Planetary #1 (After Watchmen...What's Next?)

A couple of years ago when the Watchmen film came out, comic book stores were giving away samples of similar titles. This was one of those reprint examples released under the banner: 'After Watchmen... What's Next ?' 

Here, a mysterious man named Winter is recruited to become a member of a clandestine team of metahumans. In their first mission, they discover what happened to a superhuman team that disappeared during World War II.

I liked this title. I was very impressed with the plotting and writing. The dialogue, while a little crude, was original and Warren Ellis didn’t dumb down to the audience. The art was very good and there were some impressive amounts of gore and action.

Not sure if I want to make this series part of my collection, but I wouldn’t mind finding additional stories at my library or trades for very cheap at a used book store or comic’s sale.

Worth Consuming.

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

   

Jack Cross #1

Ellis is a master of writing espionage. But, his newest creation, Jack Cross, a Homeland Security operative by day, who can get information out of anyone and a peacenik hippie by night, trying to overthrow big corporate America is a little bit of a stretch. That is until the last powerful page of issue 1. Then it all made sense.

The sequential art is all wrong, however. For example, a CCTV scene where an operative goes rogue, killing his own team- the bodies keep reappearing and disappearing in each panel. It would be considered an Ed Wood type of error if done on film. Better work on that is needed by either Ellis or the artist, Gary Erskine.

Worth Consuming

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars