Keeping the World Strange cvr.png
Sequart Research & Literacy Organization is a non-profit organization devoted to promoting comic books as a legitimate artform that has published studies on various topics including Batman, the X-Men, and Grant Morrison. Now they are promoting “A Year of Ellis” including several books –Shot in the Face:  A Savage Journey to the
Heart of Transmetropolitan and Voyage in Noise:  Warren Ellis and the Demise of
Western Civilization — as well as the movie Warren
Ellis:  Captured Ghosts. However. first up is a study of PLANETARY — the multi-dimensional pastiche on genre fiction by Ellis and artist John Cassaday — called Keeping the World Strange: A Planetary Guide. Details on the contents have just been released:

Edited by Cody Walker, Keeping the World Strange offers essays that examine the highly-acclaimed WildStorm series from varied, thought-provoking viewpoints:
* We Contain Universes:  The Delicately Spinning Reality of the Snowflake, by Kevin Thurman 
* Surfing through Planetary:  The Characters behind the Fiction, by Andy Richardson
* The Secret History of the WildStorm Universe, by Cody Walker
* When Third is Fourth:  The Mystery of the Fourth Man, by Chad Nevett
* Bleeding Between the Lines:  Planetary and Vertigo, by Timothy Callahan
* “The Hidden Wonders of the World”:  Planetary and Reconstructionism, by Julian Darius
* Archaeologists, Architects, and Acolytes:  Reading Futures Studies in Planetary, by Caleb Stokes
* The Monster Within:  Examining Monstrous Archetypes in Planetary, by Ross Payton
* Planetary and Decompression, by Patrick Meaney
* The Ideal and the Strange:  Order Vs. Freedom in Planetary, by Peter Sanderson
* The Man Who Knows the Game, by A. David Lewis (viewing Planetary as a game that begins with Elijah Snow’s white suit)
* Apocrypha or Canon?  Fitting the Three Crossover One-Shots into Planetary, by Chad Nevett
* Appendix:  Sequencing Planetary, by Julian Darius (a suggested reading order for Planetary’s 31 stories)


Sounds like if you like PLANETARY, you’ll want this book on the shelf next to your ABSOLUTE PLANETARY collections!

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

1 COMMENT

  1. When is this available for purchase? I didn’t see it in Previews. Is this just an essay book available in book stores?

  4. I’ve been reading the PDF review copy of it.

    It’s quite superb. I’ll certainly get a copy for myself when it’s out.

  5. Thanks, Allyn. Just added it to my DCBS order! Didn’t even know it was being released until I saw this post.

  6. “Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.”—Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism