Planetary #18 (February 2004)

Looks like more backstory and imperialism!

Planetary #18 (February 2004)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy Martin, and Richard Starkings
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by Kristy Quinn and Scott Dunbier

Here are some of the themes I get while reading Thomas Pynchon novels:

1. THEY are doing everything they can to make the world a worse place for the majority of people simply to sate their own selfish desires.
2. Imperialism is one of the major tools used by THEM.
3. Predestination and Preterition may not be true religious or philosophical concepts but it hardly matters since they explain so much of the world. THEY have everything at birth and keep it; the Preterite have nothing and gain less.
4. Belief warps reality. New ideas don't just change the future; they literally change the current reality.
5. Nostalgia traps the mind into viewing the world where constancy trumps change leading to stagnation, racism, and anger.
6. Dick jokes are pretty goddamned funny.

I feel like Planetary hits a lot of the same notes. Maybe not so big on the predestination stuff but, I don't know, maybe? I haven't really thought about it much but The Four are gods who are definitely also THEM and who is to say why they were picked to become gods? THEY were picked so THEY were always picked so THEY were predestined to become gods. Everybody else are the Preterite to be used at their whimsy. I mean, everybody except all the Century Babies! I think they were natures way of combating those four future gods.

I guess all the white men with guns on the cover made me realize I need to finish Against the Day!

This issue begins, sort of, with (6.), the dick joke:

See, Bond fucks so many dirty evil spy women that his dick probably looks like a half-rotten cucumber mauled by a sewer rat.

Thanks to Elijah Snow's earlier meeting with John Stone where Snow regained his memory, Elijah has been meeting up with all of his allies (and potential allies) to bolster his relationship with them. He's been giving some of them pensions and some of them Wilders and some of them German families. He's been considering his past and deciding who might join him against The Four and who might have already sided with The Four. He's headed toward an ultimate showdown with the gods who have been shitting on the world because it's their kink and now he's meeting with the guy who — for still unknown reasons — got the ball rolling. Where does Stone, John Stone, stand?

Stone has some information for Elijah: he knows where William Leather will be in a few days. An object that has been in orbit between the Earth and moon for 150 years will be making landfall soon. Leather will be there. Stone thinks Elijah, with help, has a real chance of destroying him. John Stone kills a pigeon with his cigarette and walks off. So I guess Stone isn't actually offering to help any more than handing Elijah a piece of paper with the location of the space object's return to Earth? And what does this have to do with the Gun Club?

Oh wait! Do I actually remember something? Did the Gun Club launch this thing like a massive skeet shoot in the mid-nineteenth century?! I guess that's why those three guys on the cover are in rudimentary space suits. And that's the space barrel of their space gun behind them, ready to launch those three idiots to their death.

I do not, however, remember what happened to the crew. Or what will happen to Leather when Snow catches up to him. Or too many things to list but none of them have anything to do with this comic book which I first read 22 years ago and, I believe, re-read eight years ago. I do remember a day many decades ago in Aptos, California standing in front of a full length mirror naked immediately after losing my virginity suspecting that I'd see myself differently but, alas, I perceived no change at all. Except maybe I was a little giddy while my partner in the other room was a lot disappointed.

The returning space capsule landing exactly where it was launched 150 years previously.

Alternate Dimension Johnny Storm, aka William Leather, blazes onto the scene covered in blue fire. He speaks angrily with Randall Dowling about getting something in return for this artifact recovery. It seems they've been on the outs and Dowling has been keeping something which Leather desires. His soul, maybe? That's a joke. Souls don't exist! Even in comic books!

Before Leather can procure the space bullet, a Planetary helicopter arrives on the scene and scoops it up. Knowing that Leather isn't subtle about his actions and doesn't think anything through because, you know, he's a god. Why would a god worry about the consequences of his actions? So he burns his way into the helicopter to begin kicking ass and discovers he's in the inventory of Dungeon Crawler Carl.

Man, I've got to remember that one. If I ever meet a god, I'm calling them Mr. Buttwipe. Or Ms. Buttwipe, if I can easily tell their gender. Probably don't have one so, um, Mx. Buttwipe? Is that right? I'm old.

I don't imagine a helicopter full of explosives is meant to take Leather out but merely to knock him off-kilter so Elijah, Jakita, and whoever else they convinced to help them appears.

While Leather's getting his bearings, Jakita speeds up to him and jams some kind of Hark-brand inoculator with a five inch needle into the back of his head. Leather remains unconscious and Planetary takes him into custody. Next, Jakita opens up the massive space capsule to see what that thing's all about.

This would have made a cool painting on the inside of a double album by a prog rock band in the '70s. The front and back covers would have just been the orb itself floating in space.

Planetary can only surmise what happened here from the available evidence in the capsule, the surrounding buildings, and the massive pipe crumbling across the moor. Three men make an attempt to visit the moon using the technology of 1850 and disappear from history for the next 150 years. They discover photos of the day, the club, the men as they entered the space vehicle. And they discovered a list of signatures of people in the club, one of them being Jules Verne. So that name alone probably answers any question anybody might still be asking!

The Ranking!
This one was unexpectedly emotional! What I was thinking as I read it was, "Wouldn't it be awesome if nothing after opening the capsule was explained? Then the reader would just put it together from the cover, really. But the cover is a replica of a photo inside the space capsule. And, of course, Jakita and Elijah wander about speculating on what could have happened here. It's so weirdly optimistic in the way it shows what humans will attempt for nothing more than curiosity and possible knowledge. Three men willing to risk their lives on a belief in their belief in technology, math, and human ability. Seeing their corpses was both sad and uplifting at the same time. This is why I love literature. I like people who do things out of passion and love and curiosity and knowledge and whimsy and art. I can't stand people who do things for money or fear or hatred or practicality. Give me chaos over order any fucking day because chaos believes you can shoot the moon. Order believes you're stuck in the mud.

I'm so glad I was wrong about the cover being imperialistic! Of course, I don't know that these men weren't planning on colonizing the moon, excited to oppress the moon beings they find there. But that's too cynical even for me. The cover knows it'll make the viewer's colonizer Spidey sense tingle and then it actually tells a story about scientific ingenuity and humanity attempting the seemingly impossible. And they succeeded! Sort of!

Oh look! No footnotes this time! Maybe I've gotten them out of my system for a bit. I guess littering my thoughts with asides encased in em dashes and parentheses is probably easier.