Planetary/Headscratchers

• How can Planetary be part of the same universe as The Authority? If the Four are supposed to be be hiding and/or destroying all that fantastic things that could stand a chance against their evil expies of everything ever drawn by Jack Kirby employers invaison plans then shouldn't they do something about those tolitarian superheroes who overthrew the US government and killed God?
  • The Authority are either too powerful to take down or are allowed to exist because they do wonderful, helpful things like turn the US into a police state (give the conspiracy theorists a bigger target) and kill God (definitely a supernatural force that the Four couldn't control or conquer, so had to be eliminated). Imagine this - you're a group of four posthumans who are very, very good at getting rid of other superhumans. And you want to take over the US. But the US is run by a lot of bureaucrats and elected officials and such, and killing them all would draw a lot of attention. So you let a group of less than ten people take over the whole place. Toppling or subverting this regime is a lot easier. Or, as we learned in the same issue of Planetary that introduced the Four, the real rulers of America are thirty-three levels above the president, so the Four don't really give a shit because they're still the Man Behind the Man...Behind the man behind the man behind the man.Or they could have been dead by then. I'm not quite sure how Planetary's timeline syncs up with the post-Jenny Sparks Authority's timeframe.
    • The Planetary/Authority crossover has Jenny still alive, and Snow is still not at full mental function (ie the blocks Dowling put on him are still present), so that's before issue #11 of Planetary and issue #8 (IIRC) of Authority.
  • Jenny Sparks spends roughly the same amount of time that Snow spent in the desert in a drunken stupor. It's not too great a leap to assume that Randell Dowling got to her as well, thus neutralizing the last two Century babies and was bank rolling the post-"screw you America" Jacob Kreigskind in case either Snow or Sparks got back into the game to keep them busy
  • I always took it to be a simple matter of timing. Yeah, Planetary took 10 years to make, but the events of the book from start to finish may only take a few months. The Authority doesn't really get going until after Planetary has rescued Axel Brass and Elijah has his memories back, so I saw it as The Four wanting to get rid of Planetary before worrying about anyone else. And besides, there's no indication that Jenny/The Authority knew anything about The Four.
• Jakita expressing surprise that aliens have visited Earth, when at least some of those visits are public knowledge in the Wildstorm verse. Warren Ellis doesn't even have the excuse of ignorance, since he's written rather extensively in that universe.
  • My personal WMG for this and the above is simply that Planetary in fact takes place in a universe which is very similar to-in-many-ways-but-not-quite the actual Wildstorm universe. It's just easier that way.
• Radioactive Half-life Doesn't Work That Way: Why would a radioactive woman "with a half-life of 50 years" stay fully functional for exactly fifty years and then instantly blink out of existence?
  • Doylist Explanation: Rule of drama. Watsonian Explanation: Everything that woman knows about her own condition she was told by Randall Dowling, who is one of his universe's biggest liars.