…. and Warren Ellis is first in the queue to love them.
He talks over at his site of John Cassaday’s absolutely stellar work on the covers, creating things designed to look absolutely nothing like anything else on the shelves at the time;
“The overall concept for the PLANETARY covers was that, every issue, the book would simply look like nothing else next to it on the shelves, and that was how it would stand out. Look for the thing that looked like none of the other things. I think we mostly managed that. These are a few of my favourites.”
Full list over at Ellis’s post.
Planetary was/is one of my favourite comics of all time for many, many reasons, and I wrote about them here, saying stuff like this about Cassaday: “And every step of the way artist John Cassaday’s classical artwork perfectly visualises every wonderfully strange idea. It may have taken many, many years to complete the series’ 27 issues and many of these delays may have been art led. But never has the concept of “good or on time?” been proven.”
Thing is, trying to pick a favourite Planetary cover is like trying to pick a favourite child, and frankly my favourite changes from day to day… but of those Ellis puts up, this Steranko loving, Nick Fury loving fan can’t help but enthuse over this one….
February 17th, 2013 at 2:34 pm
Planetary is one of my favorite comic book series, and issue 19, which I call the series “2001 A Space Odyssey” cover, was the first issue I saw at my local comic book shop. From that point on, I was hooked on the series.
February 17th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Oh, I know – magnificent. My Christmas treat to me a while back was both Absolute Planetary volumes. Every so often I’ll sit and re-read and enjoy it all over again.
Did you try Ellis’ Secret Avengers volume – Run The Mission, Don’t Get Seen, Save The World? Not as good, but very similar in style – his Marvel Planetary.