To be completely honest, I have something of a love/hate relationship with Warren Ellis. The first three or four things by him that I read all perfectly meshed with my own tremendously unpredictable, disorganized tastes: Transmetropolitan, The Authority, Planetary, even some of his work on Stormwatch. In the years since, I've encountered enough Ellis-authored works that grated rather than entertained to have stepped back from the fanboy brink. Now when I see a new Ellis work I wonder two things:

1) will it just be congealed snark and
2) will it be published often enough for me to keep up?

Three years ago, when Planetary #26 came out, I felt like I had all the closure I really needed or could fairly expect. When Jakita said she couldn't believe it was over, neither could I, but I closed that issue feeling like I'd gotten more or less everything I needed. So was Planetary #27 worth it?

Yes.

I'll try not to spoil the plot, but I will say this: it felt like Planetary at its best. The story of Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner and the smoking hot Drummer has always been a dark story about saving the world. It's about the risks a superhero must take and the crazy things its heroes would be willing to do in service to a world they love for its oddities, not despite them. Whereas many comics riff on those themes, few do it without descending into angst. Planetary is (almost?) never angsty, instead reading like a love letter to the bizarre. At its very best, Planetary is about the beautiful diversity of the strange we create and encounter and valuing the variety afforded society by its own pariah fringes. The team routinely look to bask in the thrill of the edge of experience. They're in it to save the world, and they take that mission seriously, but they are not afraid to enjoy the view along the way.

Planetary #27 revels in just those questions and characterizations. The crew have one last major plot thread dangling and they've come up with a potential solution that is both horribly dangerous and wonderfully audacious. True to their personalities, they discuss the dangers of it in terms of how their actions might affect the world, but it's impossible not to know how one potential side effect - the removal of some significant quantity of possible outcomes from the infinite web of probability that makes up the future - must be horrifying on a very personal scale to these people who live for the sole purpose of finding the obscure, improbable unknowns and blowing the dust off of them. It must occur to them that they are eliminating futures that include oddities they would have loved to discover and understand.

Happily, Ellis gives us a resolution that is both relevant to the remaining plot point and satisfying. When I was finished with it, I first felt that I could believe that even if I won't see any of them, the adventures of Planetary could conceivably go on, somewhere, sometime. Then it dawned on me that part of my positive reaction was that Ellis hadn't taken anything away. It's still Planetary and he still knows how to write them. Is issue #27 absolutely necessary? No, but it's good. It was satisfying. It was a little brush with a past obsession, a visit with a charming old flame.

The artwork is, of course, beautiful as ever, but of special note is the magnificent tri-part cover. If you fold out the front cover, and turn it over, the back cover, front cover and inside fold form one long and gorgeous cover sheet the size of a small poster that summarizes all the stories of Planetary in one beautifully detailed image. I actually said, aloud, "Wow..." when I realized that. My boyfriend, who has never read Planetary, looked over and asked to what I was reacting and I said, "Long story." I hadn't meant to be cute about it, but it's true. It took too long getting here, but #27 is well worth it.