Planetary is surely one of the best comics ever written for people who like comics. Most of it is to do with the archeology of comic books. The team discover things that almost occurred or which occurred and ended. you've got nods to Godzilla, old 50s sci-fi (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman), Jules Verne, a Vertigo Comics homage, a Doc Savage story, a absolutely brutal "why the JLA never happened" story, a Star Trek Borg story, even a "why Batman is so different in each of his iterations" story with a cross-over of sorts to mainstream Batman. (The DKR batman is awesome, but we also see the Neal Adams Batman complete with purple shading, and the '66 Adam West Batman). The villains of the story are The Fantastic Four, kind of a "what if they were self-ish and evil fuckers?" And "what if Reed Richards's initial rocket trip was intentional?"
I didn't know Ellis was writing Batman. He must need the money. Ellis really turns up his nose at superhero comics and the two main publishers. He referred to his time with Marvel a few years ago as his "year of whoredom" - it happened to coincide with lukewarm receptions of his novels (Gun Machine was pretty shitty). Ellis has an enormous wit which is acerbic and unforgiving. It didn't translate well into prose and he mucked up his characterisation with it.
in comics, he has some clever ideas (look at Iron Man: Extremis, and Simon Spector). I didn't like Transmetropolitan, which I thought was a political wankfest. But he did a fine job on The Wildstorm for DC, which I think just finished up.
