[Comics] Planetary/JLA: Terra Occulta

When DC first started releasing books under the Elseworlds banner, it was a pretty interesting concept for sure. While rival titles like Marvel's What If...? explored what might happened if one or two things changed during key events, Elseworlds were complete reimaginations of many of their most beloved characters in strange and interesting ways. It certainly helped enrich the notion of a dynamically thriving multiverse, as has been a common theme across DC stories especially in cases when the fans embraced a particular Elseworlds universe more than others.

So what happens when you merge the Elseworlds concept with a comic book line like Planetary, which already deals with a Multiverse and many alternate realities? Well, you certainly get a pretty interesting tale and one that makes you wonder if it's something that might eventually get included in some potential Planetary story in the sky or just another Elseworlds book that will remain independent of the rest of the DC universe.

Planetary/JLA: Terra Occulta is essentially an Elseworlds title that pits an alternative JLA versus an alternative Planetary. Where normally such crossover titles involve the two groups working together to defeat a larger foe, this time around things were reimagined such that the Planetary members were essentially the bad guys while the JLA were trying to find a way to defeat them.

In this world, Planetary pretty much behave in a manner similar to how The Four do back in the primary Wildstorm universe. Of course this time their global archeology missions have affected the likes of the JLA leading to things like the theft of Superman's original spacecraft, the capture and dissection of what could have been Martian Manhunter and the destruction of Themyscira using a space laser cannon of sorts to name a few. Thus we get the rather human-looking Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman meeting in secret in order to find a way to take out Planetary.

I didn't quite realize how much of an alternate reality this story was set in and initially assumed that maybe the JLA just didn't fully understand Planetary and its mission and thus were incorrectly seeing them as bad guys. Of course this wasn't the case as the comic went along and more and more I realized that this wasn't quite the same Planetary that I had been following in other titles. So that's definitely something you'll need to accept as you jump into this book.

Plus you also have to remember that the JLA won't be the usual powerhouses in flashy costumes. Given the interference and manipulations of Planetary during their formative years or during those key moments when they're supposed to discover their powers, they're now pretty much superheroes in hiding and in dire need of finding a way to deal with a group as elusive and powerful as Planetary without tipping them off somehow. This does present an interesting dynamic to things but it takes a bit of a while to really get there.

Overall, the story was just okay and a tad confusing at points. Then again, this is both an Elseworlds book and a Planetary book, so confusion is par for the course. It's not a rock'em, sock'em kind of action title but then what Planetary book is such, right?

Planetary/JLA: Terra Occulta gets 3.5 dead alien Lanterns out of 5.

[Comics] Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth

I've been pretty keen on (or outright obsessed with) the concept of alternate realities or parallel universes or multiverses ever since I was young. The mere thought of such a thing - that there could be other worlds than this one, but not in a geographic sense but in a temporal or dimensional sense just seemed utterly fascinating to me. It's certainly colored my own fiction writing along with influencing my taste in books, TV shows and other geeky stuff. It's a thing I guess.

Comic books have always dabbled in the realms of science fiction since they make for good story material. Throw in some superheroes along with a comical villain and you get your issue's story done for the month all thanks to some fantastical idea about time travel, secret serums or alternate realities. It's just how it works in the comic book world.

Planetary never felt like a stereotypical superhero-type comic book. In fact, issue after issue the trio dabbled a lot more in the realms of science fiction (and at times fantasy) and behaved more like Agents Mulder and Scully from the X-Files or something. I guess it's why my partner learned to like the series so much and why he knew it was something that I'd be able to get into.

Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth is one of those one-shot crossover comics that a lot of us geeks have learned to fear and love given them mixed quality of such titles. However this time around the pairing turned out to be pretty interesting given Planetary isn't your typical group to encounter in any situation.

In this title, the Planetary crew find themselves on the trail of John Black, whom they believe might have inherited abilities from his father given he had been part of Science City Zero. Of course they were right and the young black happens to have the ability to somehow warp or distort reality such that he can open dimensional gateways or transport people across dimensions. He's not in full control of his abilities and thus the stress of being chased by the trio is enough to set off his powers.

Image via Wikipedia

Thus he sends Planetary into alternate versions of Gotham City where they encounter the city's most famous mythical protector - the Batman. However given the erratic nature of Black's powers, they end up meeting many different versions of Batman covering the different eras of the long-running comic book character and his various incarnations, speech patterns, mannerisms and the like. Its both humorous and interesting at the same time and certainly makes for a fun title.

Planetary is not necessarily everyone's cup of tea - they're not necessarily a very action-packed book like most comics unless Jakita Wagner is allowed to let loose on the bad guys. And that will never be the point of the group - they're supposedly the archeologists trying to unearth the world's secret history and that's a job description that doesn't necessarily entail wide scale violence.

Thus that's how the book shines - as a rather cerebral interest piece that manages to show the many different versions of Batman in the form of different aspects of the same character but in different universes. It's simple by the standards of the science fiction story world at large, but it does make for a much meatier comic book and one that ups the bar for intelligence and thought. This is one of the reasons I eventually read the entire run of the series out of sheer curiosity.

Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth gets 4.5 versions of Batman out of a possible 5.

[Comics] The Authority Vol. 4 - Transfer of Power

The end of a story arc is one thing; the end of the run of a particular writer is another The abrupt departure of an artist can be madness.

The end of the first volume of The Authority had all these problems and more. Sadly, things just didn't seem to be going in the right direction for the comic given all these complications. Ultimately this became a story that could have been resolved in a few issues but instead lasted for 8 issues over the course of nearly two years. Seriously.

That's a lousy way to go for such a great comic, but what can you do, eh?

The Authority: Transfer of Power collects the last 8 issues of the first volume of the comic book series, namely issues 22-29. Given how proactive the Authority has become in interfering in what would typically known as internal matters for various countries, they've certainly started to make enemies amongst the governments of the world. They continue to operate as an independent group with no direct authority of their own to report to. Naturally this has made people nervous.

Cover of Transfer of Power (Authority)

Thus the G7, which you should know to be the most economically powerful nations of the world, hired or created this creature known only as Seth, who is essentially a stereotypical red neck given super powers on a very significant scale. He manages to single-handedly defeat all members of the Authority in order to allow their replacements to come in - a hand-picked group of 7 super humans representing each of the G7 nations.

Originally, Transfer of Power was meant to be a 4-issue story arc. However when Frank Quitely left the team to work with Marvel for New X-Men, this left Wildstorm with a story that still needed to be drawn. So what happened instead was that a 4-issue filler was created to fill in the gap while other artists took over Quitely's work in order to try and finish the original story. The 4-issue filler just covered the new G7 Authority and all the mischief they get into across the multiverse. As a fan, you know that the real Authority isn't dead and it's just a question of how they're possibly going to come back.

The awkwardness of the politics behind the scenes, I felt this book had some very strong potential. The concept was right for a comic like Authority but the overall execution ended up feeling sloppy and misguided. Too many elements got away from them, thus leaving us with a story that will never feel perfectly correct.

This has nothing to do with how annoying the "new" Authority ended up being. That was the point of that particular team, right? They had to be the kinds of characters we wouldn't fall in love with given how thin the line is being being the "good" Authority versus the "bad" one. The joys of morally ambiguous super teams.

At last now we can read it in a single sitting and not have to feel the agonizing wait of months turning into years like those who originally followed the comic prior to 2001. Still, there were certainly much better ways for the comic book to end and it remains highly unfortunate that an alternative path was not found in time.

The Authority: Transfer of Power gets 3.5 refugees out of 5.

[Comics] The Authority Vol. 3 - Earth Inferno and Other Stories

When you define your comic book characters to be the types that deal with threats to the planet on a multi-dimensional scale, are willing to go extremes to get the job done and are very strong-willed and defiant of authority, the pressure to create more and more epic villains and storylines fitting of the characters will always be there.

Such is the case with The Authority the longer the comic book went on. With the departure of Warren Ellis, now Mark Millar had the primary responsibility (and challenge) to bring The Authority to new heights, present appropriate adversaries and of course keeping the fun and humorous tone the team is also known for.

No tall order, eh?

The Authority: Earth Inferno and Other Stories is the third collection of the comic book series covering issues 17-20 and the Summer Special one-shot. The main story arc of interest here is the Earth Inferno story covering issues 17-18, which most of the other issues covering independent stories.

Earth Inferno involves a series of catastrophic incidents around the world that are all eventually linked to the planet itself, trying to lash out against humanity. Think of it as The Happening on steroids and then some. The Authority come into play trying to save as many people as possible while The Doctor, who has the most appropriate powers to deal with the planet's attack on such a scale, happens to be incapacitated due to an accidental drug overdose.

As this is happening, Midnighter tries to find out on his own what's going on and this brings him to cross paths with a former holder of the Doctor mantle. The only difference is that when this man took on the magical abilities of the Doctor, he proceed to kill off entire populations for no apparent reason.

The story was pretty interesting and I have to give credit to Millar for the kind of widespread destruction he planned for in this story. It's one thing for plants to subtle release pheromones to drive people nuts but to instead command massive weather shifts, tectonic upheavals and swarms of locusts and other insects, well, that's just darn cool.

Image via Wikipedia

The other stories were just okay - one involved the revived corpses of the same black ops Stormwatch team that Apollo and Midnighter were a part of. Others were just the usual one-shots that are done to push character development.

This volume of The Authority remains to be just okay for me but nothing spectacular. The storytelling here wasn't as epic despite the whole planet attacking humanity aspect and it just seemed to lack something. Millar does try to make up for things in the next volume, but that needs to be saved for another review.

The Authority: Earth Inferno and Other Stories gets 3 undead Stormwatch members out of 5.

[Comics] The Authority Vol. 2 - Under New Management

All good things must come to an end, and endings can come in many forms. While we usually lament the end of TV shows and comic book lines but sometimes we don't immediately notice when there's a changing of the guard behind the scenes - when the creative time moves on or new writers are given a chance to play around with an existing franchise. That happens to all comic books and that happened to The Authority as well.

The Authority was pretty much a Warren Ellis creation ad it provided a venue for him to continue to play with certain characters he had introduced in other books he had written such as Stormwatch. Then again, the comic book industry is the kind of environment that supports multiple creative efforts and writers are known to dip their hands into more than one project. When the other projects become more interesting or perhaps the leadership decides that things should be shaken up a bit more, then we get creative changes.

This next volume we're about to review sort of stands on the very border of this transition point and documents how one moves to the other.

The Authority: Under New Management collates issues 9-16 of the series and covers two main story arcs. The Outer Dark is the last Warren Ellis story arc and the remaining issues introduce us to a slightly different Authority under the guidance of Mark Millar.

The Outer Dark covers several major items - one is the fact that the centurey is nearing its end and thus becomes the question of what does Spirit of the 20th Century Jenny Sparks do at the end of her "term"? The other aspect of this story pretty much involves the Authority facing off against God. Or something very close to it.

The second half of this volume covers the beginning of the Mark Millar run for the Authority and it does it in a rather grand style. With Jenny Sparks gone, the Authority is left to operate on its own with Jack Hawksmoor taking on more of a leadership role. At the same time, other forces are set in motion to challenge their rule and put them in their place in the form of a rival superhuman team. Given we've always seen the parallels between The Authority and DC's JLA, the team they end up fighting has obvious parallels with Marvel's Avengers, and thus it makes for an interesting match-up.

Image via Wikipedia

I'll definitely miss the writing style of Ellis and the kind of art that Bryan Hitch brought to the series. Seriously, as a big finish the man decided to pit the team against "God. Top that! They really helped define the look and feel of the Authority and made sure that the story followed a tight vision. Millar came along and shook things up significantly by really pushing the limits of the Authority's mandate and making them get more involved in disrupting the status quo of things in cases when they felt people were being taken advantage of or were in danger. This definition of their moral compass certainly pushed things into interesting territory.

Character development has been steady and we can certainly see the group become more comfortable with their teammates and with their individual powers an abilities. The challenges they end up facing forces them to truly reconsider how to use their abilities as best as possible and ultimately results in some pretty creative (and often violent) solutions.

There wasn't really much of an actual transition between the two creative teams. One story arc ended with Ellis and the next picked up with Millar, which is typical of the comic book industry. While I would have liked to see more of an explanation for the changes in their behavior and the "morality" of their decisions, it wasn't exactly a bad thing and was done to ensure that readership didn't drop given the changes. Millar certainly has a rather hard edge to his ideas for stories and we consistently see this in his various projects around the industry.

The Authority: Under New Management gets 4 lab-spawned superheroes out of 5.

[Comics] Planetary / The Authority - Ruling The World

Comic book crossovers tend to be rather messy affairs. We, as readers, know full well that crossovers are blatantly commercial in motivation and are designed to draw readers to meet new titles in the hopes that we'll start buying the other comic book outside out of comfort zone as well. Given this prime motivation, good storytelling tends to give way to marketing and this has resulted in some really bad crossovers over the years.

You know how the formula goes - the two characters or teams first tackle the problem alone, then they meet and butt heads a bit, then they unite against the common foe. It gives enough page time to both characters / teams and ensure we get to meet both equally, then see them in action. The fan boy in me can probably think up of hundreds of possible mash-ups that might seem stereotypically "cool", but the rest of me remains pretty jaded about how well executed any crossover can be.

So I guess it makes sense that crossovers not only involve different comic books companies but can also involve characters from the same company, just thrust into a new situation along with another member of the franchise. It gets even better when the two titles turn out to have a single writer at the helm and thus making the crossover even easier.

Enter: Warren Ellis.

Planetary / The Authority - Rule the World is a bit of an alternative take on the comic book crossover. Given the typical aforementioned "formula", it was pretty refreshing to have the two groups not actually meet one another during the course of the issue. It works, believe me.

Here, yet another strange alien threat seems to be attacking Earth in the form of a giant octopus creature of some sort. Naturally the Authority comes to the scene and works to stop the monster while the Planetary team also happen to be in the area. It turns out that somehow Drummer had somehow triggered the monster and Elijah remained focused on trying to remember where he had seen the eggs before.

So the story then progresses on two levels - the Authority continues to deal with threats on a very grand and public level while Planetary works behind the scenes in line with their original thrust of being secret archeologists. Their investigations lead to a risky missions to infiltrate the Carrier and steal whatever information the Authority has but still the groups hardly confront one another.

Ellis made sure each group remained "in-character" and played to their strengths despite this being a crossover, which was really nice. Too many times to crossovers result in very unusual and awkward interactions or character behaving completely differently only because of the introduction of new elements from other titles. This time around each group acted in the only way the thought best and coincidentally ended up maneuvering around one another but still ultimately helping one another.

True, the fan boy in me still wished that the two groups had a bit more interaction to some extent, but after reading quite a number of Ellis titles by now, I'm beginning to understand and appreciate his love for non-conventional solutions and new interpretations of classic patterns.

Planetary / The Authority - Ruling the World gets 3.5 people who have seen the Snowflake out of a possible 5.

[Comics] The Authority Vol. 1 - Relentless

My excursion into the Wildstorm comic book universe continued with The Authority, that rather nasty version of the JLA or any other superhero team that had the strength and the smarts to get the job done - and the flexible morality to really drive that point home.

I got into the series because my partner was a big fan and I have to admit that I was pretty interested in terms of how this would all go after I got a taste of the interplay between Apollo and Midnighter when they debuted in Stormwatch. To have them feature in a major superhuman team that was meant to somehow trump the scale that Stormwatch once operated in seemed like an interesting enough challenge.

Leave it to Warren Ellis to redefine how a super team can work.

The Authority: Relentless is the first volume of the comic book series that collects the first 8 issues of the first volume of this series. Here we get to meet the diverse characters of The Authority and their unique abilities that make them a force to be reckoned with.

Image via Wikipedia

There's Apollo, who is pretty much a solar battery like Superman. There's Midnighter, who can predict every possible outcome of a battle and use that information to win very much like Batman. Then there's The Doctor, who is basically your magic powerhouse of the group. The brains are provided by the Engineer, who is pretty much a scientist who replaced her blood with nine pints of nano-technology. There's Jack Hawksmoor, the "King of Cities" who draws strength from urban environments. There's Swift, the winged warrior and tracker. And in charge of the group is the rather bad ass Jenny Sparks, the electrically-enabled Spirit of the 20th century. Together they work to keep Earth safe using The Carrier as their staging ground. It's a ship they found between the dimensions that seems to choose to remain anchored to Earth and this makes it very useful in terms of teleporting to any location on the planet.

This first volume features two main story arcs. In "The Circle", the Authority is made to square off against a former Stormwatch villain, Kaizen Gamorra, who's main goal is to prove to the worth his superiority now that Stormwatch is no longer in the picture. The Authority have to fight off his army of super-powered clones and figure out which city is going to be attacked next while trying to stop the source of the attacks.

The second story, "Shiftships", plays on the interdimensional aspect of these stories and pits the Authority against an invasion from a parallel Earth known as Sliding Albion. It's interesting to see the scale the group has to operate on and the fact that their code of ethics is definitely not typical of the superhero genre.

What I loved most about the series is how it manages to poke fun at the kind of superhero archetypes that we've all gotten used to over the years while at the same time being willing to throw convention out the window. These are not your nice kind of heroes who only want to stop the bad guys and throw them in jail. They have decided to take on the charge of protecting the Earth from any threat, external or otherwise and they will use maximum force as they see fit. This means that they will kill enemies and they will take extreme action if it means saving the majority. Despite that kind of a mandate, the comic series is not at all dark and in fact tends to take on a rather humorous tone.

The Authority really is a superhero team unlike most others and the framework set up here is pretty stellar. The sheer potential of the group is just insane at times and the scale of their powers defies convention. Add in their willingness to go to extremes to protect their slice of reality and you end up with one massively violent yet gripping series.

The Authority: Relentless gets 5 cities up in flames out of a possible 5.

[Comics] Stormwatch Vol. 5 - Final Orbit

In my review of The Sandman Vol. 10 - The Wake, I discussed briefly how sometimes the end of a comic book series can seem like it was so calculated months or even years before. On the flip side, there are those sad cases when a comic book simply gets the axe and the writers have to scramble to close things with some semblance of logic.

This is what happened to Stormwatch, I feel. In the end if just wasn't a productive comic book and the group had lost focus once they had gotten rid of their psychotic leader Henry Bendix. And thus it ended up with a really bad ending that must have made the Warren Ellis cringe at the need to kill the comic. It was a bad situation to begin with and clearly they did the best they could in order to close things up well enough.

Although I don't think they managed even that.

Stormwatch: Final Orbit collects the last two issues of the second volume of Stormwatch along with the WildC.A.T.s / Aliens crossover comic. Yes, Stormwatch couldn't even end its own comic book and it took a separate crossover comic to resolve that. What a cop out, seriously.

Image via Wikipedia

The story starts with a mysterious asteroid that enters our solar system that piques the interest of Stormwatch. They dispatch survey teams to investigate the asteroid and eventually detonate charges to blow it off course. Only one of the two shuttles makes it back and it is eventually revealed that somehow the survivors brought on the Alien parasite onboard. This leads to the space station being overrun by Aliens and the WildC.A.T.s are eventually dispatched to investigate the raising of the Storm Door and possibly rescue any survivors.

Cross-company crossovers tend to be rather silly and are just there to drive comic book sales, and in some ways this was no exception. The sad consequence of the whole thing was this was also used as a plot device to deal with the end of Stormwatch by killing off a large number of their characters "off-camera" so to speak. We don't quite see how they died - we just find out they're dead later on. And thus it really cheapened the death of most of Stormwatch but it did serve the purpose of cleaning up the ranks.

What really irks me is that you'd think that a highly organized group like Stormwatch would have been efficient enough to quarantine the survivors of the original asteroid incident and isolate them in time to catch the aliens coming out. Supposedly they were brought on-board with facehuggers still attached and so it was obvious they were contaminated with something. To have them overrun by aliens despite being a space station filled with superhumans was just silly.

But all things have to end and it did pave the way for The Authority, so I guess that works.

Stormwatch: Final Orbit gets 3 gaping plot holes out of a possible 5.

[Comics] Stormwatch Vol. 4 - A Finer World

I've never been very exposed to the Wildstorm universe apart from catching a few episodes of the WildC.A.T.s cartoon. Thus it was an interesting experience when my partner started getting pretty obsessed with getting me into The Authority. Of course in order to do that properly, he first needed to introduce me to some of the prior books that built up to the comic.

In order to understand The Authority, one has to make a detour through the universe of Stormwatch. Now this group seemed a little confusing to me since I'm not very big on government-sanctioned superhero groups, what more a multinational group given it was sponsored by the United Nations, of all things. It did make for an interesting premise although it was a tad tricky to catch up with the story since I started reading pretty much towards the end of Stormwatch as a comic book.

Stormwatch: A Finer World is the fourth compilation of Storwatch comics and it collects issues 4-9 of the second (and last) volume of Stormwatch. It covers two main story arcs that are pretty well-connected to the main concepts that eventually result in The Authority.

Image via Wikipedia

The first story arc is "A Finer World" and the main claim to fame with this one is the revelation that there's been a secret Stormwatch team operating independently after it was created by previous Weatherman Henry Bendix. Most of the team is believed to be dead except for two unknowns - they're eventually revealed to be Apollo and Midnighter, who are clearly analogous to Superman and Batman respectively. Thus the Stormwatch team sets out to find these rogue superhumans and figure out whether or not they can be trusted.

The second story arc is "Bleed" which introduces the interdimentional concept of The Bleed, sort of the fluid between dimensions. The core Stormwatch team figures out how to observe an alternate Stormwatch with Jack Hawksmoor as the Weatherman. Ultimately the alternate universe is set to be invaded and the core Stormwatch group needs to determine whether or not they should intervene in the fate of an alternate Earth.

Stormwatch itself was sort of "meh" at this point it seems and I didn't really get the point of the group. Sure, I understand it's purpose on paper but in a larger sense, the group didn't really have a clear direction or identity and it felt like just another superhero group. Thus it's completely understandable why fans latched on very strongly to Apollo and Midnighter since they were fresh takes of classic superhero archetypes that certainly makes for interesting storytelling potential.

Ellis definitely had something going there when he first introduced the concept of The Bleed. Transdimensional stories have a high potential for coolness despite and equally high potential for being overly convoluted and complicated if managed badly. Thus it makes perfect sense why this eventually became a springboard for The Authority later on.

This volume of Stormwatch really was only worth it for the concepts and characters introduced but not so much for the interplay between the characters themselves. I probably need to read the earlier books to get a better understanding of Stormwatch as a group, but that doesn't stop me from really appreciating where Ellis went with all of this afterwards.

Stormwatch: A Finer World gets 4 alternate realities out of a possible 5.