ALL OVER THE WORLD
By JAn.

I came straight home after work, as I would on almost every other day. As I was closing the front door a voice came from out of the darkness and scared me half to death.

"Hello JAn." the voice monotoned.

A light switch was thrown and a standing lamp illuminated my brother sitting in the comfortable armchair in my living room.

"Andee! Man, you scared the crap out of me." I blurted at him as I made my way into the room.

"My apologies brother." He smiled his thin-lipped smile, "Have you perchance been to the comics book and comic book related merchandise store?"

"Yeah, I went and got some comics. Why?" It seemed odd that he would be asking me about comics, as my brother usually didn’t care for the things.

"I was wondering if perhaps in your weekly haul you picked up any of the so called ‘retro’ books?" The distaste was so evident in his mouth as he spat out that word. Retro.

"I don’t know which books you are talking about…" I said not altogether honestly, but I wanted to hear what he was going to say.

"Well..." He paused for a moment, " Well… It is a style, a mood if you will, of comic book which has recently become prevalent in the industry. I guess the three best exponents of the style would have to be Astro City written by Kurt Busiek, Alan Moore’s Tom Strong and Warren Ellis’ Planetary."

"Whoa, hold on there Andee. I’ve read a couple of issues of all three books and I agree with what you’re saying about the first two, but I don’t think that Planetary is a retro book"

"JAn, please, pay attention. Granted the style of writing maybe very modern and very Warren Ellis, but at the same time the way it plays with styles, situations and characters give it quite a retro feel." Andee paused, took a sip from the glass on the table next to him and looked around before finally setting his gaze slightly above my right shoulder. An action which quite unnerved me no small measure.

"I still don’t really get it Andee." I said

"Look, It’s really easy!" He shouted before settling down. "Sorry, but it really is. The Planetary team explores phenomena in the Wildstorm world. Following me?"

I nodded.

"Now, to us, these ‘phenomena’ are represented by comic book genres and pop-culture conventions. Do you follow?"

"Yeah, I’m getting it so far." I was.

Andee continued, still looking over my shoulder "With each issue we further explore the history or evolution of comic books. We are the archaeologists along with the Planetary team. As they learn we learn, as they laugh at oddities so too we laugh at the parts of comic books history best left behind. No where is this more evident than in the ‘Vertigo’ issue."

"Yeah, I guess I agree with you… But isn’t pastiche a really post modern thing to do? Post-modern, thus recent, thus not retro?"

"I agree that pastiche in comic books is a relatively recent thing, along with sampling in music. Both probably owe quite a lot to William Burrough’s cut-ups experiments, but Planetary is more than just pastiche."

"It is?" I was beginning to get confused.

"It is. Most comic book pastiche is used, like musical sampling, to simply enhance a work or at its worst, ride the coat tails, so to speak, of the original. Planetary employs the styles of days past for two main reasons. Firstly to display before us what has gone before so that we may have a better understanding of where we are going and secondly to show us where we should have never gone and will hopefully never go again."

"Oka…" I began when Andee held up a halting hand.

"But the thing which makes it take on that retro feel, is something, ironically, quite progressive. The expression of big ideas, concepts which make your eyes widen and situations which drop your jaw, things which are sadly lacking in modern comic books."

"You’re losing me again. Explain why this is important?"

"Most modern comics books are concerned with the micro scale. Analysing tiny situations and intricate details; the complete dissection and de-construction of the superhero in mainstream comics, and peoples’ lives in most alternative ones. Yet comics with their unlimited ‘special effects’ budgets and immediacy of ideas were designed for big things. Truly mad ideas by creators who quite often draw on inspiration from the fringes of what is considered normal society."

"I get it. It’s like a movie takes two hours to watch and a novel a couple of days, but a comic only takes ten minutes so it had better leave an impact, right?" I felt quite proud of myself.

"Precisely. And Planetary leaves one of the best impacts of any comic book available. You really should be buying it."

"No, I don’t think so. I’m just not that interested."

"JAn. I really think…"

"That’s it!" I really had enough of the way he avoided my eyes throughout the entire conversation, "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing JAn, it’s nothing at all." Came the answer.

"Sure." I spun to gaze over my shoulder.

There, behind me, stood a small, nervous looking man holding a que card. On the card were printed the words ‘NOTHING JAn, IT’S NOTHING AT ALL’ and as I watched, the guy dropped that card and revealed another which read:

"Oh-oh. Now you’ve done it."

I looked around me and nearly lost my mind.

From out of nowhere workers appeared in my house, and began to take furniture out. Further teams of workers were disassembling the walls. Soon I could see sky where the ceiling used to be.

"You should have just trusted me on the Planetary JAn. It didn’t have to be like this"

I felt a slight sting in my neck and looked up to find a man holding a large syringe injecting me with a greenish liquid.

The last thing I saw clearly was my ‘brother’ getting up, walking over to me and dropping something onto the ground beside my head.

I don’t know how long I was out, but when I awoke, the place where my house once stood was nothing but an empty field. Stunned as I was I still managed to notice that what my ‘brother’ had dropped was the latest issue of Planetary.

I wanted to just leave it lying there but since I really had nothing better to do, I grabbed it and began to read.

The moral of this story is: Buy Planetary before the person you assumed was your brother strips you of your life and leaves you with no other choice.

Jan is a regular columnist for PopImage.

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