Dictionary:
plan·e·tar·y (plăn'ĭ-tĕr'ē) 
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Thesaurus:
planetary |
adjective
Word Tutor:
planetary |
A woman knows that nothing can come to fruition without light. Let us call upon woman's voice and woman's heart to guide us in this age of planetary transformation.
— Diane Mariechild
Wikipedia:
Planetary (comics) |
| Planetary | |
|---|---|
 The members of Planetary; from back to front, The Drummer, Jakita Wagner, Elijah Snow. |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Wildstorm (DC Comics) |
| Schedule | Erratic |
| Format | Ongoing series |
| Genre | Superhero |
| Publication date | April 1998 – October 2009 |
| Number of issues | 27 (final issue released October 7th 2009) |
| Main character(s) | Jakita Wagner The Drummer Ambrose Chase Elijah Snow The Four Axel Brass Bret Leather |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Warren Ellis |
| Artist(s) | John Cassaday |
| Letterer(s) | Ali Fuchs Bill O'Neil Ryan Cline Michael Heisler Richard Starkings |
| Colorist(s) | Laura Martin David Baron Wildstorm FX |
| Creator(s) | Warren Ellis John Cassaday |
| Editor(s) | John Layman Scott Dunbier Kristy Quinn |
| Collected editions | |
| All Over the World and Other Stories | ISBN 1-56389-648-6 |
Planetary was an American comic book series created by Warren Ellis (writer) and John Cassaday (artist), published by the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics. Planetary also refers to the group portrayed in the series.
Planetary was previewed in the September 1998 issues of Gen¹³ (#33) and C-23 (#6), and issue #1 was cover-dated April 1999. It was originally intended to be a 24-issue bi-monthly series. However due to illness of Ellis and other commitments by Cassaday, the series was put on hiatus between 2001 and 2003; it has since restarted and concluded with issue #27 in October of 2009.
Laura Martin (also credited as Laura DePuy) colored almost every issue of the series.
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Contents
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Planetary is an organization billing themselves as "Archaeologists of the Impossible", tracking down the world's secret history. Funded by the mysterious Fourth Man, who it is said could be anyone from Bill Gates to Adolf Hitler, the field team consists of three superhumans: Jakita Wagner, who is strong, fast and nearly invulnerable; The Drummer, who can detect and manipulate nearby information streams, most commonly used to manipulate computers and other electronics; the new recruit Elijah Snow, who can extract heat from nearby substances at will, freezing them; and the former third man Ambrose Chase, who has a "selective physics-distortion field".
The series is set in the Wildstorm Universe, along with other titles such as Stormwatch, The Authority, DV8 and Gen¹³. Snow was born on January 1, 1900, as was Jenny Sparks of the Authority, and the two know each other. Planetary rarely crosses over with other Wildstorm series, although references are made to characters in other series, such as Henry Bendix from Stormwatch.
Planetary's field team travels the world investigating strange phenomena: monsters and other beings, unusual relics, other superhumans, and powerful secrets which certain individuals are trying to keep hidden from the rest of the world. Their purpose in doing this is partly curiosity, and partly to use what they learn for the betterment of mankind. There are, however, groups who oppose their goals, and the organization has a substantial history which is gradually revealed during the series.
Warren Ellis, the creator and writer, has always intended the focus of the book to be the genre of superhero comics, rather than the superheroes themselves. "I wanted to do something that actually went deeper into the sub-genre, exposed its roots and showed its branches."[1] One of the series' main hooks is that it portrays alternate versions of many well-known (and obscure) figures from popular culture. At various times versions, and in some instances multiple versions, are shown of major company characters such as John Constantine[2], Superman, Captain Marvel[3], Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Nick Fury, the Justice League, the Fantastic Four[4], and the Hulk. Ellis has also reached beyond the genre, noting it is "about the superhero sub-genre, and its antecedents"[1], and as such has also created pastiche characters based upon Godzilla, Sherlock Holmes[5], and Doc Savage[6]. Ellis also references the modern League of Extraordinary Gentlemen[7], Japanese monster movies[8], 1950s horror/science fiction movies[9], Hong Kong action movies[10] and more. This provides a rich backdrop for the ongoing story, and is similar to Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton family.
Typically, the public domain characters such as Holmes appear as themselves, while those still under copyright appear in altered but recognizably similar form. In this regards Planetary is similar to Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
The idea of the series is to create a concise world in which archetypes of superheroes, pulp fiction heroes, science fiction heroes, and characters from just about every possible mass media format, live in one large universe while the Planetary team investigates them and ties together the ends. As Warren Ellis wrote in his proposal for the comic series: "[W]hat if you had a hundred years of superhero history just slowly leaking out into this young and modern superhero world of the Wildstorm Universe? What if you could take everything old and make it new again?"[11]
The comic relies heavily on John Cassaday's distinctive art nouveau artwork, featuring a variety of styles of covers (with no consistent logo or layout) and interior art, often paying homage to the respective sources from which each issue's characters and concepts are drawn. Rich Kreiner has described Cassaday's artwork in The Comics Journal as being "close to the gold standard for fabulous realism in mainstream comics"[12]. The book is colored by Laura Martin, Tom Underhill noting her contribution as "every bit as compelling" as Cassaday's in his review for The Comics Journal[13]. The mysteries Ellis sets up are what ultimately drive the book, as the characters' relationships, their histories, and the identity of the Fourth Man[14] are gradually revealed.
Ellis has also drawn on scientific sources for inspiration within the series to add an aspect of verisimilitude to his revisions of classic superheroes. He introduced the concept of a Multiverse to the shared universe in which the characters appear, drawing upon the mathematical concept known as the Monster group for inspiration[15]. Hark describes the multiverse as "a theoretical snowflake existing in 196,833 dimensional space." [16], a reference to the visualization method used by some mathematicians when describing the Monster group[17]
The series, and spin-offs, have been collected into a number of volumes:
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Translations:
planetary |
Dansk (Danish)
adj. - planetarisk
Nederlands (Dutch)
betreffende planeten, aards, onvoorspelbaar (bewegend), wereldwijd, planetair (versnellingen/ tandwielen)
Français (French)
adj. - planétaire
Deutsch (German)
adj. - planetarisch, Planeten-
Ελληνική (Greek)
adj. - (αστρον.) πλανητικός
Português (Portuguese)
adj. - planetário
Русский (Russian)
планетарный, всемирный
Español (Spanish)
adj. - planetario
Svenska (Swedish)
adj. - planetarisk, planet-, jordisk
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
行星的, 流浪的, 飘泊不定的, 在轨道上运行的, 似行星的, 地球的, 全球的
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
adj. - 行星的, 流浪的, 飄泊不定的, 在軌道上運行的, 似行星的, 地球的, 全球的
日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - 惑星の, 惑星のような, この世の, 世界的な
العربيه (Arabic)
(صفه) كوكبيك, سياري
עברית (Hebrew)
adj. - של כוכב-לכת
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved. eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Planetary (comics)". Read more |
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