In this paper, we study the planar L p -Minkowski problem (0.1)for all p ∈ R, which was introduced by Lutwak [23]. A detailed exploration of (0.1) on solvability will be presented. More precisely, we will prove that for p ∈ (0, 2), there exists a positive function f ∈ C α (S 1 ), α ∈ (0, 1) such that (0.1) admits a nonnegative solution vanishes somewhere on S 1 . In case p ∈ (−1, 0], a surprising a-priori upper/lower bound for solution was established, which implies the existence of positive classical solution to each positive function f ∈ C α (S 1 ). When p ∈ (−2, −1], the existence of some special positive classical solution has already been known using the Blaschke-Santalo inequality [8]. Upon the final case p ≤ −2, we show that there exist some positive functions f ∈ C α (S 1 ) such that (0.1) admits no solution. Our results clarify and improve largely the planar version of Chou-Wang's existence theorem [8] for p < 2. At the end of this paper, some new uniqueness results will also be shown.