For the life of me, I can't figure out what this cover is parodying. Highlights for Children?!
Planetary #13 (Febraury 2001)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Bill O'Neil, and Laura DePuy Martin
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by John Layman
I guess the modern day tagline for Highlights is "Fun with a purpose" which just sounds fucking exhausting. I decided a long time ago that life itself doesn't have any meaning so why should I saddle fun with some sense of it?! Ridiculous. You might as well try to convince me that sex has a purpose! I've read John Barth's "Night-Sea Journey" so you're going to have to be smarter than John Barth to convince me sex has any purpose other than perpetuating the curse of existential anxiety!
Speaking of things not having any purpose, I've been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm for the first time in my life the last few weeks and this is my summary of it: Seinfeld if Jerry and George were merged into some kind of Jeff Goldblumesque Fly freak while Poison Ivy's plant played Kramer and everybody was allowed to say fuck. I've finally gotten to the really great episodes which mean the episodes where Cheryl has left him because thank fucking Christ I don't have to think about how she sucks that maniac Kennedy's dick every time I see her onscreen. I think my favorite character is Jeff Green's wife Susie played by Susie Essman. Sometimes I just put her screaming at Larry on loop and I fall asleep to its beautiful music. I kind of hope the series ends with her murdering him, stuffing his corpse in a golf bag, and getting away with it because everybody is just relieved that Larry's no longer around complaining about complete bullshit every two minutes.
Was that a positive review of the series because I'm really enjoying it?
This issue begins in 1919 when Elijah Snow was still a teenager and dumb enough to admit to shit even I wouldn't admit to on this blog.
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Bill O'Neil, and Laura DePuy Martin
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by John Layman
I guess the modern day tagline for Highlights is "Fun with a purpose" which just sounds fucking exhausting. I decided a long time ago that life itself doesn't have any meaning so why should I saddle fun with some sense of it?! Ridiculous. You might as well try to convince me that sex has a purpose! I've read John Barth's "Night-Sea Journey" so you're going to have to be smarter than John Barth to convince me sex has any purpose other than perpetuating the curse of existential anxiety!
Speaking of things not having any purpose, I've been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm for the first time in my life the last few weeks and this is my summary of it: Seinfeld if Jerry and George were merged into some kind of Jeff Goldblumesque Fly freak while Poison Ivy's plant played Kramer and everybody was allowed to say fuck. I've finally gotten to the really great episodes which mean the episodes where Cheryl has left him because thank fucking Christ I don't have to think about how she sucks that maniac Kennedy's dick every time I see her onscreen. I think my favorite character is Jeff Green's wife Susie played by Susie Essman. Sometimes I just put her screaming at Larry on loop and I fall asleep to its beautiful music. I kind of hope the series ends with her murdering him, stuffing his corpse in a golf bag, and getting away with it because everybody is just relieved that Larry's no longer around complaining about complete bullshit every two minutes.
Was that a positive review of the series because I'm really enjoying it?
This issue begins in 1919 when Elijah Snow was still a teenager and dumb enough to admit to shit even I wouldn't admit to on this blog.
Do we ever learn any more about Uncle Caleb? Did he get a spin-off series?
The dumb thing Elijah's currently doing is exploring Baron von Frankenstein's castle somewhere in Germany. I guess it's dumb because Frankenstein¹ was super horny after he was created and now it's been one hundred years so he's probably super duper horny and wouldn't mind a little prison wife anal at this point? Maybe the actual dumb thing was believing that the castle actually existed after the guy who told him about it also told him he'd been to Mars. If some guy told me one of those things, I might be, "Hmm, that's interesting. You seem like a believable fellow!" But if they told me both of those things, I'd be all, "You cuckoo, Homie."
Although now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever said, "You seem like a believable fellow," to anybody ever in my entire life. Y'all are fucking liars, man! Not that I don't enjoy liars but you've got to be an entertaining liar for me to like you. You've got to be clever. You need to make me smile and laugh. You can't just be all, "Immigrants are massing at the borders and they're going to eat your dick!" My needle isn't moved by irrational fear and anger. Although now that I think about it, if Fox News was saying immigrants were out there eating people's dicks, maybe I'd watch it sometime? That sounds hilarious!
Although now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever said, "You seem like a believable fellow," to anybody ever in my entire life. Y'all are fucking liars, man! Not that I don't enjoy liars but you've got to be an entertaining liar for me to like you. You've got to be clever. You need to make me smile and laugh. You can't just be all, "Immigrants are massing at the borders and they're going to eat your dick!" My needle isn't moved by irrational fear and anger. Although now that I think about it, if Fox News was saying immigrants were out there eating people's dicks, maybe I'd watch it sometime? That sounds hilarious!
So ever since, um, four whole years ago?
Elijah Snow has some kind of poor American kid accent in this issue because he's yet to become the sophisticated and mysterious leader of a secret organization that travels the world and needs to not sound like he's from the worst, most arrogant country in the world. He uses the word "ain't" and exhibits a particular laziness in pronunciation. But Snow isn't just an American doing overseas paranormal tourism at Frankenstein's castle; he's looking for "the Map". That's how he thinks of it, capitalized and everything²!
While searching the premises, Elijah steps on a plate that triggers a trap. A bunch of Frankenstein eggs fall from the wall, crack open, and expel several living Frankensteins. I'm assuming they're baby Frankensteins even if they're full grown when they hatch because that's how it works when you make a creature from adult corpses. You can't make a creature from a baby corpse and then expect it to grow into an adult! You have to make the adult body and then bring it to life and then be repulsed by it so that you abandon it to figure out language and philosophy and sexual desire and murder all on its own. Or you just leave it in a glass egg so that it imprints on the first sucker who comes along and sets off your trap. Now Elijah Snow is going to have four or five Frankensteins following him around like baby ducklings, I imagine.
While searching the premises, Elijah steps on a plate that triggers a trap. A bunch of Frankenstein eggs fall from the wall, crack open, and expel several living Frankensteins. I'm assuming they're baby Frankensteins even if they're full grown when they hatch because that's how it works when you make a creature from adult corpses. You can't make a creature from a baby corpse and then expect it to grow into an adult! You have to make the adult body and then bring it to life and then be repulsed by it so that you abandon it to figure out language and philosophy and sexual desire and murder all on its own. Or you just leave it in a glass egg so that it imprints on the first sucker who comes along and sets off your trap. Now Elijah Snow is going to have four or five Frankensteins following him around like baby ducklings, I imagine.
"Ma ma! Ma ma! Why must you abandon us in our greatest time of need?! You have given us life and now you flee from our appearance?! It is most unjust!"
Warren Ellis must have been pretty busy with his Transmetropolitan script this month because he wrote into this script: "Elijah Snow battles five newly-hatched lizard Frankenstein's for five pages. I guess he can say, "Oh shit," or something in there somewhere. Otherwise, go to town. But don't do anything fucking clever, John, like making the lizard Frankenstein's look like my Internet girlfriends, yeah?" I can't say for sure but I think John Cassaday did not base the lizard Frankenstein's on the women Warren Ellis was, um, dating.
Elijah Snow finds "the Conspiracy's" holographic secret map of the world. One of the prominent "secret places" is Big Ben which was designed by the guy who went mad and whose biographer had a quote on the John Constantine cover of this series. That's probably important or something. It looks like some kind of alien language or musical notation is inscribed at the top of Big Ben on the secret map. Maybe it's Aramaic or Hebrew. Or it's just the Neo-Gothic spikes and frills and negative spaces as seen through a hologram that makes it look like something it's not.
The next year, Elijah Snow finds himself in England on Baker Street looking up at Big Ben which subsequently leads to his first encounter with Sherlock Holmes. I guess the map helped him find him? Maybe this story isn't about coherence but just a smattering of Elijah Snow's adventures before he began Planetary.
The Conspiracy is Ellis's version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And while Elijah's previous mentions of meeting Sherlock Holmes may have led readers to believe that he sought him out to train with him, what Snow was actually up to was putting an end to the League. The League was 19th Century bullshit! He's here to create a 20th Century team that doesn't do the work of imperialist bastards! He's an American which means he's going to do it right! And independently! And for profit! And absolutely no unionizing!
Elijah Snow finds "the Conspiracy's" holographic secret map of the world. One of the prominent "secret places" is Big Ben which was designed by the guy who went mad and whose biographer had a quote on the John Constantine cover of this series. That's probably important or something. It looks like some kind of alien language or musical notation is inscribed at the top of Big Ben on the secret map. Maybe it's Aramaic or Hebrew. Or it's just the Neo-Gothic spikes and frills and negative spaces as seen through a hologram that makes it look like something it's not.
The next year, Elijah Snow finds himself in England on Baker Street looking up at Big Ben which subsequently leads to his first encounter with Sherlock Holmes. I guess the map helped him find him? Maybe this story isn't about coherence but just a smattering of Elijah Snow's adventures before he began Planetary.
The Conspiracy is Ellis's version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And while Elijah's previous mentions of meeting Sherlock Holmes may have led readers to believe that he sought him out to train with him, what Snow was actually up to was putting an end to the League. The League was 19th Century bullshit! He's here to create a 20th Century team that doesn't do the work of imperialist bastards! He's an American which means he's going to do it right! And independently! And for profit! And absolutely no unionizing!
I think what Ellis is saying is that Planetary is 21st Century minded and Alan Moore's comic is old timey 20th Century pulp junk.³
After Snow kicks the frozen dick off of Dracula, Holmes describes how their Conspiracy took a darker turn. He explains how they "were conspiring to make a better world" but then goes on to insist that to make the world better, it needed to embrace "eugenics, re-education, and a controlled economy." Aren't those all things which Alan Moore would deride? Why would his League be into that stuff?!
Sorry, I made the mistake of forgetting that Warren Ellis was writing his version of the League and not Alan Moore's. Not that Moore's League was all sunshine and happy puppies. But at least it seemed to be led, as best it could, toward light by Mina Murray. I think that's why Snow mentions that he met a lady named Van Helsing who would have also loved to kick the dick off of Dracula.
Anyway, Holmes seems thankful that Snow has ended the association of fictional characters. He agrees to teach Elijah all of the secrets he knows. Snow spends five years training with him before Holmes finally dies of old age and opiate addiction. After that, Elijah returns to exploring the secrets of the world.
The Ranking!
When Snow mentions the Conspiracy's roster, he mentions "Poor old Carnacki". He says this as he's leafing through The Sigsand Manuscript which is from the stories of occult detective Carnacki. The question I have — which maybe will be answered but, I mean, probably not because it doesn't really matter — why poor? What happened to him?! Did he try to expose a ghost in some haunting of a mansion whose ownership was disputed in the courts only to discover that the ghost was really just an old white man with a fully loaded shotgun?! That's my guess anyway.
I may have read this one a bit too quickly because my sense of pacing was thrown off by the battle with the Frankensteins. Plus my cat threw up in the middle of it and I had to go clean up and then sit with her for awhile to make sure she was feeling okay. Now I'm not even sure I should publish this post?! I should probably rewrite it. Ha ha! That was a joke! What is a "rewrite"?!
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¹ Yeah, I called the monster Frankenstein. What are you going to do about it, pedant?!
² Okay, fine, the capitalization is pretty much everything. But he also uses the article "the" instead of "a" so, you know, more than just the capitalization!
³ In other words, Moore's an old man and Ellis is the young pup with a new way perspective on the world. Move out of the way, old man!
Sorry, I made the mistake of forgetting that Warren Ellis was writing his version of the League and not Alan Moore's. Not that Moore's League was all sunshine and happy puppies. But at least it seemed to be led, as best it could, toward light by Mina Murray. I think that's why Snow mentions that he met a lady named Van Helsing who would have also loved to kick the dick off of Dracula.
Anyway, Holmes seems thankful that Snow has ended the association of fictional characters. He agrees to teach Elijah all of the secrets he knows. Snow spends five years training with him before Holmes finally dies of old age and opiate addiction. After that, Elijah returns to exploring the secrets of the world.
The Ranking!
When Snow mentions the Conspiracy's roster, he mentions "Poor old Carnacki". He says this as he's leafing through The Sigsand Manuscript which is from the stories of occult detective Carnacki. The question I have — which maybe will be answered but, I mean, probably not because it doesn't really matter — why poor? What happened to him?! Did he try to expose a ghost in some haunting of a mansion whose ownership was disputed in the courts only to discover that the ghost was really just an old white man with a fully loaded shotgun?! That's my guess anyway.
I may have read this one a bit too quickly because my sense of pacing was thrown off by the battle with the Frankensteins. Plus my cat threw up in the middle of it and I had to go clean up and then sit with her for awhile to make sure she was feeling okay. Now I'm not even sure I should publish this post?! I should probably rewrite it. Ha ha! That was a joke! What is a "rewrite"?!
__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Yeah, I called the monster Frankenstein. What are you going to do about it, pedant?!
² Okay, fine, the capitalization is pretty much everything. But he also uses the article "the" instead of "a" so, you know, more than just the capitalization!
³ In other words, Moore's an old man and Ellis is the young pup with a new way perspective on the world. Move out of the way, old man!
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