| SYNOPSIS: It's 1995, and in a hidden Planetary scientific facility, an elderly professor shows Elijah Snow a stick recovered from a captured ship. But it's more than a stick, as a small amount of kinetic energy results in it being replaced by an ornate and powerful hammer, which the professor describes as a weapon belonging to The Four. The stick has not been transformed but rather transposed with the hammer, which crosses The Bleed between universes while the stick assumes its place in another one. The professor says he can expand the portal to send a team across to where the hammer came from; Snow says no and goes alone. There he discovers an entire world, vast and barren and carpeted with bones, serving as an armory for weapons that stretch as far as the eye can see. "They killed an entire world," mutters Snow. "So that they had somewhere to store their weapons." Back on Earth some time later, an unseen force -- leaving footprints -- breaks into a Planetary bunker in Antarctica. Rows of containment chambers with alien bodies suspended in them line a passageway, into which the unseen intruder warps into visibility: The Four's Kim Suskind. She contacts Randall Dowling to tell of her discovery ("They have our children...I don't know quite how they got this good"), but is interrupted as her goggles are ripped from her neck. Without them, if she turns invisible, she'll be blind. Snow's disembodied voice speaks to her, and her defiant response is met with the arrival of Ambrose Chase, whose reality warping powers cut through her force field and ravage her body. Warning Chase to keep up the pressure, Snow tells The Drummer to watch for William Leather, who arrives almost on cue but is quickly felled by a devastating rain of blows from Jakita Wagner. Before Planetary can secure their captives, though, an immense saucer arrives on the screen and (apparently) uproots both the bunker and the surrounding area. Snow awakens to find himself strapped to a table about to be operated on by Dowling, a scene we've become familiar with. Before the memory blocks are placed in his brain, a bloody and disheveled Snow speaks to his team. "Don't you dare come looking for me. I mean, don't even think about it. But do NOT let these bastards win. These are orders. Goodbye." REVIEW: I spent some time searching for one word to describe this issue, and the one I ultimately came up with was claustrophobic. (I'm still not totally satisfied with the choice, but it will have to do for now.) Because that's sort of the overall tone I get reading it, the palpable tension I felt as a reader. From the ominous, low-lit scene that opens the issue; to Snow in his spacesuit (as one emailer already said to me, very Kubrick 2001) in a vast yet looming expanse of weapons and bones; to the cramped, two-color-splashed corridors where they savagely battle The Four; to the inevitable conclusion that we've known was coming for months now, where a helpless Snow goes under Dowling's knife. Scary and gripping stuff, and like the best of Planetary, nary a wasted panel to be seen. The slow close-up on Snow's face on the final page is brilliant.  In this issue, our grasp of the ongoing struggle to combat The Four enters a new realm. Jakita's words to Leather seem to suggest a history. Snow's warning to Chase about Suskind reveals a history. And the mere fact that Dowling only takes Snow's memory indicates what has long been suspected -- that there's more behind The Four's relationship with Planetary than simple boredom and amusement. It seems possible that these two groups have been clashing for half a century, with this skirmish being the most violent, but hardly the first. One thing Suskind's words make clear: Planetary has gotten an awful lot better at it over the years.
We also get our first glimpse of The Four's schemes and plans beyond simple murder of the Earth's greatest heroes. Alien abductions? "Children"? And a vast armory which, frankly, doesn't seem like anything The Four themselves would utilize -- to name but a few of the developments we see here. And then this dance with Planetary, which judging by the way the tables are turned on Snow is still pretty one-sided. Considering how easy a matter it was for them to put him on the operating table here, one wonders why Snow's defiance in Issue #12 is so immediate and loud. Perhaps he remembers Dowling's smug dismissal of him here -- "We won't meet again." Did I mention I liked this issue? I've written this much without even touching on the action-movie, comic-book staples that bring out the guy (kid?) in me. Chase's rough handling of the richly deserving Suskind (and man, does she look cool). Jakita's thorough smackdown of Leather. Snow's defiance on the operating table. And heck, you know, Thor's hammer! What's not to love? The (more than) two-month wait is frustrating, but issues like this one make it a lot easier to take. | |  Random Thoughts:Suskind mentions that they learned of the Antarctic bunker via a "leak." The theories are going to run wild now, because there are precious few possibilities if she's referring to a person. A member of Planetary? John Stone? And then there's a theory which cropped up on the message boards -- that the "leak" was intentional: a trap. Considering how prepared the Planetary team was for Suskind's arrival, it makes sense. Kim Suskind: She-Devil with a cell phone! I know everyone is going to be talking about the Miracleman homage with the whole weapon transposition thing, which of course is quite similar to how Miracleman and Michael Moran switched bodies in Alan Moore's classic (excuse the redundancy) series. But Moore didn't exactly invent the concept either. Mar-vell and Rick Jones had a similar relationship in Marvel's Captain Marvel series in the '70s, for example. (I don't know about the original Captain Marvel - Shazam - and Billy Batson.) The row upon row of weapons in an otherwise empty world certainly called to mind the armory in The Matrix. And that there hammer is obviously an homage to Green Arrow's bow. (Okay, look, I'm kidding. Thor's hammer, I mentioned it at left. Just testing you.) And while we're talking references, I doubt anyone missed the unsubtle X-Files reference on the issue's first page. Not to mention later -- the reports of abductions, the Antarctic base filled with alien bodies in tubes, and oh yeah, the big-ass saucer. Not to mention the operating table...I almost expected the issue to close with Snow screaming, "Scullyyyyyy!" Just in case I haven't posed enough questions yet...when are we gonna see Jacob Greene, who presumably will bear a striking resemblance to a rock-covered, Aunt Petunia-loving Yancy Streeter? Um, have I mentioned yet how much I liked Kim Suskind? Okay, so, she's a Nazi. To quote Osgood Fielding III in Some Like It Hot, "Well, nobody's perfect." Rating: 10/10. A great issue. More of the stuff that reminds me why I created this site in the first place.
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