| SYNOPSIS: Elijah Snow meets secret agent John Stone (Issue #11) on a park bench in Austin, Texas. Stone gives Snow a scrap of paper showing an orbit of an unknown object between the Earth and the moon. It's an orbit that has lasted some 150 years, of an object launched from Earth. It's about to end, returning to where it started, and The Four, says Stone, will likely be interested.
When the spacecraft -- spherical, iron -- does land, The Four's William Leather is there, as is a Planetary helicopter with a grappling hook. Entering it, Leather finds he has stumbled into a trap, as the copter explodes around him. A second helicopter, with Snow and Jakita Wagner aboard, touches down and Jakita streaks over to put a shaken Leather down for the count. The capsule contains three skeletal, space-suited figures, clearly traveling in orbit for a very long time. From notebooks and pictures found in nearby abandoned structures, Snow determines the craft was launched into space, through a pipe with explosives, in 1851. But with no means of propulsion and no way to get home, it just orbited, until its occupants and those who launched it, "The American Gun Club," gradually died off. "Strange world," murmurs an obviously impressed Snow.
REVIEW: Another new issue and another cool story. And although I noticed the signature "Jules Verne" on the final page as a gun club member, I didn't think to look into it further until another fan emailed me a link (The Gun Club) to the Verne work that inspired the issue. No doubt Verne fans with familiarity beyond merely "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and "Mysterious Island" picked up on the source material.
Of course, bringing fictional creations into Planetary's world is one of the hallmarks of this series. As I write this, I'm starting to think of Issue #9 in a whole new light, since the storyline of that issue is arguably the unstated premise of this entire series. Bringing fictional characters into the real world. Here of course a real person, Jules Verne, is brought into his own fictional world....okay, brain hurts now.
 Back to the issue. As usual, Cassaday's visuals carry the day, as we get skeletal crewmen yawning at us, yellowed photographs of heroic adventurers saying goodbye to their loved ones, and a 150-year-old space capsule and the ruined gun that launched it. At the same time, we get Ellis's story, which speaks to the best of what Planetary has been about since issue one: Heroes. Adventurers. And to quote Doc Brass, glories -- even if The American Gun Club had to wait 150 years before anyone realized it.
| |  Random Thoughts:Maybe it was the scene with the Drummer, maybe it was Jakita and Snow back in the field together, maybe it was the Leather confrontation, or maybe it was the astronaut theme, but this issue reminded me a lot of Issue #6. That's a good thing.
No pigeons were harmed during the making of this comic. Well, maybe a fictional, cartoon one.
Why IS John Stone in Texas?
Clearly there's a strained relationship between Randall Dowling and Leather. (Coincidentally, Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch squabbled in a couple of recent issues of the Fantastic Four ongoing. Lord, what I bring to this site.) "You know what I want," says Leather. What? Tell US!
Seeing Leather get the hell kicked out of him, which we see almost every time he appears, hasn't gotten old yet. Nice nod to the Hark Corporation alliance.
The ending is cool, spooky, inspiring, and dramatic. As in all the best issues of this series.
Rating: 9/10. Good stuff. |
