Just remember I asked you to give up. 
Planetary #25 is an issue of the series Planetary (Volume 1) with a cover date of June, 2006. It was published on April 5, 2006.
Synopsis for "In From the Cold"
Elijah Snow meets up with John Stone at the remote bar, The Last Shot, in Kazakhstan. Stone anticipates for another talk with Elijah like last time. But this talk is different. Elijah tells Stone that he specifically picked the spot -- as he suspects Stone did back then -- because it would interfere with communication devices, and prevent anyone listening in. Snow puts Stone off guard when he states that Stone arranged their meeting last time to break down Snow's memory blocks without The Four hearing. Snow knows Stone is working for The Four, and that Stone was responsible for engineering Jim Wilder's transformation into a superhuman (after The Four destroyed the Hark building to access the travelstone buried underneath).
Unwilling to respond to Snow's accusations, Stone attempts to leave, but finds himself confronted by Jakita with an armed squad of Planetary agents. The Drummer steps out from a back room and announces the location of a transmitter in Stone's body, and that they will have to operate. Snow tells Stone that he can't have a major intelligence player helping The Four, and he need to know what Stone knows. But Stone then activates his "Blitzen Suit" and flashes through the bar and flees down the mountain landscape. However, Snow and Drums anticipated this; the latter slows Stone down with mines. Stone refuses to stay down and engages against Jakita. After being disarmed of his weapon, Stone resort to using a high-tech gauntlet called the "Devil's Paw". Following an intense hand-to-hand battle in which Stone actually manages to injure Jakita, Stone is eventually overpowered by Jakita before being knocked unconscious by Snow.
Stone comes to in a hospital bed, where Snow greets him and tells him they've removed the internal surveillance device and a bomb planted inside his body by The Four, and wants to know everything, starting with The Four. Snow and Stone speak of a (previously undisclosed) probe that Randall Dowling had sent on the Artemis flight path prior to the actual flight in 1961. This was a calculated move by Dowling to find a crack into The Bleed. Stone explains that it wasn't the transit into The Bleed that changed them; it was what lay beyond.
In reality, the Artemis had traveled through the Multiverse and are above another Earth. Dowling explained to his fellow crewmen that this world is inhabited by superhuman beings with whom he has struck a bargain: Dowling and his crew will become posthuman in exchange for information about the secret history of their world and giving their Earth itself to them, deliverable after fifty years. The crew embraced Dowling's plans, willing to sacrifice their Earth and using their newfound powers to live forever and traveling the Multiverse to exploit the endless number of Earths. The Four's ship rocketed into an orbiting, hexagonally-shaped device that ultimately triggers the transformation that gave each of them their powers.
For the next fifty years, The Four had been purposely denying their Earth so much of its potential for greatness in preparation for subjugation from conquerors from another reality. But now, according to Stone, what's left of The Four are scared that Snow's return and his actions may have jeopardized their deal with the other Earth.
Snow also learns that Stone worked for Dowling in exchange for greatly decreasing his rate of aging since 1965, and that Dowling's true power is to stretch, not with his body, but with his mind -- he becomes other people, takes them over, and replaces their minds with his own. That, Stone says, is why he brought Snow back: to save him. Snow assures that it is what he is doing and will "take things from here."
Appearing in "In From the Cold"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- The Four (Flashback only)
Other Characters:
- James "Jim" Wilder (Flashback only)
Locations:
- The Last Shot
- The Bleed (Flashback only)
Items:
- The Devil's Paw
Vehicles:
Notes
- This issue is collected in Planetary: Spacetime Archaeology.
- The events regarding John Stone's responsibility for Jim Wilder's circumstance were depicted in Planetary #4.
Trivia
- The Devil's Paw used by John Stone is based on the Satan Claw, a power glove used by Nick Fury's foe Baron von Strucker that Fury himself memorably used in one of his better-known stories
- The alternate Earth that The Four travel to is very similar to the hell planet Apokolips. It should be noted that Apokolips and The Four's baseline counterpart, the Fantastic Four, were created by Jack Kirby. Randall Dowling's description of the alternate earth "a planet of eternal superentities who learned the secrets of inhuman powers many centuries back" is maybe a reference to the Eternals, who were also created by Kirby.
- The people of this alternate Earth are also described as having 'learned the secrets of inhuman powers many centuries past' and Randall Dowling even mentions that have a 'transformative apparatus' which unlocks powers which could also make this alternate earth a stand-in for Inhumans, who were introduced in the original Fantastic Four series, also by Jack Kirby.
- John Stone says "Be seeing you", a reference to the British spy series The Prisoner.
See Also