PLANETARY is best read as book collections, but if you must spend $2.95 on a single comic book, Planetary gives the closest thing you'll get to that joyous feeling you got from a cheap comic when you were a kid - at least for those of us who remember comics that cost less than a dollar. Warren Ellis & John Cassaday's tale of the archeologists of the unknown - a small band digging through the conspiracies and paranormal mysteries of the 20th Century is a must read comic.

In a lesser writer's hands, "Hark" would have been a half-assed kung-fu movie wannabe with too many pages of talking heads. In Ellis' mitts, Hark reads well if you've been following Planetary.

I wouldn't call this one of Cassaday's better efforts. The hazy, shadowy look works because he's a good comic book artist, but he's trying to look too much as if he we're tracing photographs. The coloring is overwhelming, and there's enough red tint to make you think the printer made an error. A sub-par effort, but even Stan Lee got away with at least one every month or so.
[DRECK, DULL, READABLE, PRETTY GOOD, EXCELLENT]