Planetary (comics)

Planetary is an American comic book series created by writer Warren Ellis and artist John Cassaday, and published by the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics. After an initial preview issue in September 1998, the series ran for 27 issues from April 1999 to October 2009.

Publication history

Planetary was previewed in issue #33 of Gen¹³ and issue #6 of C-23, both dated September 1998. The first issue of the series was cover-dated April 1999. Originally intended to be a 24-issue bi-monthly series, the series was on hold from 2001 to 2003 due to illness of writer Warren Ellis and other commitments by Cassaday. Laura Martin (also credited as Laura DePuy) colored almost every issue of the series. The series recommenced in 2004 and concluded with issue #27 in October 2009.

Ellis intended the focus of the book to be the superhero genre, rather than the superheroes themselves. "I wanted to do something that actually went deeper into the subgenre [sic], exposed its roots and showed its branches" and stated in his proposal for the comic series: "[W]hat if you had a hundred years of superhero history just slowly leaking out into this young and modern superhero world of the Wildstorm Universe? What if you could take everything old and make it new again?"

Planetary

Planetary means relating to a planet or planets. It can also refer to:

Warren Ellis

Warren Girard Ellis (born 16 February 1968) is an English author of comics, novels, and television, who is well known for sociocultural commentary, both through his online presence and through his writing, which covers transhumanist (most notably nanotechnology, cryonics, mind transfer, and human enhancement) and folkloric themes, often in combination with each other. He is a resident of Southend-on-Sea, England.

Early life

Ellis was born in Essex in February 1968. Ellis has stated that the televised broadcast of the moon landing is his earliest coherent memory. He was a student at the South East Essex Sixth Form College, commonly known as SEEVIC. He contributed comic work to the college magazine, Spike, along with Richard Easter, who also later followed a career in writing.

Before starting his career as a writer, he ran a bookstore, ran a pub, worked in bankruptcy, worked in a record shop, lifted compost bags for a living.

Career

Early career

Ellis's writing career started in the British independent magazine Deadline with a six-page short story published in 1990. Other early works include a Judge Dredd short and a Doctor Who one-pager. His first ongoing work, Lazarus Churchyard with D'Israeli, appeared in Blast!, a short-lived British magazine.

John Cassaday

John Cassaday is an American comic book artist and writer, known for his work on Planetary, Astonishing X-Men, Captain America and Star Wars.

Early life

A self-taught illustrator, Cassaday studied filmmaking and directed TV news before leaving Texas to pursue a career in comics. His influences include NC Wyeth, classic pulp magazine-culture iconography, and popular music.

Career

Cassaday's professional career commenced in 1995 with a story in Caliber Comics' Negative Burn. However, he was not really "discovered" until the following year, when he showed his portfolio to Mark Waid at San Diego Comic-Con International; soon after the convention, Cassaday began to receive job offers. In December 1996 he began to provide art for Dark Horse Comics's Ghost. Less than 12 months later, he became the main artist on Desperadoes. He started getting work with DC and Marvel at the end of 1997, on publications such as theTeen Titans and Flash annuals, X-Men/Alpha Flight, and Union Jack.

He is best known for his work on the critically acclaimedPlanetary with writer Warren Ellis, Astonishing X-Men with Joss Whedon and Captain America with John Ney Rieber. The Captain America series was a re-launch under the Marvel Knights banner. Cassaday based the covers on World War II propaganda posters; they were popular with fans and critics alike. He revisited Captain America in 2007, illustrating an issue of Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America, written by Jeph Loeb. He has also created several covers for comic books featuring The Phantom, both for US publisher Moonstone Books and the European Egmont, as well as covers for Joss Whedon's Firefly spinoff comic Serenity: Those Left Behind, and Guy Ritchie's Gamekeeper. Renowned as a perfectionist, Cassaday personally inks his own work manually, it is then often colored by Laura Martin.