1572 ( )

Firstly i enjoy reading these, i got them as a gift but can't say i'd have payed for them. My enjoyment however is for the losest of low-brow reasons because make no mistake this is AWFUL!

Its really badly plotted and written. So many confusing elements. Characters not reacting to information leaving you unsure of whats important and whats not. The protagonists are mostly just tourists, they turn up, look about, then the issue ends usually without any resolution like the last few pages went missing.

The main gimmick is that it consists of various references to different genre fiction. This along with the art is the best bit. BUT its just references, its just 'hey look, heres a thing like something you've seen before'.
Ellis doesn't seem to have any opinion or point or commentary to make on any of this. Also his homages, while the artist does a good job, Ellis' attempts to impersonate pulp writing etc. is a complete failure.

So why do i still enjoy it? The only way i can describe it is that i like 'Dogs Playing Poker' and therefore quite enjoy 'Cats Playing Hungry Hungry Hippos' :P .

Extra Credit: Heres a couple of facts you won't find elsewhere. There's a Fu Manchu analogue in this, well Fu Manchu is actually a knockoff of an earlier character, Dr. Yen How from the apocalyptic novel [b:The Yellow Danger|6559410|The Yellow Danger (Sources of Science Fiction 7 Future War Novels of the 1890s)|Matthew Phipps Shiel|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|5149647] by [a:Matthew Phipps Shiel|4991672|Matthew Phipps Shiel|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1337643245p2/4991672.jpg] (1898).

At another point a character claims to have put together a super-team because he was inspired by a group operating during the French Revolution. This is an oblique reference to the book [b:The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel|31501|The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel|Emmuska Orczy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1566287442l/31501._SX50_.jpg|1946373] in which despite the name, a group is formed which calls itself 'The Avengers'! Presumably the first ever use of that group name.
Edit: Some might also recognise the Avengers as a group created in [b:The Mark of Zorro|898839|The Mark of Zorro (Zorro, #1)|Johnston McCulley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312040592l/898839._SY75_.jpg|104836] but thats just because Zorro is a plagarized varsion of the Scarlet Pimpernel, going so far occasionally as to steal scene-by-scene or even word for word. ( )

Warren Ellis is a freaking genius. I loved Transmetropolitan to bits. Trees was amazing as hell. And now I finally got around to reading his best work ever - Planetary. And I am absolutely blown away by it.

Planetary begins a bit slow and takes the amnesiac route to familiarize the reader with the protagonist’s universe. What a wonderful, weird, glorious universe it is. Ellis uses some truly fantastic ideas here: a machine that creates realities out of fictional narratives and lets those characters cross over, a brilliant post-Gojira tribute, World War II supercomputer that can access other universes, and so on.

It’s also a stupendously awesome and different take on superheroes. I won’t spoil it for you here; I highly suggest you read and find out yourself. The characters aren’t immediately likeable, but that’s how they’re designed: with flaws and everything. Once you break the surface, though, you’re in for a wild cast of characters that you’ll learn to love and hate.

The writing is sharp and superb. No moments are wasted. The art complements the writing, drawing the characters in a realistic fashion while maintaining the standard comic book feel. It’s a brilliant package that must be enjoyed first-hand.

If I had the chance to wipe my memory and read this again, I’d do so in a heartbeat. ( )

Finally re-read the entire series - all four volumes. What a brilliant series - fantastic artwork, big ideas, twists and turns and the most self reflexive comic book series ever. ( )

Sadly not my thing and the first issue was so promising. The premise was so promising. But I couldn’t get sucked in and I didn’t like any of the characters and the world seemed too sketched out, too reliant on “this is what a superpowered world looks like”. And things didn’t move fast enough for me in terms of plot, either. This volume’s very episodic—it bounces from supercomputers to kaiju to megacorporations with only the barest link between anything. It felt like all the pieces were moving into place in this volume so that volume two could really kick off, and maybe that’s the case, but I wasn’t wowed enough by the writing to want to go there. (Sorry, Warren Ellis fans! I guess he’s not for me!)

5/10 ( )