| SYNOPSIS: In the Brazilian office of Planetary, Jakita and The Drummer confront Elijah Snow. They tell him they know what he's been up to and know what he's planning. "Of course you do," he says, then tells them to follow him down to a sub-basement. On the way he says, yes, he's been torturing William Leather, and he's been to see Melanctha, all part of gathering information -- which he now intends to use. He explains how he's one of the earth's protective systems, built into the fabric of reality. And so, too, are many of the things they've witnessed: The Ghost Cop from issue #3, John Leather from issue #22, and so on. Then he tells Jakita who her father was: Snow's fellow century baby Lord Blackstock. The time for secrets and mystery is past, he says. Snow goes on to explain how they've been leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for The Four, investigating things, writing about them (him, anyway, in his Planetary Guides), and The Four have just been stealing that information from the world. Cheating the human race. So he's decided to change the way they do things, by fighting back. Sending Greene out of the galaxy, torturing Leather for information. And for his next trick, he's going to rescue Ambrose Chase. "I think he's still out there somewhere, frozen." He tells Jakita: he saved her, he saved The Drummer, and he's going to save Ambrose. Unfortunately, that's not going to help the workers in the Planetary office, which at that moment is utterly destroyed by an orbital death ray: Dowling and Suskind. Everything above their sub-basement level is totally gone. Point made, Planetary is unified again. Jakita: "You better have a plan." The Drummer: "I was with you from the start." And so he is.
REVIEW: Call this issue kind of a necessary step to get us to the final confrontations. Snow tells his teammates, and us, what he's been up to. Some of us, of course, had faith -- if you'd been paying attention, not much of what he said came as a surprise.
We just got it laid out in black and white for us. The torture of Leather, the point of the meeting with Melanctha, sending Greene into space, and so on.
If I wanted to carp, it would have to be the whole orbital death ray from the sky thing. I mean, if The Four are really trying to wipe them out at this point in time, it sure is fortunate they happened to be deep down in a sub-basement when it happened. Ten minutes earlier: boom. Another, final warning from The Four? To me that seems more plausible than an attempt to eliminate them only stopped by coincidence. Snow, for that matter, didn't seem overly surprised by the whole thing, which suggests -- what? He knew The Four would know where he was and might do what they did? I hope not, because if so he let all of his people get killed. Tough to work out the intent there.
But aside from that complaint, hey, the issue was typically beautiful and did a fine job of marrying all the elements of the recent issues together. Stuff makes sense: Why Planetary was kept alive by The Four, what Snow has been up to, and of course, the main concept here: Systems that protect the Earth, among which Snow, and a lot of what we've seen throughout the series, are part of. In that sense, the issue is a rousing success.
| |  Random Thoughts:I've spent a bit of time trying to work out what we're supposed to be looking at on page 2, which The Drummer peeks out from behind. Weird people with butterly wings. Science City Zero survivors? Some other reference I've missed?
If I were Jakita, I think I'd have wished Snow had told me who my father was a little bit earlier. I'm not sure that there was any good reason for her not to know before this. I'm not saying that in the Adirondacks he should have said, Hey Jakita, that skeleton over there? Um, I'm not sure how to say this, but.... Although of course, I think he didn't actually remember it then. But he did remember it somewhat sooner than he told her.
Love the image of Ambrose's bloody body on the table in front of Snow. Very cool.
And if you've been enjoying this series at all, you had to love Snow laying it out for them. I saved you. I saved you. And I'm going to save Ambrose. Damn straight.
Rating: 7/10. Like I said, a necessary step, but not the most fun of the issues to this point. |
