Planetary

A few days ago I wrote about mi intention to publish in this blog translations of the pieces I wrote a couple of years back for the Mexican edition of Planetary.

But I didn't take into account the incredible chaos surruonding most of my stuff, the back up for that material included. I think that I've managed to sort them out already, but after thinking about it, it ocurred to me that maybe it would be a good idea to write something about what Planetary is and how it was that I ended up involved with the title.

So, let's start with Planetary. Planetary is a continuing comic book series with a somehow regular publishing schedule created by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday. They started it in 1999 and so far they have published 21 issues. Trying to label Planetary in any genre it's no easy task, given the vast diversity of themes and styles used in the series. John Burnson, in a review for PopMatters.com refers to it as part of a new genre called Riddle, which is related to, but shouldn't be confused with mystery. In a mystery the characters look to answer questions in an orderly manner which eventually will lead to solve the mystery. In riddle the investigation process is somewhat looser and everytime a question is answered new questions arise. So I guess riddle is as good a definition as we are gonna get for the time being.

The stories in Planetary are based on the Wildstorm Universe, a property conceived by Jim Lee with a majority of traditional superhero stories taking place there, a characteristic that Ellis makes good use of. However, Ellis does not limit himself to the use of characters and mythos already existing in that universe, instead creating new ones, making useful contributions in expanding the existing pantheon of heroes. In Planetary's first issue -sporting the suggestive subtitle "Archaelogist of the Impossible" on the cover- we are introduced to Elijah Snow, a cold -literally- and enigmatic man who is aproached by a mysterious organization in search of recruiting his services. Planetary, as this organization is called, is an independent enterprise which dedicates its resources to the investigation of weird phenomena or, as they themselves call it, "to uncover the secret history of the 20th Century". For his first mission, Snow travels with the other two members of Planetary's Field Team, Jakita Warner and The Drummer to the desert, where some kind of construction has been discovered inside a mountain. The team goes in to discover some kind of secret headquarters where a huge battle took place. Also they find a sole survivor, a man called Axel Brass -Ellis' homage to Doc Savage, a legendary pulp hero-. Brass tells the story about how he and his team came to battle with a group of superheroes from another reality.

Later issues dealt with stories related to all kind of popular narrative genres and subgenres from the twentieth century: giant monsters, ghosts, magic, police betrayals, secret agents, space and/or interdimensional travels, secret military instalations, and so on. To sum it up, Planetary its an extraordinary voyage through 20th Century fiction in all its forms and media, guided by a passionate writer who loves what he's doing. If you have never read Planetary but enjoy sci-fi, fantasy, horror or suspense stories maybe you should take a look at it. You may be surprised.

And as for how it was that I ended up translating and writing a column for this title, even without any experience translating nor writing, well, I guess I could steal a line from Mr. Ellis himself. It was the result of my inhability to shut up. A friend of mine knew a guy who worked at Grupo Editorial Vid, the owner of publishing rights for most american comics in Latin America. This guy mentioned once, in the presence of several friends, that Vid intended to publish two Ellis' titles: Planetary and The Authority. Everyone in the room seemed pretty excited. Anyone but me, that is. Maybe it was because I was -still am- a huge Ellis' fan. Or maybe it was that I have always regarded Vid translations as really poor or, who knows, maybe I was just being selfish and feeling somehow mad about those titles being made available for an audience not quite ready to really appreciate them. I don't know. The point is that, before somebody could stop me I said something along the lines of "if only you had any capable translators". The answer was something I didn't quite expected. "Actually", he said, "still there is no one attached to these titles. They've been thinking about getting an outside collaborator". Inmediately my friends shove me to the forefront. "Go on, do it! Let's see how good you are!" and "That way you won't be able to complain about it" were some of the things they said to me. So I was given the editor's phone number and a few days later I got an appointment to meet with him. We talked about it and he gave me some photocopies from an issue of Stormwatch -which would be used as a prologue to The Authority- to take home to translate as a test. So I did the translation. sent it to them, and a few days later I received the call. The job was mine.

We went over schedules and the way they did things over there and I was sent home with the assignment of translating the first two issues of each series. Several days later, when I went in to leave the translations, I was able to talk for a while with my editor -who was actually younger than me and managed to convince in just a few minutes that he knew practically nothing about comic books-. We were talking about Planetary when I realised that he knew nothing about the homages and pop culture references used in the story. So, I explained them to him and presented my interpretation of its usage. He was actually quite excited about finding out that the stories hid more than he thought it was there and he asked me if I could write a piece about it. If they (his bosses) like it", he said, "you could take over a monthly column". And, as they say, the rest is history.