I’m waiting for this to arive by post: I hear its a bit goofy, but good. Can someone spoil it for me?
It was very good. Respectful in a way that I did not expect from Planetary.
Mmmmm. There are a few parts that are goofy, but it’s overwhelmed by a succinct plot, Cassady’s excellent art and designs, and Ellis’ usual dry humor and an EXCELLENT reference to a certain comic book event in 1986.
[spoiler]Planetary shows up in Gotham City. The Planetary offices are staffed by an extremely introverted Dick Grayson and a man named Jasper – dead ringer for you-know-who. They hit the streets looking for a murderer whose City Zero abilities make him able to traverse different Gotham cities. Planetary runs into Batman – several versions of him – and they have no idea whom they’re facing because Batman – for reasons we don’t know – doesn’t exist in Planetary’s Gotham. I refuse to spoil this any more other than to say BUY it, READ it, and watch the Adam West version get the drop on Jakita even though he refuses to hit women. HIL-arity ensues!
This is soooooo much better than the Planetary/JLA Elseworlds --mostly because PLANETARY’s weirdness doesn’t work without the synergy of Cassady’s art and Ellis’ words.[/spoiler]
I highly recommend it if you’re a Planetary fan. I didn’t bother with the JLA crossover and was underwhelmed by the Authority crossover, but this one surpassed all expectations and was worth the trememdous wait since the last regular issue of Planetary. Beautiful art, great humor, and surprising reverence paid to Batman by Ellis. And Elijah’s reference to that particular event from 1986 was a great fanboy moment.
No Batman in Planetary’s home-worldline, but when they are in pursuit of a person with timeline-jmping abilities in their Gotham City the team encounters several incarnations of The Batman.
Well worth reading.
I agree with everyone else on here. It’s very good and a must buy if you’re a Planetary or Batman fan. I thought the scene with The Dark Knight Return’s Batman was definetly one of the highlights of the book.
So I only flipped through it at the comic store, and it seemed interesting, but my question is (and I looked, but couldn’t find much contextual hints that I could understand): was the final Batman, the one who finally let Our Fugitive go, any of the recognizable ones? “Our” Batman, perhaps?
The TV Batman bit was hilarious. And I’m steamed that I missed the ref. Can anyone PLEASE tell me what it was so I don’t have to wait 'til I go back to the store?
Leaper: okay, okay, okay.
Look, I don’t want to build it up, because it’s really just a throwaway reference, only about a page long. But the murders PLANETARY have come to investigate have to do with multiple bodies of the same person occupying the same space, crushed and fused together. Snow takes one look at a photograph of one victim and says, “Damn, I’ve seen this before. 1986. Partial multiverse collapse. This happened to about a third of the population affected.” He is of course, referring to the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS when The Spectre briefly forced several DCU universes to occupy the same space to save them from obliteration. Extremely cool insider reference that only means something if you grew up reading CRISIS.
I don’t think the final Batman was intended to be anyone we know. It seemed to me to be Cassaday’s concept of the essential, timeless Batman.