Warren Ellis' Planetary No.27 or Why I still love comics.

  Ten years. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that it's been ten years since I first picked up a copy of Warren Ellis' Planetary. That's a house; a child going from a baby to middle school; a few jobs; a divorce; and three cars later in my lifetime. I was still using dial up and AOL was sending cd's in the mail every week back then. It's a long investment in a story that most people would've let go of long before now. If they were anyone else but me.

  I remember Planetary being the first comic I read in which I was AWARE that it was being written by Warren Ellis. Believe it or not I hadn't read Transmet yet. But I had read The Authority: Change Or Die; loved the story, and discovered his name plastered all over the front cover. Looking back further it bit me that I had read his work before on Doom 2099. Turns out the guy also happened to be the Messiah of internet as well. But back to Planetary.

  Saturday I picked up issue no.27 ten years after issue one was first published. It was like hanging out with an old friend where time had passed but the adoration you felt hadn't. For me Planetary as a whole is one of those  bomb blast ideas that cold cocks Popular Science magazine and all the pulp myths you grew up with  in the face, shoves them in the blender, and makes a Fantastika cocktail. (See Warren for explainations of Fantastika)  Every story stood on it's own legs and still made you want to know where the hell this thing was running off to as you chased behind it. But it also abruptly stopped...and started... and stopped... and started again off again. Yet every time it started I'd head off to the store after it like a crack junkie. I was hooked on a story. And in between stops and starts began a whole 'nother adventure. Warren had come up with The Engine during this time. It was a message board of artist, writers, fans, and other unusual species. It was here that I was introduced to other  writer's and artist whose work I've grown to love. I was turned on to writer Matt Fraction and artist Gabriel Ba' and Fabio Moon's work on a new comic called Casanova. Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie pushed out Phonogram for Image. Brian Wood was banging out DMZ, Demo, and Local. Ivan Brandon and Power's Michael Avon Oeming were dropping several works all over. The artist known as Jock work speaks for itself. There were so many people I could list and most of them went on to do bigger and better things that I still follow today. When that grew out of hand Warren created White Chapel. And in the midst of all this I even managed to have a drink and a smoke with he and my pal Raven when he was here in Atlanta.

 All of this points back to what happens in Planetary no. 27. (Spoilers) Regardless of time and no matter how many detours it took the whole book never forgets what it is at heart: one man trying to move heaven and earth to save his best friend. The difference is that Warren does it in such a grandiose manner you forget that over the course of ten years. All the history, mad science, and reshaped pulp heroes boiled down to this one thing: save Ambrose Chase.

  I can't tell you how it ends. But I can tell you it's the best trip I had to the store in a while and fun waltz down memory lane. I'd wonder what the next ten years will bring but you know what?

Today is the future.