Planetary

On February 16, 1968 in Essex, England, Warren Ellis materialized fully-formed, flicked a lit cigarette at the world, and went off to write brilliant comics, essays and stories that read like compressed and condensed versions of the man himself, full of all the prescience, bile, and heart that flows out of this creative giant.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. This week the bats are out of the belfry as we look at five of Batman’s greatest team-ups!

Savage Critic and "Reading Comics" author Douglas Wolk runs down the hottest comics and graphic novels coming out this week. KEY * Speaking in code ^ Young soul rebels % The hammer of the gods ^ % FABLES #100 Vertigo does throw a lot of ideas at the wall, but sometimes they stick, as with this durable take on fairy tales and mythology...

I never fully got into Warren Ellis. "Transmetropolitan" seemed uneven to me, and especially when given mature-readers latitude he tends to include tons of... well, for lack of a better term, Ellisisms (Godzilla bukkake, "chair leg of truth", etc...

With 2009 about to draw to a close, now seems like a good time to look back on a year of Wednesdays and remind myself of the reason I buy new comics every week. To remember that it's worth sifting through the piles of never-ending zombie comics, celebrity biography cash-ins and Barack Obama team-ups because every once in a while you find a great story with beautiful artwork...

ComicsAlliance's Chris Murphy reviews the biggest -- and best -- books coming out this week. AND AT LAST WE ARRIVE AT THE END -- Planetary #27 I believe I may be required by law in this review to address the following topic first: This week Wildstorm is releasing the 27th and final issue of Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary...

"There are mad and beautiful things beneath the skin of the world we know, that you only see when you look at things on a planetary scale..." -- Warren Ellis, from the original "Planetary" proposal With this week's publication of "Planetary" 27, one of the most articulate and influential superhero comics of the last decade finally spirals to its strange end... Rea

Savage Critic and Reading Comics author Douglas Wolk runs down the hottest comics and graphic novels coming out this week. KEY ¶ One Ellis-door closes, another opens £ Penguins % Swords, S.W.O.R.D., guillotines--they're really just stand-ins for papercuts ¥ Remember: everything that ever happened to Batman is canon, and that includes "Crime and Punishment" * If comics will teach you any

Fans have been waiting a long time for the conclusion to "Planetary," and now after nearly three years, they can feast their eyes on the end of an era with pages to the final 27th issue online. The final issue of Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's "Planetary" are up and ready to be previewed over at Wildstorm's The Bleed blog...

"Planetary" writer Warren Ellis has posted John Cassaday's full wraparound cover art from the series' long-awaited final issue on his blog. Fans will recognize visual elements from preceding installments, including my personal favorites - the bugs from Island Zero...