Whenever I originally read this, I didn't have the slightest clue of what Planetary even was. I merely picked up the book for three reasons - firstly, because it had Batman in it, but also because I had recently come off of writer Warren Ellis' limited run on Iron Man with the "Extremis" storyline and because John Cassaday was one of my favorite artists at the time. So the talent was there, and I was itching to see how the duo would lend it to The Dark Knight. I didn't really get lost in following the plot, despite my lack of prior knowledge about the title, but in the event that you need a little more enticement than that, here's the concept of Ellis' Planetary: essentially, Planetary focuses on three superpowered protagonists. Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner, and a social misfit called The Drummer. Their mission, as dictated by the organization they work for, is to discover the undiscovered truths about the world's history. Some of these missions range from the fantastical to the horrifying, and investigation into inter-dimensional anomalies were a common fixture of the series. Think of it as
X-Files crossed into the more bizarre Superman stories from the fifties, and you've got a clear idea in your head of what Planetary is all about.
