A Sense of Doubt blog post #3645 - The Covers of Planetary - John Cassady RIP via Warren EllisAfter tomorrow, I am going into LOW POWER reprint mode for the rest of the week and then some more days, probably.
I have been ill, but I have also produced many original posts lately. I need a break. Though I do not break the daily production cycle.
So, today, a simple share, re-constructed from Warren Ellis' newsletter last week, so that the images don't break.
In all of comics, my number one favorite WHOLE story is Planetary.
I say WHOLE story because I need to distinguish it from ongoing franchises that I adore, such as Fantastic Four, Nightwing, Titans, Daredevil, and more.
I mean self-contained short-ish run comic stories.
And my recent reading of DCeased is giving Planetary a challenge, but it's not unseated in my favorites.
Other contenders are Watchmen, Black Hole, Freak Angels, Global Frequency, DCeased, Nice House on the Lake, Something is Killing the Children, DIE, Bone, Wandering Star, and a few others that are not immediately coming to mind. I tried to steer clear of really long series that do wrap up, like Cerebus (that really lost it later in the sequence), ZOT, Sandman, and several others. I also stayed clear of really short mini-series, though some may argue that a few of my choices qualify, such as Marvels, Kingdom Come, Earth X, and more. I also avoided single books in this estimation, something that was never serialized, such as Fun Home, Killing and Dying, Shortcomings, Silver Surfer (with Moebius), Sculptor, Blankets, Maus, Persepolis, The Best We Could Do, and many others.
For me Planetary is my favorite, and I would argue one of the best short comic book series with a clear beginning, middle, and ending.
It's probably my main reason to adore Warren Ellis as a writer, though two of his works are in that contenders list (Freak Angels and Global Frequency) to which I would probably add Doctor Sleepless. Many times I have been in a comic book store around Christmas with someone shopping for a great comic to give as a gift, and I loudly proclaim that Planetary is the best thing in the store.
Years ago, I wanted to start a series in which I reviewed one issue per post, spreading these 26 posts out over a couple of years. I would still like to do that, but it's a lot of work to do it right. I could redact to ONE THING from each comic that makes it special, which is what Ellis does here with the covers.
Lest we forget (I won't) or you do not know, the artist John Cassady passed away just a few months ago. I focused a tribute for him here:
Sunday, September 22, 2024
I did not know John Cassady as did Ellis and so many others, but I do miss him.
This one's for him.
Thanks for tuning in.
The Covers Of Planetary
Orbital Operations for 2 February 2025
ORBITAL |
The Covers Of PLANETARY |
So, I’ve mentioned before the plan I wrote for the PLANETARY covers. Each cover and its design would be different from the last, and my intention was that you’d find it on the shelves by dint of the fact that it wouldn’t look like anything else out that month. Utter hubris, I know, but I was like thirty years old when I came up with that scheme. |
The first cover, I wanted to be just John doing John, and the cover was perfectly lovely. I wanted to get involved from issue 2. |
Thing is, I don’t recall much about this one. I don’t know if the dialogue was me or editor John Layman. It’s still quite a “traditional” cover, a Japanese monster movie poster vibe. The next one is when I started to get odd.
This was a compromise cover. Because Scott Dunbier, bless him, had to make one of his many interventions with me because I’d gone off the reservation. My plan was for this to look like a still from a Hong Kong action movie. And that the title and credits would appear as English-language subtitles superimposed across the bottom of the frame. I am, to this day, still sad that didn’t happen. But they told me I was insane and eventually I caved and we agreed on this compromise. |
CUT TO: me in my office afterwards: |
Full early pulp magazine:
The lettering here was either Ali Fuchs or Richard Starkings, I think. The additional text elements like “250 cents” was probably Layman. We had fun at Wildstorm. |
If writers get a lot of help from the best people in the business - who also want to have fun - then writers can write comics covers too. Sometimes it’s a prompt, sometimes a few paragraphs, sometimes just a bunch of ideas you need help to stick together. Sometimes it’s just a very specific reference. |
This one probably got us into trouble. The owners of DOC SAVAGE were not pleased about my knock-off Axel Brass, and I probably shouldn’t have conned John into aping a James Bama DOC SAVAGE paperback cover for this one. Or my production co-conspirators into doing the logo. But isn’t it gorgeous?
We did a lot of pastiche stuff, yes. But it was a book about the history of weird pulp fiction and the roots of the modern commercial comic. Every now and then, though, I wanted to go somewhere else.
This one, I wrote. The graveyard rows, the colours, and a specific tonal thing. “Joy Division album cover.” John fucking nailed it. I don’t recall for sure, but I suspect either Laura or David were involved with the colours. I almost emailed John to ask him…
I know why this one is here, though. John really wanted me to do a Western episode for him, so I had nothing to do with this cover. This was all for him to play with. I'd already done one of my bucket list things, after all:
British science fiction paperback cover! That still thrills me. And, let me note again, when you can talk to all your co-creators, you can pull stuff like this off.
I include this one partly because it says on the cover that John won an Eisner Award, and never was one more richly deserved. This was my “Doctor Strange” issue. Doctor Strange was, of course, a slightly pre-psychedelic (1963) and a New York thing. But, equally obviously, it had a huge impact on what came later. This cover is a West Coast psychedelia thing, Fillmore poster style, green and pink being a classic psychedelia colour combination.
Victor Moscoso - who was also a comics artist! |
|
The acid Sixties are intimately connected with comics, so, again, it’s pastiche - seemingly outside of comics, but in fact tangled around the modern form’s roots. |
|
What was, however, the best cover we ever did? For issue 12, I just told John to do whatever he wanted, because, shit, we’d made it to twelve issues and he should have some fun. When we started to reach the end of the series, I did the same thing. Said that John should do whatever he liked. |
And he did the best cover the book had ever had. The iconic PLANETARY cover. |
Hubris, see? I thought I could do all the work, make everything far too difficult, and cause every issue to do something new and stand out on the racks every time just by main imaginative force. And then John, without me underfoot all the fucking time, takes a breath and does the cover that defines the series to this day. |
One measure of John Cassaday’s kindness is that, even though I put him through all this, he still talked about doing covers for me right up until the end. I miss him. THE ENDING OF PLANETARY: |
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2502.09 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 165 days ago & DAD = 3510 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
No comments:
Post a Comment