If this were on a British hillside, it would have a massive cock.
Planetary #15 (October 2001)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy Martin, and Bill O'Neil
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by John Layman
Let's get ready to Dreamtime!
Was that disrespectful to the indigenous peoples of Australia? Can I be sued by Michael Buffer¹ for typing it? How many people in history do you think have shoved a didgeridoo up their arsehole? How many did it while somebody else fucked the other end? Were those questions disrespectful to the indigenous peoples of Australia?! Or do you think they'd read it and wink and go, "Roight on, me old China"?
I grew up watching Dot and the Kangaroo every time² it aired on Showtime in the late '70s. One of my main concerns while watching it was how did In Search Of... miss doing an episode on the Bunyip? It was fucking terrifying!
The main thing I remember about this issue is that Uluru turns out to be a sleeping giant who may or may not have been fucking a didgeridoo. It's hard to tell by the cover because Greased Lightning³ is standing in front of his crotch.
The issue begins telling the origin of the world through the eyes of the Australian indigenous peoples. Giants sang all life into being after the sun exploded into the sky and shit heat all over everything. Ellis may have been less vulgar in his telling but if you wanted to read his telling of it, you'd read his fucking telling. I figure since I'm just repeating what a white man from an imperialist nation is repeating of the legends of those his nation colonized, I wasn't going to respect the retelling even if it sounds like I'm not respecting the original source. But I am! By shitting on the retelling which stole the telling from the source!
The second beginning to the comic occurs when Elijah Stone and Jakita Wagner pay a visit to Ambrose Chase's wife.
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy Martin, and Bill O'Neil
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by John Layman
Let's get ready to Dreamtime!
Was that disrespectful to the indigenous peoples of Australia? Can I be sued by Michael Buffer¹ for typing it? How many people in history do you think have shoved a didgeridoo up their arsehole? How many did it while somebody else fucked the other end? Were those questions disrespectful to the indigenous peoples of Australia?! Or do you think they'd read it and wink and go, "Roight on, me old China"?
I grew up watching Dot and the Kangaroo every time² it aired on Showtime in the late '70s. One of my main concerns while watching it was how did In Search Of... miss doing an episode on the Bunyip? It was fucking terrifying!
The main thing I remember about this issue is that Uluru turns out to be a sleeping giant who may or may not have been fucking a didgeridoo. It's hard to tell by the cover because Greased Lightning³ is standing in front of his crotch.
The issue begins telling the origin of the world through the eyes of the Australian indigenous peoples. Giants sang all life into being after the sun exploded into the sky and shit heat all over everything. Ellis may have been less vulgar in his telling but if you wanted to read his telling of it, you'd read his fucking telling. I figure since I'm just repeating what a white man from an imperialist nation is repeating of the legends of those his nation colonized, I wasn't going to respect the retelling even if it sounds like I'm not respecting the original source. But I am! By shitting on the retelling which stole the telling from the source!
The second beginning to the comic occurs when Elijah Stone and Jakita Wagner pay a visit to Ambrose Chase's wife.
I thought Jakita and Ambrose were fucking. That's not the kind of greeting you get from a wife of the man you were fucking! Was I mistaken?!
I guess if you're going to cheat on your wife, it's helpful to have a reality distorting power. You know what a reality distorting power also helps with? Convincing your wife to engage in a three-way. And not a Devil's Triangle three-way! The good kind!
Angie is Ambrose and Larissa's child, the one Ambrose held up over his head in an earlier issue. The one I assumed was Jakita's because I'm a gross pervert who assumes all coworkers are fucking each other. It's why I work alone. Don't worry about how you should parse that! Maybe I just love to masturbate. Maybe I'm too hot to work with people because we'd never get any work done. Maybe nobody wants to fuck me. Maybe it's none of those and I just learned a long time ago that the worst aspect of any job is always your coworkers and/or managers and/or bosses.
The third beginning of the story has Elijah calling up that Wilder fellow to see how things are going on the Planetary's Own Authority Shiftship Front and to ask him about his old boss, Anna Hark.
The fourth beginning has Elijah sitting on the side of a hill watching the sunrise (unless it's setting) with Axel Brass and talking about memories and old times.
What all of these short narrative threads come down to is this: Elijah Snow is doing research on his enemies. He's only got about a years worth of issues left to take them down. He needs to gather as much information as he can and build as broad a team as possible to formulate and execute a plan that will enable him to murder four gods. I wonder if he's going to recruit Angie. I bet she can distort reality too.
But the cover, and the first beginning, concern themselves with Australia. So it's time to get back to the main plot thread.
Angie is Ambrose and Larissa's child, the one Ambrose held up over his head in an earlier issue. The one I assumed was Jakita's because I'm a gross pervert who assumes all coworkers are fucking each other. It's why I work alone. Don't worry about how you should parse that! Maybe I just love to masturbate. Maybe I'm too hot to work with people because we'd never get any work done. Maybe nobody wants to fuck me. Maybe it's none of those and I just learned a long time ago that the worst aspect of any job is always your coworkers and/or managers and/or bosses.
The third beginning of the story has Elijah calling up that Wilder fellow to see how things are going on the Planetary's Own Authority Shiftship Front and to ask him about his old boss, Anna Hark.
The fourth beginning has Elijah sitting on the side of a hill watching the sunrise (unless it's setting) with Axel Brass and talking about memories and old times.
What all of these short narrative threads come down to is this: Elijah Snow is doing research on his enemies. He's only got about a years worth of issues left to take them down. He needs to gather as much information as he can and build as broad a team as possible to formulate and execute a plan that will enable him to murder four gods. I wonder if he's going to recruit Angie. I bet she can distort reality too.
But the cover, and the first beginning, concern themselves with Australia. So it's time to get back to the main plot thread.
Captain Marvell was just some guy who was bored with life and decided to commit suicide by entering the Dreamtime.
The Four believe they're using the correct song to open a gate into the Dreamtime at Uluru. But they only have half the song. Since Elijah knows the other half and he also knows what will happen if the song is sung, he fires the rest of it into the Four's version. Instead of a gate opening, Uluru wakes up. The giant stands, head butts Alternate Dimension Fantastic Four's shiftship, and then goes back to sleep. The ship explodes and Elijah is all, "Before you can say it, that's not all I've got, Dowling! I've got so many more inches, dude! And girth!"
The Ranking!
I know! That was it! I guess this was just the slight rise in the graph toward the climax of the story. It'll probably go exponential from here being that basically not a whole lot happened, climactically, in the first half of the story because Planetary were archaeologists and what everybody who has never been fooled by an Indiana Jones movie knows, archaeology is fucking boring. But Elijah finally remembered his backbone and his testicles and was all, "How come we're letting assholes make the world a worse place? It's time to do something about it." Hmm, good idea, Elijah! I wish more people would start doing something about it! I know a lot of people think, "But what can I do?! I have no power!" But those people are also generally the type who don't call out their asshole relatives on social media. They continue to have relationships with terrible fucking people because they're family. You want to know what you can even when you have no power? Ostracize the assholes. Call them out on their behavior. Shun the motherfuckers, man! Shun, shun, shun! Shun like nobody's watching, baby! The amount of family and friends I have that I know are progressive and yet are still friends with terrible fucking assholes simply because they were friends with them when they were young makes me so fucking mad. Although what infuriates me more is how they just ignore how those people believe the worst propaganda and most racist shit. They just don't bring it up. They'd rather pretend their friend isn't a piece of shit rather than rock the fucking boat. But those friends? They say the stupidest garbage all the time. They're not worried about the boat capsizing! Kick those motherfuckers to the curb, man! Tell them to eat shit!
There's a reason I named this blog Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea a decade and a half ago!
__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ I had to look up Michael Buffer's last name (somehow, I remembered Michael) by typing into the search engine, "Let's get ready to rumble dude". I think I had to pay royalties just to type that out.
² Seriously. Every. Fucking. Time.
³ Greased Lightning is a member of the Galactic Hero Corps, a team of heroes that my friends and I wrote about in our early 20s. We put out about eight issues of a 'zine with stories and art. Dan Santat did the art for our #0 issue convention special! If I could bother digging up all the action figures I made of the crew, I'd take a picture of Greased Lightning (a paint job on top of a Wonder Man figure) and you'd go, "Hey! That's the guy on the cover of this comic book!" If Michael Buffer can sue me, I'm going to sue John Cassaday.
The Ranking!
I know! That was it! I guess this was just the slight rise in the graph toward the climax of the story. It'll probably go exponential from here being that basically not a whole lot happened, climactically, in the first half of the story because Planetary were archaeologists and what everybody who has never been fooled by an Indiana Jones movie knows, archaeology is fucking boring. But Elijah finally remembered his backbone and his testicles and was all, "How come we're letting assholes make the world a worse place? It's time to do something about it." Hmm, good idea, Elijah! I wish more people would start doing something about it! I know a lot of people think, "But what can I do?! I have no power!" But those people are also generally the type who don't call out their asshole relatives on social media. They continue to have relationships with terrible fucking people because they're family. You want to know what you can even when you have no power? Ostracize the assholes. Call them out on their behavior. Shun the motherfuckers, man! Shun, shun, shun! Shun like nobody's watching, baby! The amount of family and friends I have that I know are progressive and yet are still friends with terrible fucking assholes simply because they were friends with them when they were young makes me so fucking mad. Although what infuriates me more is how they just ignore how those people believe the worst propaganda and most racist shit. They just don't bring it up. They'd rather pretend their friend isn't a piece of shit rather than rock the fucking boat. But those friends? They say the stupidest garbage all the time. They're not worried about the boat capsizing! Kick those motherfuckers to the curb, man! Tell them to eat shit!
There's a reason I named this blog Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea a decade and a half ago!
__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ I had to look up Michael Buffer's last name (somehow, I remembered Michael) by typing into the search engine, "Let's get ready to rumble dude". I think I had to pay royalties just to type that out.
² Seriously. Every. Fucking. Time.
³ Greased Lightning is a member of the Galactic Hero Corps, a team of heroes that my friends and I wrote about in our early 20s. We put out about eight issues of a 'zine with stories and art. Dan Santat did the art for our #0 issue convention special! If I could bother digging up all the action figures I made of the crew, I'd take a picture of Greased Lightning (a paint job on top of a Wonder Man figure) and you'd go, "Hey! That's the guy on the cover of this comic book!" If Michael Buffer can sue me, I'm going to sue John Cassaday.
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