"Planetary" is easily one of my favorite comics of all-time. Each issue Warren Ellis, John Cassaday and Laura Martin took a scalpel to one of our great fictional archetypes and explored what made it relevant. I'm pretty sure everything was hit - westerns, pulp heroes, super heroes, 50's science fiction, Japanese monster movies ... it went on and on.
And Ellis was NOT taking the piss out of these archetypes, quite the opposite, in many cases he was exposing the souls of the work, showing us why these stories matter far beyond their plots or the simplicity of what are, in many cases, simple action stories.
Below are my 10 favorite quotes from the series, they won't all make sense out of context but these are the ones that still punch me in the gut when I reread the book, all these years later.
10. 'You're never what I expect, Jakita.' - Issue 7.
9. "People always said The Dead Ranger always shot to wound, but that wounded badmen died of shane. Nobody ever worked out that the bullets were poisoned." - Issue 21
8. "Good morning, Dr. Dowling. From here things will only get worse." - Issue 15.
7. "Bomb makers could be heroes, in 1962." - Issue 0
6. "This where we made the monster movies. I was killed here." - Issue 8
5. "Why did you invent me?" - Issue 9
4. You want to know the secret of the world. It's this: save it and it will repay you, every second of the day." Issue 5
3. "Time to be someone else." - Issue 7
2. Brass: "You should have been around with us in the thirties, Mr. Snow. I can't begin to tell you what you missed. Glories."
Snow: I was busy. - Issue 5
1. "And then they brought me back. Just to see if they could." - Issue 8
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