ABSTRACT The interaction behavior of planar/nonplanar of bright and dark ion acoustic solitary waves (IASWs) in a multicomponent plasma composed of positive and negative ion fluids and kappa distributed superthermal electrons is investigated. For the generic case, the extended Poincaré - Lighthill - Kuo (PLK) method is employed to derive planar and nonplanar Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equations and phase shift equations. The nonlinear propagation and the collision of planar/nonplanar bright and dark IASWs are studied. On the other hand, at a critical value of ion concentration, the extended PLK method is applied to obtain the modified planar/nonplanar KdV equations and their corresponding phase shifts. It is found that planar/nonplanar bright – planar/nonplanar dark IASWs can propagate and collide with each other. In all cases, the effects of several parameters such as: ion concentration, the position of IASWs, negative ion-to-positive ion mass ratio, the superthermality of electrons on the trajectories of planar/nonplanar bright and dark IASWs after collision are investigated. Numerical calculations lead to some highlights on the properties of IASWs (e.g., in laboratory plasmas such as laser–matter/plasma interaction experiments).