John Cassaday - Planetary 17 Cover

While the mid-80s to early 90s were my peak childhood comic book years and are therefore very nostalgic, I am also extremely fond of the late 90s and early 00s which was a particularly fertile period for the evolution of more mature storytelling. So many great books came out during this time that it's hard to remember them all, but Planetary was towards the top of that list. In a way Planetary seemed to pick up the torch for The X-Files and John Cassaday's art was the cherry on top of the sundae.

Picking up a nice Planetary cover has always posed a bit of a challenge in that the series was only 29 issues long, and of those 29 issues most had covers that were very design heavy (with minimal original art) and/or did not prominently feature main characters, etc. When JC's art collection went up for auction at Heritage I did my due diligence by re-reading the entire series for the first time in 15 years and this cover stood out for several reasons. Not only is it a great shot of Snow, but it's gorgeously rendered, and ties directly into Snow's backstory and his relationship with Jakita Wagner. The homage to Tarzan's first appearance in All-Story is also a nice touch.