Which series should I read first: Planetary or Astro City?

Polar opposites. Astro City is a slice of warm nostalgia pie. Amazing shit. The art... eh. Planetary is this odd brilliant amalgam. You can't lose either way but they are definitely different food groups. I'd say Astro because it's so damn engaging. And because I remember how fucking long Ellis made me wait between issues of Planetary back in the day.

Astro City. Planetary, somewhere in the last several issues, shits the bed hard. Astro City is always a joy.
 

Planetary, because it is my favorite comic book series and you can spend endless time tracing down threads Ellis has in those books.

 

Don't listen to Cameron. He's insane. Yes, that's a joke. Maybe.

 

 

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

 

You can probably tell by my username what my preference would be:  Astro City.  As Nick pointed out, the two series are quite different.  Astro City is just plain fun for anyone who has ever been a comic book fan.  I liken it to memories of rummaging through back issues and discovering something neat.  Planetary is a fine series as well, but I agree with Cameron's assessment of the last portion of the series.  Either way, you won't go wrong.    

I prefer Astro City, but I haven't completed reading Planetary yet. And AC is not without its faults, like the artwork (MAN I wish that Busiek had gone with his original plan of having a rotating cast of artists, but apparently he's very loyal to Brent Anderson, which is too bad, as he mostly drags the book down). But there are parts of Astro City that are just flat-out genius, especially in the early going. Even a couple of recent stories, like the one with Infidel, still have the magic. The Dark Age went on for way too long, though, and it was mostly so Busiek could wank off over bronze age comics, which I've never been crazy about. I'm eager to see where the series goes next.

 

While Planetary has a lot of cool stuff to recommend it, and obviously shares a lot with Astro City in that they're both about digging into the history of pop culture in general and comics in particular, for some reason Planetary has always felt a lot less ambitious to me. It feels more like a string of "Hey, remember this movie/tv show/comic? Here's a very similar character made as a winking allusion to it!" Of course, I only got up to the second trade or so, so maybe it goes somewhere more interesting.

Planetary just gets lazier, and I really love those first 12-15 issues.

I've been too scared to finish Planetary.  Much like Lost, I figured they couldn't stick the landing.

They definitely don't stick the landing in Planetary. To me, though, it was never so much about the continuing storyline and was more interesting in the one issue stories.

Astro City is fairly terrific as well, though similar to Planetary, it kind of doesn't get too much better after some of the first few books. I give the edge to Planetary, but like Nick said, they couldn't be more different kinds of stories.

I read most of the first trade.  And I like elements of it.  The premise is, obviously, intriguiging.  A very clever concept to analyse pop art.  I love the small nudges to by gone eras, like the pulp 30s heroes, and character designs obviously riffing off past works.  Things I don't like, include Ellis' annoying dialogue.  Many of his characters speak with the same curt smarmy tone.  And there is the same shitty banter in this one as there is in many of his other comics.  Snow berating The Drummer gets old and repetitive quickly, and it's just not funny.

 

Also the issue about the dead Hong Kong cop was a little boring, and I'm not sure what the point of this issue was.  We all know it's obviously homaging the Hong Kong action films, which I think is awesome.  But, how is it deconstructing those films or its characters?  It feels more like he's using pop art to tell a cool story in this case, rather than actually deconstructing it.  I don't understand the point of the issue other than to establish the sort of work they do, and it doesn't really satisfy the clever deconstruction angle.  Maybe I'm missing something in this issue.  One thought I had about the issue was, is this somehow also linked to the Spectre?  Seems very similar.  Admitedly, I know very little about the Spectre, but I still don't see how it's potentially a commentary on this character.  

 

Oh yea, the Doc Savage dude was pretty sweet. 

 

I really love some of the character designs, and Cassadays art work is mostly stellar, although it does tend to have that stiff photo referenced quality to much of it. 

 

Obviously I need to read more before final judgement, but so far, it's aight. 

The HK cop story was just a monster of the week type deal, like a lot of the issues.  If you go into every issue just searching for the pop culture homage/deconstruction, you're going to be disappointed.

You're right Ryan.  But the problem I have is, if its a MOW type story, I expect it to be narratively exciting or important in some way.  In that one episode, we don't really learn too much about the characters, and the actual story is very tame, and seems unimportant in the lives of the main characters.  I know it's just one issue, which is hardly indicative of the series and its very early on in the run.  I'm certainly not damning or criticizing the series, just this one issue.  I just thought I missed somthing.  I guess I was just surprised at how much it felt like an issue of padding.  It's the fact I have very high expectations.  It is Warren Ellis, after all.  

Well, although I enjoy it, I do think it's probably the weakest of the MOTW stories in Planetary.  But it does have some implications which aren't apparent now but do come into play later on in the series.  I think. 

Yea it is an awesome series.  I've been reading more issues in the second trade, and I'm loving it.  I think the reason, I'm getting less out of the series is simply due to the fact I don't know that much about comics.  I mean I know quite a lot.  But I used to read the mainstream superhero stuff from the 3rd grade to 6th or 7th grade, like my life depended on it.  And then read some random stuff in college.  And since an ipad reignited my interest last year, I've been reading all the interesting comics I can get my hands on.  So even though I know about Hellblazer, I haven't ever read an issue of it.  And I sure has hell didn't get that the lame looking mutants/demons that populated the Constantine dudes funeral, were a dig at the characters of the Vertigo universe.  Still, their lameness was amusing. 

 

But of course there's quite a lot that I do get, so its all good.  A fair amount of this series is insular to comics.

 

 

But then you have that trippy issue where there is another third man.  Ambrose something.  And they're fictional characters, that have been brought to reality by the evil reality based govermnet, from Planet fiction.  That whole issue was a commentary of Ellis' experience on creating fiction for the big two, like how the evil government orders the death of the entire creative team of Planet Fiction, after they've done their job.  And a commentary of our(creator and audience) relationship with fiction.  Man it was a trippy episode, but very cool.  And I especially like that the episode was dedicated to Grant Morrison, since it very much felt like vintage Morrison. 

 

Comics have got to be the most meta medium there is.  No other medium is so obsessed with analysing itself.  It's awesome.

Considering Morrison pretty much believes we live in a comic multiverse (or something), it is fitting that issue was dedicated to him.  Good stuff.  If you get a chance, pick up Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth.  It's pretty fun.