They manage to obliterate the Wildstorm logo and the Issue number and price without any evidence but they chose to scrub the "TM" with what? A Sharpie tool in Photoshop?
Planetary #22 (March 2005)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy Martin, and Richard Starkings
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by Scott Dunbier
I don't own the singles of the last seven issues of Planetary so this is a scan of the cover from the trade. Which is why the various edits and the missing UPC code box. As somebody with well over 25 years of Photopaint experience, that attempted obliteration of the TM after Planetary is just mind-boggling. They could have just cloned over it using the covers own colors. Who would choose to grab a pen tool, select BLACKEST BLACK, and rub it out like they were filling in a Scantron? This entire trade is fucking ruined for me. I might as well just throw it in the bin. Just low quality garbage!
After lying about that, let's lie about something else: William Leather sure has short legs! I never realized! Also I think I'd fuck that horse. Obviously I mean if I were drunk. Or had been drinking. Or was about to go out drinking.
So now that you know I don't understand foreshortening or basic non-bestiality etiquette, let's read about William Leather's torture! I guess after last issue, somebody reminded Ellis that Planetary had captured William Leather and Snow wasn't actually trying to find the last three of The Four. Just the last two. And with one of them being invisible, it wasn't going to be easy so Elijah had to ask an oracle and risk winding up fucking his mother.
As you can tell by the cover, this issue is of the Western genre. It is the story of William Leather's ancestors and it involves outlaws and lawmen and mining rights and a mystic, mysterious Indian savior. But there's something odd going on right from the start.
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura DePuy Martin, and Richard Starkings
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by Scott Dunbier
I don't own the singles of the last seven issues of Planetary so this is a scan of the cover from the trade. Which is why the various edits and the missing UPC code box. As somebody with well over 25 years of Photopaint experience, that attempted obliteration of the TM after Planetary is just mind-boggling. They could have just cloned over it using the covers own colors. Who would choose to grab a pen tool, select BLACKEST BLACK, and rub it out like they were filling in a Scantron? This entire trade is fucking ruined for me. I might as well just throw it in the bin. Just low quality garbage!
After lying about that, let's lie about something else: William Leather sure has short legs! I never realized! Also I think I'd fuck that horse. Obviously I mean if I were drunk. Or had been drinking. Or was about to go out drinking.
So now that you know I don't understand foreshortening or basic non-bestiality etiquette, let's read about William Leather's torture! I guess after last issue, somebody reminded Ellis that Planetary had captured William Leather and Snow wasn't actually trying to find the last three of The Four. Just the last two. And with one of them being invisible, it wasn't going to be easy so Elijah had to ask an oracle and risk winding up fucking his mother.
As you can tell by the cover, this issue is of the Western genre. It is the story of William Leather's ancestors and it involves outlaws and lawmen and mining rights and a mystic, mysterious Indian savior. But there's something odd going on right from the start.
The cracked moon is a clue!
Also the name of this story, "The Torture of William Leather", is a clue. One the first page, William Leather's pupils are strange, reflecting some odd shape that looks like the sight on a gun or maybe a harsh spotlight. And being that he's tortured, the spotlight seems like a likely suspect. Which then maybe explains the prominence of the moon on the next few pages, always overhead, always slightly blocked by some piece of geography or a Native American's mysterious head.
William Leather's grandfather, John, was nearly killed by Dowling's ancestors who did manage to kill his grandfather's brother (I'd describe him more accurately if I knew anything about how you refer to family members further up the family tree. Great Uncle, maybe?). But William Leather's grandfather escaped. He was rescued by a Native American scientist (the Melanctha kind and not the Stephen Hawking kind (or maybe? Was Hawking into hallucinogens?)) who stuffed a bunch of drugs into his mouth so that he could experience what Elijah Snow just experienced at Melanctha's pad. Legend has it that nobody ever learned the Native American's name because if they learned it was Tonto, Ellis might have been sued.
Having been saved by an experimental drug that drove him to the afterlife and back, John Leather took up murdering people with Mercury-tipped silver bullets. I think he only murdered scumbags and maybe it was his working with Mercury that made him a massive nutbag and not Tonto's drugs.
William Leather's grandfather, John, was nearly killed by Dowling's ancestors who did manage to kill his grandfather's brother (I'd describe him more accurately if I knew anything about how you refer to family members further up the family tree. Great Uncle, maybe?). But William Leather's grandfather escaped. He was rescued by a Native American scientist (the Melanctha kind and not the Stephen Hawking kind (or maybe? Was Hawking into hallucinogens?)) who stuffed a bunch of drugs into his mouth so that he could experience what Elijah Snow just experienced at Melanctha's pad. Legend has it that nobody ever learned the Native American's name because if they learned it was Tonto, Ellis might have been sued.
Having been saved by an experimental drug that drove him to the afterlife and back, John Leather took up murdering people with Mercury-tipped silver bullets. I think he only murdered scumbags and maybe it was his working with Mercury that made him a massive nutbag and not Tonto's drugs.
Ha ha! Not armed! Good one!
That final shot looking through the dead man's split head looks remarkably like William Leather's pupils from the first page. Is that a clue?! Probably although I don't think there really are any clues here. They're just echoes of William Leather's surroundings as he tells his torturers his tale. I've never played Assassin's Creed but I think it's similar to how I think that game's story goes.
The Leather Ranger eventually hung up his guns and unsaddled his silver to get a lady pregnant just in time to give birth to their son at the turn of the Century. His name was Bret Leather and he was the Century Baby father to William Leather. Bret became a vigilante running about at night in Chicago in the '20s and '30s, a parody of Batman and The Shadow and, I don't know, Dick Tracy? Maybe Spider-man since he could seemingly turn into spiders and other bugs. The bandolier across his chest looks like a cockroach so maybe he was a parody of a parody and emulating Cerebus's The Roach.
This guy was one of Axel Brass's group who were nearly all killed in the Adirondacks by Alternate Dimension Justice League in the, um, '40s, I think it was? The night he's showing of his skills in the story is the night that William Leather was born.
The Leather Ranger eventually hung up his guns and unsaddled his silver to get a lady pregnant just in time to give birth to their son at the turn of the Century. His name was Bret Leather and he was the Century Baby father to William Leather. Bret became a vigilante running about at night in Chicago in the '20s and '30s, a parody of Batman and The Shadow and, I don't know, Dick Tracy? Maybe Spider-man since he could seemingly turn into spiders and other bugs. The bandolier across his chest looks like a cockroach so maybe he was a parody of a parody and emulating Cerebus's The Roach.
This guy was one of Axel Brass's group who were nearly all killed in the Adirondacks by Alternate Dimension Justice League in the, um, '40s, I think it was? The night he's showing of his skills in the story is the night that William Leather was born.
Is this an interrogation or therapy?
After learning that he wasn't actually the son of the coolest guy in Chicago, William Leather began drinking and pouting and kicking rocks. Right up until he met Randall Dowling who was all, "We suck and it's the fault of those super human jerks! How dare they not be us!" So he joined Dowling's 20th Century gang of bandits and brigands to steal all the silver mines in all the worlds.
The final two pages return us to the present where William Leather is strapped to a table under a spotlight so much like the moon while Elijah looms over him and tells him his future (because he's the scientist in this situation): William Leather is going to get his eyeballs punched out by a pair of goggles full of needles and then he's going to tell Elijah where Alternate Dimension Reed and Sue are. Elijah admits he was told to think about the big picture and not the little picture where he's a vindictive jerk who murders four assholes for the sheer pleasure of it but he's all, "You shot somebody I loved or something so now listen to your eyeballs pop, you piece of shit."
The Ranking!
Warren Ellis had probably been promising John Cassaday a western story for years and he finally figured out how to do it. Probably when he was playing Assassin's Creed while listening to old radio dramas of The Shadow while The Lone Ranger played on nearby television and a small baggy full of the detritus of the mushrooms he just took sat on the table nearby. I wish he'd promised John Cassaday two western issues because one just isn't enough. Especially when he had to throw in the Chicago gangster stuff. Those could have been pages and pages of wild horses running free with their manes blowing in the wind! Maybe even throw in a panel of a horse just pissing so much piss. Just so much piss!
The final two pages return us to the present where William Leather is strapped to a table under a spotlight so much like the moon while Elijah looms over him and tells him his future (because he's the scientist in this situation): William Leather is going to get his eyeballs punched out by a pair of goggles full of needles and then he's going to tell Elijah where Alternate Dimension Reed and Sue are. Elijah admits he was told to think about the big picture and not the little picture where he's a vindictive jerk who murders four assholes for the sheer pleasure of it but he's all, "You shot somebody I loved or something so now listen to your eyeballs pop, you piece of shit."
The Ranking!
Warren Ellis had probably been promising John Cassaday a western story for years and he finally figured out how to do it. Probably when he was playing Assassin's Creed while listening to old radio dramas of The Shadow while The Lone Ranger played on nearby television and a small baggy full of the detritus of the mushrooms he just took sat on the table nearby. I wish he'd promised John Cassaday two western issues because one just isn't enough. Especially when he had to throw in the Chicago gangster stuff. Those could have been pages and pages of wild horses running free with their manes blowing in the wind! Maybe even throw in a panel of a horse just pissing so much piss. Just so much piss!
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