Elisha

So! Warren Ellis! Pretty talented guy! I finally got around to reading his "Planetary," a series he wrote for Wildstorm that only lasted for 27 issues but spread those issues out over a very long time, running for more than a decade before finally wrapping up in 2009. It's very good, and very different from what I'd expected. Transmetropolitan and Crooked Little Vein were both gleefully profane works of fiction, constantly shocking and provoking the reader in their bizarre and offensive content. Planetary is very different. On its surface, it looks like a typical superhero comic: there's a team, with pretty cool equipment, that consists of people with supernatural powers. However, there's a lot more going on under the hood, and even without getting into the subtext of the story, the rhythms are very different from a typical superhero comic, or even other "alternative" comics: the characters' motivations are oriented more towards discovery, not fighting evil, and the past is much more interesting than the future.

The art is extremely well-done. It's... not exactly realistic, I guess, but not impressionistic either. I loved the character designs, particularly Jakita. The environments tend to be very sweeping and majestic and often awe-inspiring, whether they're in a desert, in a city, or some highly advanced technology. (It was hard not to think of The City when reading Planetary, just because they're so different. The City was pure filth that had calcified into buildings and sidewalks; cities in Planetary tend to be more attractive, partway between practical and impressive.) The coloring is bright and attractive without being too, um, cartoony.

MINI SPOILERS

There are a lot of plot twists throughout the story. Most significantly, Elijah Snow, who initially is presented as a new recruit to the Planetary organization, is eventually revealed to have had a prior history with that group. I want to re-read this sometime to see if and how that was foreshadowed... I'd like to think that Ellis had planned that switch all along, but I didn't really see it coming. I'm just a little bummed by the mechanics of that development, since it feels like amnesia stories are too common, but this does have the added beneficial twist of a person's friends (and not their enemies) being in on the con.

The coolest thing about Planetary is what it is: an archaeological group. I love that their purpose is to make discoveries and share them with the world. That's such a cool idea (and not unknown to larger popular culture, given the fame of Indiana Jones), and after reading Planetary, I'm surprised that it isn't done more often. Of course, there are villains and fights, but it's refreshing that the story approaches them obliquely instead of smashing opposing forces head-on.

I have a confession to make: I'm very dumb. I think it was probably around issue 20 or so that I first thought, "Huh... you know, some of the people in The Four have some similarities to that other comic. You know, the Fantastic Four." Then I realized that, duh, The Four are very deliberately a riff on the Fantastic Four. And THEN I started realizing that a ton of stuff throughout the whole series is also inspired by other stuff - some comics, but also pulp novels ("Of COURSE that's Tarzan!") and movies ("Of COURSE that's Godzilla!") That also helped me re-interpret some of the earlier stuff in the book: we'd met Sherlock Holmes in flashback a while ago, and I'd thought that we were getting a glimpse at the fictional "real" Sherlock Holmes - that is, the real man behind the Arthur Conan Doyle stories. By the end of the series, though, I'd come to believe that we were actually seeing an alternate universe's version of Sherlock Holmes.

That's where the story gets very meta, and very good. Stuff finally started sliding into place to me, and stuff that had seemed like nonsensical technobabble turned into incredibly clever post-modern comics writing. When they're talking about living in a three-dimensional world that's contained within a stack of two-dimensional worlds... they're talking about being characters in a comic book. That's SO COOL! I love their treatment of fiction, and the idea of characters moving from one story to another story, being transformed along the way.

MEGA SPOILERS

That very last issue was a doozy; I was surprised to see that it really was the end of the series, since in the first few pages it felt like something that would kick off an entirely new arc. I was VERY concerned that the time machine would open a portal to the evil Earth, and had a sinking feeling in my stomach when Drums starts tracing out the shape of the loop of light that would power the time machine; Jakita says something like, "I feel like I've seen that shape before..." and of course we have: it's the shape of the portal outside the evil Earth, and I can very easily imagine a version of the story where that space portal is the same as the one Drums is constructing now. Once it is turned on, if the "aliens" are EVER able to visit Earth, even millennia in the future, they'll be able to travel back in time to this moment and conquer the planet. Or - more unsettling - perhaps the "evil Earth" we saw before is THE Earth: it isn't so advanced because it has followed an alternate timeline; it's so advanced because future visitors have come back with their technology and made it so. There's a certain grim sense of inevitable annihilation to this scenario: in turning on the machine, Elijah could be enabling that other timeline in his own world, and creating a Hell on Earth.

Fortunately, I was wrong, and Ellis didn't screw over the universe in the very last pages of his closing issue.

Also: I loved the science of the time machine, which reminded me in a very good way of "Primer", which is hands-down the best time-travel story I've ever heard or seen. It feels like both of them are based on good science, very possibly the same science.

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I have a hard time summing up or cataloging Planetary. It's much better and deeper than a superhero comic, but it also isn't trying to be a metaphor powerhouse like "Sandman," or as clearly idiosyncratic as "Bone." Its storytelling is a curiously pleasant blend of episodic and serial, not unlike what you might get from something like "X-Men," while simultaneously retaining an overall focus that keeps the story nicely contained, and not something that endlessly spills out. (Despite my curiosity at the last issue, the story does end rather nicely and definitely, and I don't feel dissatisfied that there won't be a sequel.) I have learned that there are a few one-shots, though, so I'll probably check those out and explore the world a little bit longer.

The Filth

Warren Ellis isn't exactly Neil Gaiman, but if you squint you can see the similarities: both are English, both made it big in America with their personal, idiosyncratic limited-run comics, and both branched out into regular novels. Gaiman has gone on to become the master of all media, while Ellis is content to mostly stay in the graphic novel world with occasional forays into script-writing.

As far as I can tell, Ellis has just published one novel so far, Crooked Little Vein, and it's a doozy. The language and thematic content will be familiar to anyone who has read Transmetropolitan (which I'm tempted to call his opus, except that probably isn't fair since I haven't yet read Planetary). It's about moral decadence and the breakdown of contemporary society, and primarily revolves around sexual perversion, drug abuse, misuse of power, and cringe-inducing physical injuries. All of this is channeled through a kind of refracting lens; in TransMet it was the gleeful hedonism of Spider, in CLV it's the jaded resignation of private investigator McGill.


MINI SPOILERS

Speaking of McGill, the book also centers around a MacGuffin: in the impressive first chapter, we meet both McGill and his unexpected employer, the heroin-addicted White House Chief of Staff. The job: track down the "secret Constitution of the United States." This vaguely seems like a DaVinci Code-esque bit of history-inspired creativity. According to the Chief of Staff, after writing the famous Constitution, the founding fathers got together and secretly penned ANOTHER document that laid out their private vision for the country. It includes several "invisible amendments," and has guided the actions of Presidents throughout centuries. It also resonates at the same frequency as our eyeballs, which somehow compels you to read it? And it turns people into upstanding and proper citizens? None of this actually matters at all: it's a very entertaining MacGuffin, but for all that it affects the plot, it might as well be a nuclear launch code or a bag of jewels or incriminating blackmail photos... it only exists to motivate the characters to go on their journey.

McGill is a fairly likeable, fairly blank character. His only really distinguishing characteristic is his rotten luck; bad stuff always seems to happen when he's around. Early on he joins forces with a polyamorous girl (who I couldn't help thinking of as his Filthy Assistant), who navigates him through the landscape of bizarre sexual peccadilloes and other corruptions. They embark on a fascinating tour of America, starting in grimy New York, moving on to featureless Cleveland, down into smug San Antonio, over to tacky Las Vegas and finally ending in soulless Los Angeles. I don't think any of the later cities topped the craziness of New York, but the overpowering blandness of many suburban landscapes are even more offensive to the protagonists than, say, Godzilla fetishists.


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The book is a really quick read; I polished it off in a few days, but you could probably do it in a single sitting. It's entertaining for most of the same reasons that Transmetropolitan was entertaining: it's dirty, dangerous, funny, and direct; it gestures at the filth in our society without making you feel bad about it. Like Transmetropolitan, I personally feel a bit uncomfortable about that mental perspective; it's tough to tell when Ellis is glorifying something, or condemning it, or just gleefully observing.

I can't say that Crooked Little Vein is high literature - this ain't no American Gods - but it's a great modern noir-ish adventure detective story, and if you can stomach the subject matter, you'll have a blast.

The Chair Leg Of Truth Does Not Lie!

Working in an office full of guys makes it easier than ever before to engage in guilty pleasures.  High on the list are our weekly tradition of watching Zero Punctuation and the huge number of comic books in the bathroom.  I've been gradually working my way through Transmetropolitan, a really intriguing series that channels Hunter S. Thompson by way of Philip K. Dick.  As I keep on insisting, I'm not a "comic guy", but I guess I'm becoming more of one every year.  Four years ago I had never read a single comic (excluding from newspapers or the internet) - now, I've read the complete "Sandman," "Firefly," "Bone," "Watchmen," and started on "Dark Knight" and "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."  So I can no longer claim TOTAL ignorance of the conventions and tropes of the comic medium.

On the other hand, I have no illusions: I"ve just been reading the best.  Much like anime, I have an inflated opinion of the medium due to the fact that I blissfully ignore all the mediocre and poor work out there.

That said, "Transmetropolitan" does wind up towards the bottom of my list of comics - but that's the bottom of a very exclusive set of company.  At its best, T manages to be funny, horrifying, prescient, and thoughtful, all wrapped up into one immoral package.  At the worst, it feels a bit unfocused and overly reliant upon shock humor.  All together, it tells a really compelling story, with copious digressions that help flesh out the fictional world.

Probably the most unique thing about T, in comparison to the other comics I've read, is its political bent.  It isn't political in the same way that, say, Doonesbury is, commenting on particular issues and politicians in our own time.  Instead, it's political in the way that 1984 or Gattaca are... it deals with theoretical situations, but with such gravity and realism that you can't help but think about how we should act in our own world to deal with or prevent that vision of the future.

MINI SPOILERS

It's a little creepy to read T and realize that it started in 1997.  So much of it seems to mirror our own experiences in the oughts... the way we were lied to, abused, how we clung to brutish policies and persons who promised to keep us safe.  Thinking back to 1997, when the Cold War was long dead and we seemed to be embarking upon a prolonged period of peace and prosperity, it took a lot of creativity to envision a powerful nation devouring itself.  Warren Ellis did so, and for better or for worse, this was the result.

The main character is one Spider Jerusalem, and calling him a copy of Hunter S. Thompson is an understatement.  This is a good thing, of course... HST is a larger-than-life personality, and one of the most entertaining forces to ever emerge from journalism.  Spider shares HST's predilection for drugs, his gatling-gun diction, his vaguely left-libertarian outlook, his self-deprecation and aggression, his constant smoking.

There are differences.  For starters, SJ is naked most of the time.  He also loves cats and hates dogs.  HST seems to be a regular loner, occasionally accepting company from an interestingly psychotic sidekick.  SJ professes loner-dom, but is fortunate to lead a posse of Filthy Assistants.  I wish I had some Filthy Assistants, too.

SJ aside, my favorite character was probably Mitchell Royce, Spider's editor.  Like a lot of other characters, he smokes multiple cigarettes at the same time, and has a wonderful world-weary attitude that perfectly fits the stereotypical editor, while his dialog retains enough of an edge to engage entertainingly with Spider's shenanigans.  I also enjoyed Spider's Maker, although sadly it ceases to be a character after the first book or two.

The Beast and The Smiler were both great villains.  I kind of got the impression that The Smiler was originally imagined as a kind of Bill Clinton - someone who seems friendly and is quite deceptive.  I may be over-reading into it, though, and by the end there isn't much resemblance to be found.  I do like the general sense of reversal one gets when reading the series - very reminiscent of The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again."

The main political plot thread is quite interesting.  Page by page, though, there are more side stories than main stories, and these really run the gamut in quality.  My favorite passages from the whole run are included here - among the very best is the incredibly surreal and hilarious "Spider Watches Television" sequence.  Others just seem to be taking up time.  I never really got into the whole Transient subplot, and was usually bored any time Fred Christ was on the page.

Oooh, gotta mention the art.  It's really remarkably rich and dense.  The artist does a phenomenal job at bringing The City to life, with all that that means.  Any given street scene will be jammed with more graffiti, syringes, piercings, concrete cracks, filth and depravity than you can really fit into your brain.  On the rare occasions when they visit a reservation or other "outside" location, the sheer beauty is even more moving in relation to the ugliness we're used to viewing.

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I'd never recommend this as a first comic book series to someone looking to get into the scene, but I'd certainly nod in approval to someone looking for an interesting comic to read.  It almost goes without saying that this is an incredibly R-rated, violent, sexist, and purposely offensive piece of work, but also one that should entertain people looking for an edgy glimpse into our dark potential future.