And if there's one thing I've gotten good at in thirty-odd years above ground, it's disappearing. 
- —Jack Carter
Appearing in "To Be In England, In The Summertime"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Jack Carter (First appearance) (Flashback and main story)
Adversaries:
- unnamed assassin (Only in flashback) (Death)
- unnamed caped killer (Only appearance; dies)[1]
Other Characters:
- Shifting Man (First appearance)
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for "To Be In England, In The Summertime"
Jakita receives word that Jack Carter is dead, which has a different effect on each team member. En route to the funeral, Snow learns that Carter, a former lover of Jakita's, was Planetary's window on England in the '80s, a period during which a series of strange occurrences occurred. Carter himself was skilled in the occult arts, as a story Jakita tells -- involving a shadowy (literally) government assassin being mystically dispatched by a coldly righteous Carter -- grimly reveals. And the bizarre group of characters in attendance at his funeral ("They're eighties people," explains Jakita) gives credence to Jakita's statement that "Jack was everything you wanted London to be," even though the Drummer dismisses him as "a con man who pulled a scam once too often."
Afterward, they head over to the scene of Jack's death, and within five minutes the Drummer's ability to see magic ("it's just signal, just information, and that puts it in my ball court," he explains) tells them that the man faked his own death. Confirmation comes when his anguished, musclebound killer in spandex shows up to explain his reasons for doing the deed... and then Carter himself shows up to blast the man's chest open with a shotgun. Explaining that he faked his own death to get the drop on his "killer," he kisses Jakita goodbye, telling her the '80s are long over, "and it's time to move on." He then vanishes into the night.
Notes
- This issue is reprinted in:
- Planetary: The Fourth Man trade paperback (2001);
- Absolute Planetary vol. 1 hardcover (2005);
- The Planetary Omnibus hardcover (2014);
- Planetary Book One trade paperback (2017).
Trivia
- Jack Carter is based on John Constantine, of Hellblazer fame, and arguably the single most important character of the Vertigo imprint. The attendees at Jack Carter's funeral are analogues of characters that appeared in the Vertigo comics, including Swamp Thing, Sandman, Spectre, Death, the Metal Men, the Demon, Animal Man (alongside Grant Morrison as seen in Animal Man #26), and Brother Power.
- The caped man that attempted to murder Jack Carter is presumably based on Miracleman. His rant that he should have been "clean, noble, single" and that he should not have become involved in deviant natures is an in-universe criticism of how traditional superhero comics were becoming too dark and mature in the 1980's and 1990's.
- Jack Carter's new identity bears a physical resemblance to Spider Jerusalem, the protagonist of Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan.
See Also
Links and References
References
- ↑ First and only known appearance to date besides flashbacks