in time. Each story in each issue seems to be a self-contained story at first, but later on turns out to be just a piece of the puzzle in the 'grand scheme of things'. There's very little going on that's useless information. What also is very nice is that the essence, the starting line if you will, of the series is reality as WE know it. It's about OUR reality (not one made up as a comic-reality), WE are 'the common public and the way things really happened occured behind OUR backs on things that are REALLY in our history (like the first man on the moon and such things). Think of it as having a little bit the mood like 'X-Files' and you'll know what I mean. So finally I would like to advise this title to all people who are not strictly interested in superhero clashes but not neccesarily only into 'serious comics' either. It's a mix of the two and it's done very well with a good mixing of illustrating and text. None of the two factors is dominating, it's very well balanced and it makes for a very good experience. For me it's easily the best writing I've seen of Warren Ellis so far.

Thanks to this collection, I'm finally realizing what a gifted writer Warren Ellis is. Luckily, I already knew artist John Cassaday was good, but he really reaches new heights here. Planetary is a concept I've never seen before -- that of a team of "mystery archaeologists" -- which explores concepts and archetypes seen before but observed in a new light. If you're a DC Comics buff, think of each of Planetary's missions as a tiny peak at an incredible "Elseworlds" story. Another way to look at it is as a sort of Astro City on a global scale, where familiar themes play out in jaw-droppingly new directions.All of this may make Planetary sound somewhat heady or academic (which it is in a sense) but thanks in large part to Cassaday's beautiful illustration, even the most cerebral moments are visually breathtaking without becoming mere eye candy. Add this to Ellis's breakneck pacing and you've got a thinking person's action-adventure book.

Those people who know Warren Ellis' work on STORMWATCH and THE AUTHORITY are already familiar with the dynamism and imagination of his storytelling. PLANETARY exhibits a lot of these same qualities, but in addition shows Ellis' ability to take some of the most hallowed territory in the pop/comic/sci-fi genres and hold it up to a skewed mirror, resulting in work that is wonderfully inventive but still true to the roots it draws from. Through his "archaelogists of the impossible," Ellis takes figures of the pop culture mythos a lot of us grew up with (Godzilla, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and more) and presents them in forms that are at once familiar and strange. Admittedly, I got a lot of enjoyment out of comparing what my perceptions of these figures were to the treatment of them in PLANETARY, but even if some of the references are lost on a particular reader, the characters Ellis creates are strong enough to carry the book on their own. Ellis' talent for dialogue is well-exercised with all the acerbic exchanges between team members Jakita Wagner, The Drummer, and Elijah Snow. Snow, in particular, bears watching - not only because he's the POV character, but also because he's very cranky...always a plus in a protagonist. All in all, this is a very auspicious start to what promises to be a very interesting ride through the secret history of the 20th century. It also bears mentioning that the artistic team of John Cassaday and Laura DuPuy does a phenomenal job in providing pictures to go along with the words - just a great leap forward for all fans of sequential art (or if you rather, comic books).