This comic centers on Elijah Snow and his team at Planetary, an organization he formed to discover the secret history of the world, and to save it from the Four. The Four are the crew of a secret moon shot from the early 1960s. Events in space both ruined the mission and transformed the crew. Since then they have been behind many sinister efforts to remake the world for their purposes. Snow, who was born in 1900, but looks like a man in his forties, is using all his resources to stop them and to “keep the world strange because that’s the way its supposed to be.”
The richness of this comic comes from the way Ellis blends an alternative version from the whole of popular heroic fiction into it. From the pulp novel to the Golden and Silver Age comic book, characters are blended in seamlessly. The Four are a dark and twisted version of the Fantastic Four.
This issue concentrates on one of Snow’s team members, Drummer. Drummer can communicate with any machine. In fact, they speak to him almost compulsively, spilling out everything they know. The first thing he does in this issue is turn off his cel phone, because its constantly telling every bit of data it picks up.
Drummer and another team member, Jakita Wagner, are discussing Snow. They have recently halved the four, sending one into the depths of space and capturing another. Jakita is concerned about Snow’s behaviour, but Drummer comes to his defence. He admits he has every reason to defend him, and this sets up a flashback that gives Drummer’s origin story. This story makes up the bulk of the comic. It gives us another example of how sinister the Four are, and an adventure story with the original team intact (Snow, Wagner, and Ambrose Chase). We also get John Stone (Planetary’s answer to James Bond and Nick Fury) and the “Worse. Rescue. Ever.” Actually, it’s about having a lot of fun with a cargo plane. Perhaps most importantly, in the long run, Drummer reveals what he knows about Snow’s purpose in the scheme of things.
I would be hard pressed to name a better comic than Planetary. Brilliant and rich storytelling by Ellis, and beautifully illustrated by Cassaday and Martin. There have been some complaints, which I don’t agree with, about the recent issues being too decompressed, but Ellis, Cassaday and Martin clearly to a great job in this issue.
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