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Planetary
Elijah Snow
Elijah Snow
A Century Baby with the ability of Heat Subtraction, Elijah Snow was conscripted into Planetary to help uncover the secret history of the world. Along the way, his discovery of the hidden wonders of the world and the people who hid those wonders slowly but surely unlock memories and solve mysteries that had been plaguing him for a good chunk of his life.- Amnesiac Hero: He has several gaps in his memory.
- An Ice Person: He can't actually manipulate ice or cold, but rather is able to subtract heat from various objects, allowing him to freeze whatever he wants.
- Anti-Hero: Elijah Snow is grumpy, world-weary and quite ruthless, especially during his quest for revenge against the Four.
- Combat Pragmatist: Elijah Snow isn't hesitant to kick someone in the unmentionables, or to use his cold power to simply freeze an opponent solid. Or do both at the same time, resulting in an opponent's crotch region smashed off their body entirely — as Dracula found out first-hand. And that was when Elijah was still a kid. If anything, he's gotten more ruthless with age.
- Good Wears White: Elijah Snow dresses in white and has white hair. His white clothes foreshadow his status as the amnesiac Big Good.
- Grumpy Old Man: Matches this to a t, especially when the Drummer and others of his age try to mouth off at him.
- Hidden Depths: Violent and angry as he might be, Elijah admits to Jakita at one point that he actually hates killing people. The Four's undermining of humanity's evolution and potential is enough to make him truly homicidal for once.
- Immortal Genius: Elijah Snow is a Century Baby, a superhuman with extraordinary skills and powers including immortality... and he also happens to be a natural born genius, particularly in business and archaeology.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero: Elijah Snow, who has the power to freeze things.
- The World Is Just Awesome: Despite his usual demeanor, Elijah's general response to most of the things he witnesses while with Planetary nothing short of awe and wonder. Which just serves to supremely piss him off when he realizes The Four had been keeping all these wondrous things for themselves and away from humanity, preventing them from advancing into the greatness they should be destined for.
Jakita Wagner
Jakita Wagner
An unnaturally strong and beautiful young woman with an aversion to boredom. Jakita is the muscle of the Planetary field team, often being the one to physically wrestle and fight with hostile threats during Planetary's expeditions.- Amazonian Beauty: Jakita has Super-Strength and superhuman agility, and her beauty is repeatedly commented on.
- Badass Longcoat: Jakita's regular outfit is a thigh-length black coat over her Spy Catsuit.
- Blood Knight: She really enjoys a good fight. When Batman seems to be more than a match for her, Jakita outright asks if he's single.
- The Coats Are Off: Jakita shrugging off her long coat at the beginning of a fight scene often gets a panel all to itself.
- For Want Of A Nail: If Sack hadn't gotten to her mother first, she could've been Elijah's daughter.
- Ground-Shattering Landing: Jakita's Super-Toughness is first demonstrated in a scene where she jumps out of a helicopter without a parachute, landing unharmed and leaving two sets of radiating cracks in the rock where her feet made contact.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: Jakita Wagner's standard outfit is a black leather bodysuit with red trim.
- Heroic Lineage: It's later revealed that she's actually the daughter of Kevin Sack, who was once a member of Axel Brass's Secret Society.
- In the Blood: Jakita Wagner claims that she works with Planetary mainly because it's never boring and she hates being bored. Issue #17 is a full-issue flashback to an adventure involving her parents, and shows that her father had the same trait, which she apparently inherited from him even though she's never actually met him.
- Jumped at the Call: Jakita Wagner.
- Lightning Bruiser: Jakita Wagner is durable enough to survive being defenestrated from a skycraper without harm, strong enough to "...drop-kick a rhino over the Grand Canyon" and fast enough to out-run trigger-pulls.
- Spy Catsuit: While Jakita Wagner is not a spy, it is definitely a catsuit.
- Super-Toughness: Jakita is largely impervious to damage; the fact that William Leather is able to draw blood during their first depicted fight is a major sign of how dangerous he is.
The Drummer
The Dummer/Little Drummer Boy
A young man with the ability to perceive, detect, and absorb information as well as communicate with any machinery. Once the lone survivor of Randall Dowling's experiments with children to infect the internet, the Drummer was rescued and recruited by Planetary to become Mission Control and then some, often relaying whatever information he can uncover at the site to aid Planetary's archaeology.- Cloudcuckoolander: The Drummer.
- The Drag-Along: The Drummer tends to complain if he has to accompany the field team into a dangerous situation, because his information-gathering powers aren't the most useful in a fight.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": First name: The, last name: Drummer
- Spell My Name with a "The": The Drummer. "First name The, second name Drummer."
- Stat-O-Vision: This is how The Drummer sees the world.
- Super Cell Reception: The Drummer receives a cell call while on the Authority's spaceship/headquarters - located outside of the universe!. Possibly justified in that The Drummer's superpower is control over information and information transmission.
- Technopath: The Drummer has nebulous powers related to "information flow", which apparently include sensing magic (the "cheat codes of the universe"), but he's usually employed as a super-hacker and living Electronic Counter-Measures device (disrupting security systems, monitoring or jamming enemy communications and such).
Ambrose Chase
Ambrose Chase
A member of the Planetary field team with the ability to distort reality. Long ago during a mission, Ambrose was mortally wounded and disappeared from reality. His apparent death would haunt the main characters for much of the series.- Black Dude Dies First: Discussed and weaponized. Ambrose Chase, originally a member of the group, had the bad fortune to come across a character who had the ability to make Horror Tropes the laws of physics, explicitly including this one. Of course, they Never Found the Body. In the final issue, the above example is subverted; it's revealed he activated his time field and is currently preserved exactly a moment before his actual death, allowing Elijah to save him.
- Guns Akimbo: Ambrose.
- Monochrome Past: After Ambrose is shot, he has a two-page montage of his life flashing before his eyes in grayscale.
- My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: After Ambrose is shot, there's a two page montage covering the key points of his life and career, which also serves to inform the audience about those things since he was only introduced a dozen pages earlier.
- Reality Warper: Ambrose Chase's power is a "selective physics distortion field" which allows him to warp reality in small ways in his immediate vicinity.
- Superhero Packing Heat: Ambrose Chase has minor reality warping powers, but the effects are not entirely predictable, so he also dual-wields pistols.
- Time Stands Still: One of the effects that Ambrose Chase is able to produce with his Reality Warper powers. This is also how he saves himself from dying after being shot in the first issue he appears in, only to be rescued in the finale by being broken out of his area of frozen time.
The Fourth Man (SPOILERS)
Elijah Snow
The mysterious leader of Planetary and the writer of the Planetary Guides is in fact Elijah Snow himself. His memory blocked by inhibitors implanted by Randall Dowling, the amnesiac Snow was sent into hiding until Jakita decided to bring him back, much to his chagrin. With his memories restored, Elijah officially declared war on The Four.- A Father to His Men: He begrudgingly agreed to the memory blocks to protect his team from The Four.
- Papa Wolf: Is protective over Jakita as though she was his own daughter. And she almost could've been, as Elijah was in love with her mother before boredom led her to conceive Jakita with Kevin Sack instead.
- My Greatest Failure: Ambrose's supposed death lingers over him greatly. His restored memories only made the guilt worse. He's eventually able to rectify this by bringing Ambrose back in the final issue.
- Walking Spoiler: The Reveal that the Fourth Man was actually Elijah all along is a plot twist that happens halfway through the series.
The Four
Randall Dowling
Kim Suskind
William Leather
Jacob Greene
Planetary Allies
Axel Brass
James Wilder
Anna Hark
John Stone
Melanctha
The Strange World
The Secret Society
The Secret Society
A cabal of adventurers and inventors formed by Axel Brass that came together to save the world over and over again. Their greatest achievement would be their downfall when, in an attempt to end World War II using a 1940s supercomputer, they opened a portal to another universe and fought a bloody and fatal battle against a team of superhumans. Only Brass survived to remember and tell of the group's fate.- Cast of Expies:
- Hark is Fu Manchu.
- The Spider is a combination of The Green Hornet and The Shadow.
- Kevin Sack, Lord Blackstock, is Tarzan.
- Jimmy is Operator #5
. - Edison is Tom Swift.
- The Aviator appears to be a simple distillation of various Ace Pilot characters from aviation fiction.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Their opponents during their final battle are blatant parodies of the Justice League of America, symbolizing how pulp heroes eventually faded into relative obscurity and were supplanted by modern superheroes. Brass's survival and the fact that several of them have surviving children reflects how the pulp heroes are still fondly remembered and have heavily influenced many modern reinterpretations of their archetypes.
- End of an Era: Their final battle against the invading superheroes effectively ended their generation of heroes and adventurers.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Lord Blackstock is revealed to be Jakita's biological father.
- Proto-Superhero: All of them are pastiches of famous pulp heroes.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Their attempt to defy this led to their deaths. They understood the ramifications of attempting to directly guide history's trajectory so they invented The Brain to calculate a game plan to end World War II using the Multiversal Snowflake to observe various universes. One such universe was on a brink of destruction, caught sight of the Society's Earth, and invaded in order to save their own world, leading to major casualties on both sides.
- True Companions: From what's seen of Brass's reminiscing of their glory days, the Society was a tight-knit group that have been through almost everything together.
Island Zero
Island Zero
An island off the coast of Japan that was once inhabited by mighty, giant creatures.- Here There Were Dragons: Island Zero is littered with the corpses of giant monsters that bear suspicious similarities to some iconic Kaiju. As it turns out though, not all of them are dead.
- Kaiju: The monsters we see are all Expies of Toho's lineup of movie monsters.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The island's backstory reflects the at the time real world reputation and waning popularity of Japanese Kaiju movies. The appearance of the Rodan Expy at the end of Issue #2 gives a hopeful nod that the genre still has a chance to regain its former glory thanks to a thriving loyal audience.
- Multiple-Choice Past: Similar to how Godzilla has had multiple origins, Jakita exposits that everything from radiation (which she believes is stupid), mutagen, doors to parallel realities, or just outright aliens have been theorized to be reasons for these creatures' existence.
- Rule of Symbolism: Island Zero had been left alone by official governments and organizations so the remains of its inhabitants could serve as a warning to those who wish to try any of the possible reasons for their existence.
Shek Chi-Wai
Shek Chi-Wai
A Hong Kong detective who was murdered by his treacherous partner. He was then brought back as a ghost that haunts and patrols the streets, seeking vengeance on those who killed him.- Abnormal Ammo: He can set his bullets aflame to explode some fools.
- Beware the Nice Ones: "Why are you scared, Mok? This is old Chi-Wai. Chi-Wai never shot an unarmed man, never put bullets in a criminal's back. Good old Chi-Wai."
- Expy: Of The Spectre by way of John Woo.
- Heroic Bloodshed: An Allegorical Character meant to embody Hong Kong cinema. He even goes Guns Akimbo like in a John Woo film on the cover of Issue #3.
- Legacy Character: It's posited that there have been other phantom cops that were killed and brought back before, and Chi-Wai is the latest incarnation simply waiting for the next poor soul to be killed and take his place.
- The Nothing After Death: Chi-Wai's death made him realize that there is no true afterlife, no Heaven to reward those who have been good or Hell to punish the killers and rapists. He reasons that this is why he and other cops keep coming back, because there's no other way to punish those people.
Jack Carter
Jack Carter
An Occult Detective that operated in London at the height of The '80s. He supposedly dies, leading to Planetary attending his funeral in London.- The Ace: Jakita's descriptions of him paint him as one of the coolest guys you will ever encounter.
- Allegorical Character: Of the "British Invasion" of The Dark Age of Comic Books that was rampant in The '80s thanks to writers like Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Warren Ellis himself and, quite specifically, Alan Moore. Also like those authors, Carter expresses disdain for people remaining hung up on the so-called glory days of the 80s without realizing the Reality Subtext behind why things were so dark and cynical back then, deciding to fake his death so he can start a new life with a new look away from those days.
- Cerebus Retcon: Parodied. Carter's killer turns out to be a superhero who discovered the Awful Truth that his Superhero Origin was a load of horse crap, went insane, and killed Carter after he took incriminating photos. Apparently instead of getting his powers from a transcendent science-mentor, he was grown from the DNA of Aryan super-athletes and Hitler's personal sex midgets.
- Faking the Dead: It turns out he didn't die, just faked everything to lure his killer out and shoot him in the stomach.
- Occult Detective: He regularly solved cases of the supernatural persuasion throughout the 80s, including one adventure we see a glimpse of where Carter had to deal with a ghost's attempt to murder a prostitute that's pregnant with what might be the Second Coming.
- Take That!: Carter's evolution from John Constantine to Spider Jerusalem (Ellis actually wrote for Carter to change into King Mob but John Cassaday pulled a fast one on him) was written to be Warren Ellis's way of telling comic fans and writers to get over Alan Moore.
- Trenchcoat Brigade: Carter is more than a little obvious pastiche of John Constantine.
Science City Zero
Science City Zero
A secret laboratory run by Randall Dowling and Anna Hark where they experimented on American citizens accused of communism.- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Some of those who were experimented on were turned into giants. Some other parts of their bodies didn't grow, leaving them in horrific, deformed pain.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Planetary is briefly attacked by giant ants that were lurking in the desert floor.
- Body Horror: A lot of what happens to the experiments result in horrific deformities. One guy had the Multiversal Snowflake manifesting out of his brain, and another who grew to enormous size had to deal with his brain not growing with his body.
- Deconstructive Parody: Of the B-Movie sci-fi genre of The '50s. All the victims of Science City Zero are put through experiments that transform them into the monsters commonly seen in these types of films, but these transformations are confirmed to either be fatal or extremely agonizing. Furthermore, the victims are all Communist sympathizers or at least accused of being one, and thus had their human rights stripped away so they could be subjected to inhumane experiments.
The Fictional Man
The Man from Planet Fiction
A fictional character that stowed away on a vessel returning from an expedition into a fictional world.- Creator Provincialism: The vessel initially crashed into a farmhouse upon return to the real world. The team running the experiment discovered that a member of the creative team was born in that very farmhouse and probably imprinted its location onto the mission matrix.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We never get a good look at the Fictional Man, just a vague outline of his underlit face. We also never know exactly how he kills his victims, he just leaves a bloody mess.
- Rage Against the Author: When he arrives into the real world, he slaughters almost everybody who was involved in his and his world's creation.
- Shout-Out: Issue #9 is dedicated to Grant Morrison, who is known for their own comic stories dealing with how our fiction affects our reality and vice versa.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Planetary's attempt to intervene in the experiment is what gets Ambrose Chase seemingly killed, thus impacting all the characters greatly.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The Fictional Man is never heard from again after Issue #9, simply referred to as "still at large."
The Last Son
The Last Son
The sole survivor of a doomed planet, rocketed to Earth by his parents. Unfortunately, he was intercepted by William Leather and didn't make it that far...- Bizarre Alien Biology: His species seems to have glowing mathematical formulas floating on their skin.
- Death of a Child: Had basically only just been born when he lands on Earth, but the first people to lay eyes on him included William Leather, who incinerates him.
- Last of Its Kind: Was supposed to be this, having survived the destruction of his planet, but The Four intercepted his crash landing and promptly had him killed in order to steal his spacecraft.
- Superman Substitute: Is very obviously a play on the classic Superman origin story as a baby alien rocketed to safety from an exploding homeworld. Whether or not this baby would become like Superman is never brought up, as he's immediately killed by William Leather as soon as he touched down.
The Blue Lamp
The Blue Lamp
A humanoid alien implanted with a mystical blue lamp with unknown powers. The alien was the newest recruit of an intergalactic peacekeeping corps and was sent out into the cosmos to "be the light in blackest night."- Boom, Headshot!: His corpse has a gaping hole in his face when we see him being dissected by Dowling.
- Expy: Is very obviously supposed to be Green Lantern, most likely Abin Sur specifically.
- Killed Offscreen: Was apparently shot and killed near Jupiter.
- Light Is Good: What his Blue Lamp was meant to symbolize, to be a light in the darkest of times just like the corps' progenitor carried a Blue Lamp as his world was crumbling into ruin.
- Space Cop: He was inducted into this position by the leader of his Corps and implanted with a Blue Lamp of unknown mind-based powers.
The Wonders
Amazons
An all-female "offshoot of a Grecian civilization", this race of mysterious women live on an invisible island near an American coast. The daughter of the matriarch was about to set off into the outside world to be an ambassador of peace until The Four caught wind of their existence...- Alternate Self: In the regular Planetary, they were assumed to simply be pastiches of DC Comics' Amazons and Wonder Woman, but the Terra Occulta crossover with Justice League outright reveal that the women we see are indeed the Planetary universe's versions of Diana Prince and Hippolyta.
- Canon Character All Along: Terra Occulta reveals that the apparent Wonder Woman Wannabe is fully Wonder Woman herself, as it displays an Alternate Universe where her entire race is assassinated rather than her and she's fully referred to as Diana Prince.
- Killed Offscreen: The daughter is apparently assassinated by a Kill Sat operated by The Four as a warning to the other Amazons to remain isolated.
- Our Clones Are Identical: Dowling theorizes that the Amazons sustained their civilization through cloning procedures.
- No Name Given: Neither the "Wonder" or her mother are named in the main series, but Terra Occulta confirm they are versions of Diana Prince and Hippolyta themselves.
- Spontaneous Weapon Creation: The daughter's braces can create magical constructs shaped like any weapon she chooses to manifest.
- Wonder Woman Wannabe: Appears to be the case at first due to Planetary having a Cast of Expies, but the Justice League crossover (where Warren Ellis is allowed to use the characters themselves) reveal the daughter is a version of Diana Prince herself.
David Paine
David Paine
A scientist who pioneered Integral Design Theory and attempted to create a reality-altering bomb. Circumstances caused him to be caught in the test blast which turned him into a rampaging monster until he could be put down.- Ambiguously Evil: For unknown reasons, the transformed Paine went on a rampage and battled the military over the course of twenty four days.
- And I Must Scream: Paine died from starvation and dehydration after the military trapped him five miles underground with no food or water.
- Body Horror: Paine had transformed himself into something that could survive the Integral Design Bomb, but couldn't revert back. We don't see what exactly he turned into, but his skin turned grey, became covered in veins, and his toenails became talons. His physiology was so seismic that even breathing apparently shook the ground.
- HULK MASH!-Up: Paine is obviously Planetary's take on The Incredible Hulk, only using theoretical physics rather than gamma radiation.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: The general Planetary interrogates about Paine took to referring to Paine's new form as "it".
- No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Turns out only Paine could understand his own notes on Integral Design, resulting in no more further attempts to recreate his experiments.
- Reality Warper: His Integral Design Theory was used to create a bomb that could alter reality.
The Conspiracy
A club of extraordinary gentlemen, including Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and Dr. Victor Frankenstein's creature.
- Groin Attack: Dracula gets frozen solid and kicked in the crotch, which is broken off in a huge chunk.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Dracula refers to Elijah as "it". It's not known if he simply views humans as animals beneath him or if he's vaguely referring to Elijah's status as a Century Baby.
- The Mentor: Sherlock Holmes personally mentors Elijah in detective work.
- Precursor Heroes: They predate the Secret Society and even Planetary, and operated in Europe throughout the 19th century.
Opak-re
A hidden village in Africa that's frequented by Kevin Sack. It's also home to Elijah's True Love.
- Afrofuturism: Has some of this going on; the means by which it isolates itself from the world is through what appears to be complex machinery.
The Gun Club
Gun Club
A group of astronauts from the 1800s who, impatient about waiting for technology to advance until they could get to that point, devised an early means of space travel in an attempt to go to the moon. Basically, they created a giant cannon to launch a inhabited pod into space.- Ambiguous Situation: Elijah theorizes that they must've figured out some way to bypass getting turned to mush by the launch discharge, but there's no way to be sure considering how many pieces of the pod might be lost in orbit during the hundred or so years it's been in space.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: There's a horrifying possibility that if they managed to survive getting launched into space, they ended up stuck in orbit with not much means of returning to Earth until they all died for one reason or another.
- Refuge in Audacity: These guys from 1851 tried to go the moon by being shot out of a humungous cannon.
- Shout-Out: To A Trip to the Moon, where the portrayed means of space travel was also portrayed as a bunch of guys entering what amounted to a giant bullet to be shot at the moon.
Angels
Angels
A trio of mysterious angel-like beings who are biologically programmed to record information.- Angelic Abomination: They have this vibe thanks to their appearance as blank humanoids with wireframe butterfly wings.
- Constantly Curious: Their purpose in existence is to record as much information as possible before returning to their place of origin. As a result, they don't care how they are treated or where they're going so long as they have something to explore and catalogue.
- Expy: Appearance-wise, they are angelic versions of the Silver Surfer. They later even encounter a massive corpse that looks suspiciously a bit like Galactus.
The Object
A mysterious gigantic object that houses its fair shares of mysteries.
- Expy: There's some hints that the corpse is meant to be Planetary's take on Galactus.
- Here There Were Dragons: There's a corpse of an absolutely enormous humanoid being laying dead in the main section of the Object.
- Riddle for the Ages: There's a lot of questions to be asked about the interior of the Object, including what exactly the giant was, why there seems to be an entire viable ecosystem inside, and what exactly that throne-like structure indicates. None of this would be answered, as Elijah pragmatically uses it to imprison Jacob Greene and exile him into outer space.
The Dead Ranger
John Leather/The Dead Ranger
A Texas Ranger, John Leather was shot and left for dead by the Dowling Gang. "Resurrected" by a shady Native American medicine man from the Potawatomi tribe, Leather caught a glimpse of the Multiversal Snowflake via an intense hallucination and was reborn as the Dead Ranger. Armed with silver bullets tipped with mercury, Leather painted his eyes with ashes and launched a reign of terror against the Dowling Gang- Doing In the Wizard: Many believed that those who survived an encounter with the Dead Ranger died of shame, but the reality was that John had laced the tips of his silver bullets with mercury, implicitly poisoning those he hadn't managed to kill.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After cleaning up much of Texas, John eventually met a woman he fell in love with, wiped the ashes from his face, and retired from being the Dead Ranger. He became rich off the silver mine from which he shaped his bullets and fathered Bret Leather, who would later become The Spider.
- Expy: Of The Lone Ranger.
- Nominal Hero: What we see of him shows that he does not care if his enemies are unarmed and surrendering.
Dowling's masters
"Another Earth"
An alternate Earth populated by malevolent superentities that Randall Dowling came into contact with before The Four's fateful space expedition. Fifty years prior to the events of the series, Dowling had sold out his Earth to them in exchange for power. They await further messages from Dowling before they begin their incursion on a world stripped of the wondrous, natural defenses it should've had.- Bizarrchitecture: Notable parts of the planet's surface includes giant metallic human faces that shoot fire out of their mouths.
- Expy: None of its inhabitants are shown, but the pillars of fire erupting from the planet's surface and its populace's desire for multiversal conquest makes it clear that this Alternate Earth is a pastiche of Apokolips.
- Greater-Scope Villain: They are the ones who empowered The Four in exchange for their Earth to conquer.
Others
Justice League
Justice League
A trio of people who had been wronged by Planetary and seek to free humanity from their dystopian regime. They feature in Planetary/JLA: Terra Occulta.- Adaptational Wimp: Clark Kent can usually survive in space for however long writers want him to. Here, getting sent out the airlock kills him.
- Adaptational Villainy: Not the League, but their Arch-Enemy in this universe is a villainous version of Planetary that basically became their version of the Four.
- Alternate Self: Of their DC Comics counterparts.
- Crazy-Prepared: Bruce Wayne deflects many of Elijah's attacks by repeatedly reiterating that he's spent twenty years training for this moment.
- Sole Survivor: Besides Clark still being the last Kryptonian, Diana is also now the last Amazon due to Planetary destroying Themyscira with a Kill Sat.
- Legacy Character: They aren't necessarily called the Justice League, but Bruce mentions that his parents and a couple of Earth's brightest and most powerful minds attempted to form such a league before Elijah Snow had the Waynes murdered. With this trio, Bruce is picking up where his parents left off.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: The Kents were supposedly killed in a natural disaster, but Bruce points out how floods don't usually cause bullet holes.
