Planetary Loves The Authority: Ruling the World #1 (August 2000)

Why is the only thing I can remember about Swift is that she spent twenty grand on a boob job?

Planetary/The Authority: Ruling the World #1 (August 2000)
By Warren Ellis, Phil Jimenez, Andy Lanning, Laura Depuy Martin, and Ryan Cline
Cover by Phil Jimenez and David Baron
Edited by John Layman

I forgot I had this book while I was reading through The Authority. It was released between Planetary #10 and Planetary #11 (or close enough, anyway). It came out after Warren Ellis had ended his run on The Authority and Mark Millar (or whoever!) took over. Hopefully I'll be able to ferret out the reason Ellis wanted to dip back into The Authority enough to bring them to the page one more time. It's definitely a crossover that I think everybody wanted (if not expected) at the time. I actually can't remember anything about it and have no idea where it might lead. So that's the preamble. I know usually my preamble is all, "I wrote a song about a raccoon and possum having a Romeo and Juliet-esque romance but it didn't end in their suicide; it ended in all the cats in the neighborhood pregnant." My brain decided to be more aware of my tone this time and thought, "Let's class this shit up, motherfucker! Reviews are usually boring! Go for boring, butthead!" And then I was all, "But what about my epic nocturnal vermin love song?!" Then I felt a sharp pain in my right temple and decided maybe my brain wasn't fucking around. So boring it is!

This issue begins like Watchmen ended (or, at least, thirty-five minutes before the part I'm thinking about?) with a massive octopus creating havoc in an urban center. Although this octopus has attacked Rhode Island and I'm not sure how many urban centers exist in Rhode Island so maybe it's attacking a seaside town. Also, it probably didn't teleport in out of nowhere. I bet it was summoned up from the depths by the oddly fishy residents of the town. It doesn't have long to live because Jenny Sparks and The Authority have already arrived to turn it into deep fried calamari.

The attack takes place in Judgement, Rhode Island, even though it's an American town so you'd expect it to be Judgment, Rhode Island. Stupid Warren Ellis! What a stupid! Maybe I should blame editor John Layman for not catching this. Or, being that Rhode Island is part of New England, it's just one of those olde time leftovers from when they were a colony. Maybe I shouldn't have even noticed it? Especially when Angie's tits are right there for me to notice. What happened, testosterone? Why did you abandon me in my old age?! Is this why old men become so overly concerned with kids walking on their grass? Because they've stopped enjoying tits?!

Sorry, my gay friends, I don't mean to erase your experiences! I'm just speaking from the perspective of a long time tit lover. Although, really, butts are much better. I should have just stuck with butts so we could all be nodding along while also shaking our fists at those damn kids.

Planetary is also here "helping" out.

Halfway through the battle with the massive octopus and its flying piranha army, the narrative takes a quick trip back to Judgement, Rhode Island, in 1931 when Elijah Snow met with H.P. Lovecraft about a strange vision H. (can I call him H?) had while writing. A snowflake-shaped portal opened before him and he saw the terrible rectum of the universe. When it finally disappeared, he was left with a present from the abyss.

Um. Wut?¹

These eggs were why Elijah Snow was kicking the shit out of The Drummer seventy years later. He warned The Drummer not to touch them and The Drummer went ahead and touched them. That probably means they were full of flying piranha and not, um, you know. That other thing.

Planetary seems like maybe they're keeping a low profile. Or maybe they're just trying to avoid getting decapitated by The Authority's use of extreme violence. Either way, I suddenly can't remember what was annoying me.

And everything's suddenly right with the world.

I think it's okay for artists to portray Angie's nipples because they're actually mini gun barrels and it would be un-American to censor guns. I would love to say it's un-American to censor titties but our leaders have all the ethics and morality of a Reverend Dimmesdale: nipples for me but not for thee. That was his philosophy, right? It's been over thirty years since I saw the movie. I mean read the book. I mean saw the movie with my lesbian college professor while we were reading the book. I'm pretty sure she only wanted to see it for Demi's tits².

Angie breaks through Cthulhu's reinforced brain case with her tit bazookas so that Apollo can slam into the Elder God's brain with his entire body. The Authority loves to kill things in exactly two ways: decapitation and blasting themselves through their enemies. Even Swift does it! I think maybe that's all Swift can actually do though.

Planetary watches the battle from a basement stairwell because they're a secret organization, remember?

Seventy years ago? That's when H. to the P. found his alien space eggs!

Planetary decides they want to infiltrate The Carrier because it's sure to have loads of lovely information for them to steal. The Authority picked up on signals at the fight similar to those they found in the Adirondack Mountains a few years ago. So both teams are beginning to focus on the other team although The Authority don't quite know what they're investigating. They've witnessed unmarked helicopters all over the world in places nobody should be and they have some pictures of people Angie took when the Adirondacks first became a focal point for those unmarked helicopters. Those people are Elijah Snow and Jakita Wagner. Jenny Storm recognizes Elijah from somewhere but she can't quite place him.

Fucking another Century Baby must be like fucking a sibling. It's hot right up until the moment you come.

Meanwhile some serial killer has infiltrated Planetary working on as one of their information analysts while waiting for an opportunity to open a portal like the one that opened on H.P. Lovecraft's basement. He finally found one in Doc Brass's team's secret base in the Adirondacks where the multiversal computer is housed. He plans on destroying the world with it because world-ending threats are the only things The Authority bother with. If this guy were going to just kill a few more scientists (which he just did and The Authority didn't notice at all), The Authority wouldn't notice at all. But killing the entire world?! That's what they do! I mean, that's the kind of thing the thing they do is meant to stop other people from doing. And when the serial killer initiates the multiversal computer so he can kill the world, they notice immediately! As does Planetary.

All that is to say that "the most powerful heroes" and "the world's smartest"³ are about to have one of those good guy misunderstandings that lead to them punching each other in the baggage. Plus a serial killer will wind up without his head. Although Mark Millar isn't writing The Authority here so maybe they'll think of a different way to end the maniac's existence. Something way more creative. And sexual.

Both teams use The Carrier's junction room teleporter to arrive at the site but because Planetary knows exactly where the multiversal computer is, they wind up inside the mountain while The Authority wind up outside. The Authority is greeted with scads and scads of maxi-nano-machines⁴ while Planetary find . . . um, I'm not sure what Planetary finds.

A dead serial killer and, I think, the womb that gave birth to the maxi-nano-machines?

Angie calls the maxi-nano-machines "self-replicating war robots" so disregard the footnote where I said, "Fuck you!", to any readers who thought "maxi-nano-machines" might have been a stupid term. I want to to change it to "super fuck you" because I was proven correct. The original "fuck you" was just me being defensive because I figured I was being ignorant and dumb. But now I'm confident and smart because the comic book agreed with me!

While The Authority tries to decapitate the extradimensional invasion's ass, Planetary tries to cut the invasion off from its head. They figure the war machines are still connected to from wherever they came from via the multiversal computer's snowflake portal and The Bleed. But before Drummer can cut the connection, the womb decides it wasn't done being pregnant.

If this is a literal depiction of a baby being born, birthing babies should be outlawed.

I know that's not a literal depiction of a baby being born because one of my ex-girlfriends when I was about 21 showed me her mother's birth video of her youngest sister. Or at least tried to show me. Maybe halfway showed me? It's not a memory the brain is conditioned to retain. The depiction of birth in that panel is more like if your nose had diarrhea.

Angie connects to one of the maxi-nano-machines and realizes it's called a Worldruler. It was designed to simply destroy every world in every parallel dimension it could find. And it was created by her. Or a version of her, I mean.

This Authority comes from a parallel dimension where the only difference is that everybody's nipples are inverted.

Jakita Wagner dropkicks the womb back into the snowflake where it takes off inverted-nipple Jenny Spark's head. I should probably add that to The Authority Decapitation Counter, right?! It basically counts even though it was Jenny who lost her head and Jakita who did the losing.

Outside the mountain, The Authority finish off the maxi-nano-machines. They then rush in to destroy the Worldruler to find it already gone. As is Planetary. The world is safe again. At least until the next womb slips into their reality and begins laying fish eggs or self-replicating war robots or, I don't know, sentient penis whips covered in barbs?

The Ranking!
At the end of this issue, Elijah Snow recalls when Alex Brass told him that "if you save the world, it will repay you every second of every day." We see the seed planted by Brass begin to grow as Elijah Snow get his first taste of being an active participant in moving the Earth toward a better future. Planetary will not long remain in the shadows doing nothing but collecting knowledge and dust. I mean, sure, they'll continue to remain in the shadows! But now they'll be fucking useful for once.


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¹ Like, um, seriously. Wut?!
² See? It all comes back to tits! And negro eggs!
³ I put these descriptions of the two teams in quotes because that's how the back cover refers to them.
⁴ Fuck you. It's my blog and I'll use language however the fuck I want!

Planetary #10 (June 2000)

This issue looks like a fun time.

Planetary #10 (June 2000)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura Depuy Martin, David Baron, and Ryan Cline
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by John Layman

This issue is called "Magic & Loss". Isn't that the name of the four panel comic with the guy rushing into the hospital to see his girlfriend who just lost her pregnancy? Or is that just called "Loss" and everybody thinks it's "Magic"? Or the opposite of magic? Science?

Maybe I should begin again but more confidently. This issue is called "Magic & Loss" which reminds me of that heartbreaking comic strip that everybody applauded as one of the most sensitive portrayals of a miscarriage in comedy web cartoon strips. Nobody ever made fun of it and it never became an attempt to embarrass the artist or his work. Giants in the field like that bald human-sized thumb and his scrawny hunchbacked friend didn't shit all over it in an attempt to distract from their dick wolf comic that they'd publish two years later. Nobody attacked Tim Buckley and his superb artistic expression at every opportunity and nobody's feelings were ever hurt and everybody on the Internet held hands with everybody else forever after. And everybody was happy except the two people on either side of Jerry Holkins. Because I imagine his hands are both sweaty and sticky.

Whew. That was much better. I saved it! I'm the hero!

This first page is just as depressing as the cover, isn't it?

Seems to me if you put "Loss" in the title of your comic book and/or strip, you drastically change the tone of the thing. We're we having alternate history fun in this comic book just a few issues ago? Giant monsters, giant ants, radioactive ghost women, guys named Leather, God's Hong Kong Cum Sock, First, Second, Third, and Fourth Men, and all the cool science fiction stuff that I've already forgotten? Why's everybody suddenly got to start dying? I bet I should blame it all on Ambrose Chase's reality distortion field. He activated it at the end of 1997 and everything just went off the rails after that. Now I have to witness Alternate Dimension Superman, Alternate Dimension Green Lantern, and Alternate Dimension Wonder Woman die?!

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. They could just be tossing all of their shit on the floor because they're about to fuck each other.

Or the reality: the items in the previous panel were all part of Alternate Dimension Fantastic Four's collection. The Planetary Clean-up Crew are taking apart Dowling's lab which the Field Team secured a few issues ago when Jakita was thrown out of the window and Elijah kicked Leather in the balls.

Sidebar: I have a theory that one of the reasons Gen-X have become the worst voting demographic is that, aside from so many of them already being the bad dudes in the John Hughes' movies, is that when Covid and the vaccine came about, they were just getting to the age where cancer risk increased. So they began seeing friends and family being diagnosed with cancer simply because they were aging into that risk group. But what they saw was a bunch of people getting the Covid vaccine and then being diagnosed with cancer and they were all, "A-ha! I am the great British Detective John Holmes! I know exactly what caused this cancer!" Another part of my theory is that a lot of people are just stupid morons. And, funny enough, all of the dumbest guys I was friends with when I was younger were all the ones to fall for Fox News propaganda. Who would have thought?! End Sidebar.

Was that a sidebar? I wished I'd watched more lawyer television shows so I'd know. The only one I ever watched regularly was L.A. Law and that was because I loved Larry Drake's character. He was always bringing them doughnuts!

After some techs look at the pile of super hero accessories and before they piss on it (or whatever lowly blue collar workers do to things on the job¹), Warren Ellis turns this issue into the origin stories he would have written for Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman.

This is gay sex so powerful that the orgasm destroys Krypton.

Warren Ellis's take on Kryptonians is that they're so arrogant and proud that they destroy their planet by sending their art, poetry, and history into space to be enjoyed by all the other civilizations. Krypton explodes because every launch uses a gravitational system that destabilizes a black hole at the center of the planet. The launch by these two Kryptonians — the ship carrying Superfoetus — is the last straw on the Nightwing's back. The planet implodes. Seems like Alternate Dimension Superman, being responsible for the death of Krypton, is going to need more therapy than Alternate Dimension Batman (whose origin we're not going to get. At least not here).

Alternate Dimension Green Lantern is actually a Blue Lantern and actually uses a lantern instead of a ring. I guess they haven't gotten to the point in their organization's existence where somebody said, "Why are we carrying these stupid lanterns around? Can't we refine this shit down to something smaller? Like a brooch or a pocket watch?"

I think one of these Blue Lanterns is Arseface!

Judging by the group shot, it seems each individual member is allowed to modify the lantern for their own ease of use. But it's still essentially a "lantern". Even when it's on a guy's finger!

Alternate Dimension Wonder Woman decides to visit mankind's world from her secret island because she got tired of watching them fuck space with their rocket dicks.

Alternate Dimension Wonder Woman's Mother doesn't know about Artemis.²

Man. That one image of Wonder Woman looking back over her shoulder makes me wish John Cassaday had done a Wonder Woman run.³

Timeout: I just realized I should be selling my comic runs as I read them so I can afford to buy more old comic runs to read! I should create a WhatNot account?! Time in!

After the origins, we learn how the Alternate Dimension Fantastic Four dealt with these powerful beings. Leather incinerated Alternate Dimension Baby Superman and stole his cape. Dowling captured and dissected Alternate Dimension Green Lantern who, interestingly enough, has an, um, uh, well, err . . . you know.

I'm blushing so deeply right now!

Dowling mentions selling the Blue Lantern's lantern to Henry Bendix so that establishes that that jerk knows about Artemis. Or at the very least, the Alternate Dimension Fantastic Four.

Kim, the Nazi daughter of the Nazi, kills Alternate Dimension Wonder Woman as soon as she steps out from the shield keeping Alternate Dimension Paradise Island safe. So what we've learned is that the Earth where Planetary resides never had a chance to learn about hope and inspiration through super heroes. It's timeline was kept firmly pointed at shadowy bullshit, dark futures, and shepherding the masses into the slaughterhouse by the Artemis Project and its four mad keepers.

The Ranking!
There was one page left which I hadn't read when I got ready to write this ranking bit that doesn't have any real identity as a separate section of the review. I know it says The Ranking! right there as a demarcation to show that we've gotten to the point where I assess what I've just written but do I ever really do that? Fuck no. That's, like, bullshit review work where you suddenly have to repeat yourself over and over again using review terms and standard review tropes that everybody understands. I just want to point out that my assessment of this story was how this "timeline was kept firmly pointed at shadowy bullshit, dark futures, and shepherding the masses into the slaughterhouse" was done before I read Elijah Snow's final word on his realization that Alternate Dimension Fantastic Four has been actively keeping his world from hope, joy, and enlightenment.

See? Sometimes I comprehend the things I read!

I forget who John Stone is but we'll find out next issue, I guess. From the cover of Issue #11, it looks like John Stone is some kind of James Bond or Human Target figure. Maybe it's Martian Manhunter, eh?!


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¹ I'm pretending I don't know even though I've never worked a non-blue collar job in my entire life. It's just that if I talked about jerking off on the items during some boring downtime, people might begin to look at warehouse workers and burger flippers differently. Even if they shouldn't.
² I'm talking about the evil Alternate Dimension Fantastic Four's Artemis which has basically established a base on the moon as well as Mars but if you want to think I'm talking about our 2026 Artemis, that works as well.
³ Do I need to search out The Wonder Woman 100 Project just for Cassaday's Wonder Woman cover art?!

Planetary #8 (February 2000)

Time to learn that sci-fi B movies are real!

Planetary #8 (February 2000)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura Depuy Martin, and Ryan Cline
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by John Layman

In Issue #1, we learned that secret organizations that control the world are real. In Issue #2, we learned Kaiju are real. In Issue #3, we learned Hong Kong action films are real. In Issue #4, we learned Alternate Dimensions are real. In Issue #5, we learned Doc Savage is real. Okay, maybe we learned he was real even earlier than that and actually learned that Ming the Merciless's daughter's corporation is just another secret organization and that we'll be learning about a lot of them before this is all over. Also did we learn about Daemonites? It seems like we should have learned about them by now. Maybe they don't matter as much as all the other Wildstorm books want you to think they do. Small potatoes, those Daemonites. In Issue #6, we learned that the Fantastic Four are real. And sexy. In Issue #7, we learned that John Constantine, magic, and British authors are real. And now it's time to learn that sci-fi B movies actually happened! Every last one of them, even Little Shop of Horrors, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and Night of the Lepus. Possibly even Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

This is Allison. She's been in hiding since 1960. Her boobs are lopsided.

Allison glows blue. Is she a ghost? She's certainly too young looking to have been in hiding for 40 years unless babies often go into hiding. Maybe she's irradiated because she's hanging out in one of America's secret Science Cities¹ where they do secret radioactive experiments which make ants and bunnies and right boobs grow to tremendous size. She spoke with Jakita on the phone about something. As the reader of the comic book, I have not been let in on that conversation yet. It seems she wants to blow a whistle.

Giant ants attack while they're trading introductions with Allison because Warren Ellis wanted to skip writing a few pages and instead scribbled in the script to John Cassaday: "Jakita battles Giant Ants for four pages. She should look like Jakita and not me. Don't make her look like me, you asshat. You piece of shit. Draw what I tell you to! Don't put in some kind of visual hint that I'm a perv who only mentors young female writers who don't flinch when they walk into my office and find me upside down and naked in my Orgone Swing. You prick. You treacherous swine. I have a prescription for that swing!"

Allison is a ghost. She still might also be radioactive.

This issue came out in the year 2000 so when Allison tells Elijah, "You know what it was like, living in a country driven mad with fear of nothing?", he can say, "Yes, I was there," instead of a post-9/11 person saying, "Fucking do I?! I'm alive, right? I have ears. I have eyes. I have a penis turtled from fright of a terrorist attack thanks to the 24 hour news cycle scaremongering the shit out of my sex drive!" If you want to be really cynical, even in the year 2000, somebody could have replied, "Yeah, I know all about the fear of nothing. We just barely survived Y2K², right?!" Obviously our country is back to way too many people living with the fear of nothing. That doesn't mean they don't fear anything! It means the overwhelming fear they're full of is caused by nothing actually dangerous or scary. They're tilting at windmills. Is that why Trump hates windmills?

Science City Zero was a place the American government took dissidents³ and disappeared them. Then they experimented on them and turned them into monsters and giant ants and irradiated ghosts and werewolves and teenage Frankensteins and blobs. All those monsters in all those '50s B monster movies? Actually women who knew how to (and often did) bring themselves to orgasm.

Allison describes how she was killed by a firing squad and then brought back to life by a Doctor Randall Dowling otherwise known, in other universes, as Reed Richards. They ask if Science City Zero was part of the Artemis Project⁴ but Allison says it was actually a Hark Corporation thing (working with the government). So if Planetary didn't already realize the horror of Science City Zero and the atrocities committed there, they now know definitively that it was run by monsters. Or, to be fair to Jonathan Hark's daughter, Randall Dowling, and Randall's three compatriots, run by Planetary's rivals. I probably shouldn't assume that Planetary are the good guys, right?

Allison is radioactive. She still might also be a ghost.

Allison explains that Science City Zero was simply a place to experiment on humans and see the limits of science and the human body. She came to them now because her half-life is almost up and nobody can retaliate for having exposed their secrets. She disappears in a flash of ozone and Planetary have a massive base for the Drummer to pull all the information from.

The Ranking!
There wasn't a lot of meat on this bone. B Movies mixed with Nazi experiments on humans and the revelation that the Hark Corporation was already working in the '50s side-by-side with the Other Dimensional Fantastic Four. I guess the issue also helps solidify that Planetary are the good guys in that at least in their apathy they're not experimenting on humans and making the world a worse place. They're just not actively making it better with the information they dig up. At least that's how it's been! But now that the Fourth Man is back on the team, um, I mean, now that Elijah Snow is on the team, things are going to change, baby! Time to get proactive instead of inactive!


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¹ Science City Zero, to be precise. The ur-science city, I guess.
² Some people might not think anybody really lived in fear of Y2K. But then those people didn't have to help their father bury an oil drum full of guns and ammunition in his backyard because they wouldn't fit in the garage full of bags of rice, cans of bean, and tons of water. "The first thing to fall apart will be the supply trains, son! And once people can't buy food, the rioting and looting will begin! Also, have you read this truly informative book, The Mark of the Beast? Explains everything!" Living in fear of nothing. What an appropriate statement for the way so many Conservatives live their lives today. I wish they'd all find a hobby that wasn't attacking our fellow trans citizens, immigrants, and Satan's dick suckers. I mean liberals.
³ You know what that means: anybody they didn't like. Anybody who disagreed with whatever traitorous bullshit the government was up to. Anybody with even the slightest amount of compassion for their neighbors. Also women who enjoyed sex. The worst thing of all to powerful men who never learned how to eat pussy.
⁴ Don't worry! The current actual Artemis Project probably has nothing in common with Planetary's secret government Black Ops project which paralleled the Apollo missions. It's just the whole unimaginative naming of programs after Ancient Greece and Roman myths! Obviously Artemis would both be the opposite of Apollo but also, in our reality, the more appropriate name for a moon mission. Who came up with Apollo?! Fucking dorks.

Planetary #7 (January 2000)

In the world of Planetary, Vertigo stories take place side by side with kiddie hero crap.

Planetary #7 (January 2000)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, David Baron, and Ryan Cline
Cover by Dave McKean . . . I mean John Cassaday!
Edited by John Layman

The copy on the cover comes from Recollections of A. N. Welby Pugin and his Father, Augustus Pugin. The full quote follows:

An unwavering faith, a most singular piety towards bygone ages, a veneration the most profound for all that appertained to the beauty of the courts of the Lord, an imagination glowing with the glories of the past, all combined in impelling the subject of this memoir to surrender his heart and soul to the desire for the restoration of the forgotten faith and for the revival in the land of its ancient magnificence in art and architecture.

Augustus Pugin was the father of the father of London's Gothic Revival Architecture scene¹. Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was the son who co-designed the Houses of Parliament after they burned down on November 5th, 1834. No, wait, sorry: it was on October 16th of that year. Surely it was November 5th, no? If not, why am I remembering, remembering that date?! Also he gave over his designs for Big Ben to Barry, co-designer of the Houses of Parliament, just before he went completely mad. I suppose the quote was used here because of its content which sounds like maybe somebody into the occult but also because the guy it was quoting went insane. So maybe we're supposed to view this version of John Constantine as more on the mad side than the clever side?

It's also possible that John Cassaday just grabbed up the first bit of olde timey font he could find to shove on the cover and he didn't really care what it meant in context of the story, as long as the words that could be read sounded vaguely of the occult.²

Jack Carter = John Constantine. With maybe a bit of a play on John Carter of Mars?

Hell of a way to begin a John Constantine story although I've got to assume that multiple Constantine stories have begun with the assumption that he's dead. It's probably a bit of a trope with that arsehole³. Anyway, they'll be going to his funeral and reminiscing about him and eventually finding out he's still alive, probably.

This issue is called "To Be In England, In The Summterime" which is a lyric from The Art of Noise's 1984 song, "Close (To the Edit)". That's the one where the video has a mini-punk/new age kid sentencing various musical instruments to death on some railroad tracks after which three grown men curb stomp a violin, grind up a saxophone, and dissect a standing bass. The title might also be from a poem by some old shite British loser like Robert Browning as well but I stopped my research at the discovery of the lyric. You'd think I would have remembered that line being in that song since all of the other lines are "dum dum dum dum" and "HEY!" and also I remembered the video vividly after watching it on YouTube but hadn't thought of it for probably 40 years. That's a shame. One of my regrets when I die will be not having watched this video regularly throughout my life.

Man. Those were the days! When men wore make-up and music videos were fucking cooler than shit.

The title could also be a reference to Van Morrison's "Summertime in England" since that mentions poets doing drugs and writing stream of consciousness shit. That's fitting but the title of this comic isn't "Summertime in England" so I'm skeptical.

All I'm hearing is "Jack Carter knew how to lay down some dick."

While they're reminiscing about Jack and London in the '80s, The Drummer mentions that Jenny Sparks ran a team of heroes there in the '60s and '80s. I was going to write, "Wouldn't that be a cool team-up? Planetary and The Authority?" when I remembered I own that team-up. So we'll get to it later!

While they're walking through the graveyard, it being a metaphor for nostalgia, remembrance, and the past, they see Miracleman⁴ fly past the moon while Dream and Death sit on a bench feeding pigeons. And then they come upon this group of disturbing and familiar mourners.

Let's see . . . represented here we've got Alan Moore, Peter Milligan, Grant Morrison, and Neil Gaiman. Probably others. Oh! Jamie Delano! Duh!

That was almost embarrassing! The entire thing is about the guy whose comic Delano wrote for like four years and my brain farted out his name as a mere afterthought! If I had one wish, I'd wish that my brain could take the form of a person for ten minutes so I could kick its fucking ass. I hate it so much. Although if I use my brain and think about it for like one second, I guess I hate my body more. Stupid monkey paw's wish! I'm realizing that, in the end, I'd let my brain kick my body's ass. At least my penis would enjoy either outcome.

Jakita explains how Jack Carter schooled them on why British thought in the '80s was so far outside the realm of American identity. We were watching Benson while they were watching Spitting Image. Americans were all, "Ho ho! People in government are doddering idiots but it's okay because the lower classes are much smarter and in control!" But the British were all, "Holy shit we're being governed by an insane woman and nothing we do matters! Somebody needs to fucking bomb the shit out of that hag while she's in the bath!" The British Invasion came over with ideas that seemed like far-fetched science fiction but they were really warnings about how countries can also get dementia as they get older and people need to stand guard against it. But Americans were just, "What?! Swamp Thing is a plant that thinks it's a man! That's nucking futs!"⁶

Jakite tells Snow a Jack Carter story which Warren Ellis probably pitched for Hellblazer but got rejected because it's about a ghost looking to abort the second coming of Jesus. Britains, being more cynical in general, don't mind a good crack about aborting Jesus but the only thing American masses would hate more is a story about the president taking everybody's guns away. I always thought that the hypothetical question that people love to ask, "Would you go back in time and kill Baby Hitler?", should always be followed up by a second question if the person answers, "Yes!", and that would be, "But would you go back in time and abort Baby Hitler?" Doesn't seem like a big change to me but I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans would be all, "Fuck yeah I'd kill a baby but I wouldn't want to sin by being responsible for an abortion!" Most Americans are really bad at theology, morals, philosophy, and ethics.

Pretty sure I know what Warren Ellis's script had in place of "toerag" before John Layman was all, "Dude. I get he's British. But maybe lay off the 'cunts' for our American comic book?"

Jakita wants to see where Jack died, presumably beaten to death by some nobody⁷ who thought he was an arsehole⁸. Once at the site, Drummer notices that a bunch of magic was done here and begins investigating with his "talking to technology" powers. Magic is partly technology but it's the part where you cheat at reality and damn all of your friends to Hell.

Planetary discover that Jack Carter faked his own death. As they discover this, the guy who supposedly killed him returns to rant and rave and monologue why he did it.

Nobody asked to see the British Invasion from the hero's point of view, dude!

Fucking great moment, really. Shade the Changing Man. Animal Man. Swamp Thing. Some various characters like Doctor Destiny and the Silver Scarab in The Sandman. Even more I can't remember, in loads of mini and maxi series like Kid Eternity and such. Anyway, after this revelation of internalized rage, this guy gets his guts blown out from behind by Jack Carter and a shotgun. Jack Carter's head is shaved now, probably needed for the fake death ritual and certainly needed for his coming transformation from past legend to future icon.

So should I think of this as canon when I re-read Transmetropolitan? That it's a sequel to Hellblazer?!

I guess on a less literal level, Spider Jerusalem is just an examination of the end of the 20th Century slash beginnings of the 21st Century in the same way that John Constantine was commentary on the degradations and oppressive government of the British '80s. Although this story takes place in the year 2000 so what did Jack Carter do? Time travel spell?!

The Ranking!
Fucking chuffed, I am! I think. Am I using that correctly? Probably not. The only thing I know about British culture is that "Raspberry" is Cockney rhyming slang for "fart" because of "raspberry tart." No wait! I also know that "Berk" is Cockney rhyming slang for cunt because of "Berkeley Hunt"! Also I just realized today that the current season of Have I Got News For You? is already halfway through and my YouTube algorithm wasn't fucking telling me about it even though I follow at least two Brits who constantly upload it! Now I have to watch Ian and Paul and their guests discuss news that's three to four weeks old already! ARGH! I hate my life! Nobody has it worse than I do!


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¹ Was that a scene? Was it a revival? Not only do I not know how to write, I also do not know how to research. Do research? Read histories? Historiocize?
² It's also possible (quite probable, really) that Warren Ellis was reading Recollections of A. N. Welby Pugin and his Father, Augustus Pugin at the time because Ellis reads loads of boring things and marked this passage as interesting and faxed it to Cassaday to use in his riff on a Dave McKean cover.
³ Affectionately!
⁴ An assumption on my part as the caped person is mostly in silhouette but I think it's a good call given the theme⁵ of the issue.
⁵ What is that theme? The British Invasion of the mid to late '80s and, I guess with Jack Carter's death, it's dwindling in importance?
⁶ It was the '80s! Saying things like "Nucking futs!" was the height of hilarity, right after you've finished reading your 101 Uses for a Dead Cat book and then told a few dead baby and AIDS jokes!
⁷ Which is how all the greats guarded by their massive reputations usually go: Wild Bill Hickock, Omar, um, others, presumably.
⁸ Not affectionately!