The Authority #18 - All Aboard

[skund]

The next arc of The Authority Vol 5. started this month - Homecoming. If I knew what the hell was going on, I might have a proper opinion of it.

A giant beam of light surrounds the Carrier, magically restoring all its brokenness and unfusing it from unLondon. The Engineer uses the new found power to open Doors to every costumed hero on Earth and summon them to the Carrier. My knowledge of the Wildstorm'verse is pretty shaky outside The Authority, so due to the lack of info boxes I have no idea what, who or where most of these people are.

Said people, plus a host of civilians, gather around the Carrier.

Midnighter beats the man unconscious because we have new writers and they have to demonstrate that Midnighter is Dark and Violent.

Jack talks to the assembled masses - the Carrier is healing and will soon take off.

A sweet moment. Oh, BTW, Apollo has short hair now. No reference or mention in the text, and he's drawn in the flashbacks at the start of the issue with short hair too. It's awful.

Jack is back to being a dick. I like it.

The Carrier takes off, with Angie, Jack and Shen on board. Apollo and Midnighter remain on Earth. Then suddenly...

The carrier, while being drawn out of orbit by a mysterious alien force, is attacked simultaneously by a Kherubium warship and the Red Blade.

I predict a lot of tedious battles, more 90's 'radical' costumes and an arbitrary return to the status quo

 

Comments

[thosefew]

In today's episode, the part of Apollo will be played by Richard Mulligan.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Why's Midnighter all spikey?

[skund]

Maybe pigeons kept landing on his shoulders?

[jlroberson]

Complicated sex game. Apollo, at least, seems happy.

[kiev4am]

Ahaha! Best explanation yet!

[jlroberson]

After seeing the Lovecraftian Authority, Apollo kept fantasizing. So the Midnighter found that one, killed him with his own tongue, and stole his jacket.

That night, Apollo made him feel like a little girl again. The indigo darkness was filled with sighs. Even though Midnighter knew Apollo's every move before he did it, he kept it to himself.

[twomasks]

I don't know but he looks like a Fist of the North Star villain all of a sudden.

[northstarfan]

Oh, FFS. Can we just put a mercy bullet in the Wildstorm line now?

[autumn_lily]

Motto. It seems to be desperately trying to rekindle the 90's in a hardcore way.

[jlroberson]

It's sad that Abnett's run (a) ended up so disappointing(like he stopped caring three issues before the end) and (b) was nothing but a placeholder.

And the ended world is starting to seem tiresome.

[autumn_lily]

I'm feeling less interested in their plight as well.

[jlroberson]

The thing is too that loading up everything with superheroes after a while starts to kill human identification(not so much a problem in Ellis' run because he purposely avoided any focus on characterization), because, well, we don't mind that so much in Marvel because they're people as well. They have lives. They were usually something before, and beyond, being superheroes.

But the kind of superheroes you see here are often this elite super-race, which never mixes with actual people much, who were ENGINEERED to be superheroes, who have never been anything but. And that can only get you so far.

[autumn_lily]

It doesn't help that the characters seem to regard themselves as above the average person. Midnighter beating up an old man for asking him questions is a good example of that.

[jlroberson]

Well, it's like a middlebrow, debased, and much more fascist Miracleman in some ways. But these are kind of like gods too, if you know the older ones. Not nice or caring.

[twigcollins]

See, I remember Midnighter from the old, beginning issues as being a lot... well, basically they wrote him as already over the problems they loaded him up with in the later runs, and this...

Igh. Midnighter might give the guy a blunt, distnterested answer, or no answer, but I never saw him as incompetent enough to just beat up random, scared civilians. It doesn't even work with the logic of his power set.

[jlroberson]

Yeah--what does he anticipate the old man will do next? Cough on him?

[autumn_lily]

The biggest folly of old gods was usually hubris.

[wizardru]

Well, wasn't that kind of the message of The Authority in the first place? We have super-powers and have decided that it's time to stop screwing around and USE them? I mean, they ARE above the average person.

Now, if you're saying "they think they're better PEOPLE than everyone else", you have a point. They ARE being condescending jerks. But they also are tiny gods walking among the proles...it's not terribly surprising that people who can kill GOD don't feel the need to cater to the whims of the masses anymore.

[autumn_lily]

If they have no compassion for the people they are supposed to protect, then what makes the Authority any different from the villains in their book? And if they aren't, why should I give a damn about buying this comic?

[wizardru]

Well, I think that was one of the fundamental questions that Ellis introduced with Stormwatch (from which the Authority was born) and that Millar tried to sort of wrestle with under his run. The difference between the Authority and the villains and the world governments is generally that the Authority don't brutally murder thousands* or create weapons that blow up the world.

As for why you should give a damn about it, I have no idea. I haven't purchased an issue of the Authority for years. I'm waiting for more of a review of this new team before deciding if I want to pick it up or not.

(* - Unless those thousands happen to soldiers in a brutal totalitarian regime, anyhow.)

[kiev4am]

I'm kind of mystified by the idea that Ellis didn't do characterisation. One of the main reasons I read his Stormwatch and Authority was because I felt he had a knack for defining characters clearly and economically via their dialogue, body language etc. Sure, he said in interviews that he didn't want to focus too much on character in Authority because it was this big loud widescreen concept, but even so he gave them quirks and interactions because that's the nature of his writing. There were no drawn-out backstories, but there was personality and life to the characters.

[jlroberson]

I'm only referring to Ellis' own statements on it. That said, there is characterization--set in stone at the start which doesn't change, and after that the dialogue is an awful lot of agreement. It almost feels like one person's voice split among several characters. Oh, and they enjoy things a lot, like Angie enjoying going to the moon and being her. I have to admit, moments like that seemed a bit...undramatic.

I think it's just the aforementioned sameness of the dialogue, lack of any real internal friction, and the insufferable...PERFECTION of everyone that was the only stuff that ever really got on my nerves about Ellis' AUTHORITY. They know everything, do everything, never really any doubt they'll win. They feel like the jocks of superheroes.

[northstarfan]

In the worst way. Whatever else you can say about the 90's, there was an explosion of creativity in the industry. Shame that most of what made a mark was the X-TREME!!!111!! and crap bits out of it.

[autumn_lily]

One word: Liefeld.

[jlroberson]

See, when everyone rags on the 90s, my viewpoint is different because then I had alternatives, at least ones that came out regularly. Like Vertigo, or Fantagraphics, or Tundra for a while, or Kitchen Sink, or even just stuff like TABOO or CEREBUS. I didn't buy a single superhero(strictly speaking--the Doom Patrol then doesn't really count) comic till Morrison did JLA(and let me tell you, even understanding at first who they were now was quite a shock). Never read any Image but 1963. I was vaguely aware of what was going on in the mainstream, but only as I would be dogshit on the sidewalk; if I stepped in it, it was my own fault.

It kind of annoys me that nowadays, most of the time, when I want to read writers like Morrison, or Gaiman, or Ennis or the like, I have to read a superhero comic. Though they're better than they were for a long time, near as I can tell, I still get tired of the genre after a while.

[wizardru]

Morrison has almost ALWAYS done superhero comics. Gaiman spends much more time writing outside of comics (and thus only takes only pet projects like 'whatever happened to the Batman') and Sandman was a comic that took place in a Superhero universe, even though it moved away from it. In fact, Gaiman hasn't written more than the occasional short story or single issue of anything since Sandman concluded, really. Ennis has always written BOTH superheroes and more obscure stuff...nearly a 50/50 split. It's not like this is a NEW trend.

I mean, I can understand that you'd rather read their more obscure work because you like when they're working totally on their own...but that's neither here nor there with respect to the 90s. The 90s were filled with unmitigated crap in the major commercial successes of the time...but there was a lot of great stuff coming out in both the margins and the main superhero titles, including from the authors listed here.

Some 90s comics by these guys: Sandman 1989-1996. Hellblazer: 1991. Invisibles: 1994. Aztek: 1994. Preacher: 1995. Hitman: 1996. JLA: 1997.

Most people are ticked at the 1990s for it's ridiculous excesses and pandering to a specific demographic, in some cases attempting to eradicate decades of development to service it. This is the same kind of pandering that created the indie publishing bubble of the 1980s and the speculation market of the 1990s (Chromium covers, anyone)?

You weren't reading mainstream comics (and apparently really still aren't), so it's no surprise that you don't understand the general unhappiness over the 1990s. You didn't have to suffer through stuff like THIS.

[jlroberson]

I actually am, sadly, familiar with FATE. A friend showed it to me. It's one of the things that kept me a Vertigo reader for so long.

Seriously, when I did pick up Morrison's JLA I was wary.

BTW--no, nowadays I do read a number of mainstream comics; otherwise I wouldn't be following BLACKEST NIGHT. But as I said, it's also usually, these days, the only place I can find the creators I like.

[tavella]

...because a superpowered human beating an elderly man half to death for being all uppity and asking questions shows how AWSUM and KOOL and powerful he is!

Wildstorm's impending death will raise no sorrow with me.

[mad]

"Should we stay or should we go."

Must...resist...urge to...burst into SONG!

Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So you gotta let me knowwww
Should I stay or should I go?

[uadlika]

I can never hear that song without being reminded of David Tennant...mmmmmm.

[mad]

When did David Tennant sing that song??

[uadlika]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVuiThX44bE

[uadlika]

I never realized that dreamwidth had an auto-link function. Neat.

[mad]

Okay, that is pretty great.

[skund]

Absolutely. I missed the scan for this exchange in the issue:

(Both men are standing at the Carrier's door beating civilians away)

Deathblow: Hawksmoor's got some nerve, telling me to keep the casualties down. You hamfisted Authority boys have killed whole countries.

Midnighter: Well, they were bad countries.

In The Authority there are no innocent bystanders, just obstacles to their goal.

[skund]

Er... apparently that's now a reply to the post below...

[jlroberson]

I wish there was an edit function. I always think of something else as soon as I've submitted.

[jlroberson]

Consider in the very first one, all those innocent inhabitants of Italy on Sliding Albion(I think?)that were killed by the Doctor when he flooded it. Remember them? Of course not. You only saw it from space. I don't think everyone there was a mass murderer, and you'd think the Doctor could be slightly more tactical.

Then there was the time they fought the Bad Doctor. The Midnighter brought an army of superheroes from other parallels. Who were promptly vaporized by said doctor. Never mind, thanks for the help guys. (though granted, as it was yet another let's-load-up-with-superheroes moment and it was Millar, the fact they were then all destroyed might have been satirical)

Mass death has absolutely no weight in THE AUTHORITY. This has been its glaring flaw all along. That and, for all the talk about how these are super-liberals, their methods and thoughts are awfully neocon, aren't they?

[kiev4am]

DnA's run was significantly (and IMO welcomely) different in this regard. There was absolutely loads of guilt and regret for civilian deaths and their general failure to save stuff. It was one of the reasons I really loved the World's End series; it was a timely shift in tone. Wildstorm can't win with Authority, really - when they do the usual ass-kicking collateral-damage thing they get slammed for amorality, but when they're brought low and humbled and apologetic (as in DnA) half the internet is all "who are these wimps, bring back the real Authority." Damned if you do...

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

With Sliding Albion, they really didn't have much in the way of options. They were facing an entire world willing to wage war for the sake of raping and killing their world.

In war, civilians are always going to die, and the entire team is made up of WMDs. I think Authority's fairy progressive for accepting that.

Now, if only they tried to take some steps to limit the deaths, instead of just going on attack instantly...

[jlroberson]

So...we're back to "Authority I Can Give A Miss," are we? That was quick.

Also: I know this has probably been noticed before, but...normal people have never figured at all in the Authority, have they? I just realized, looking at the old man, that he's one of the few non-politician normal people who have ever even had a speaking part, outside of those dudes on the Carrier in Morrison's run.

But then, that sequence is all full of "Superheroes Uber Alles." And the old Wildstorm thing: when you have no ideas, pile on as many new superheroes as you can and hope it looks like a story.

[kiev4am]

Midnighter's spikes aside, I do really like the artwork. It's nicely textured and sketchy, and slightly reminiscent of early Bryan Hitch, which is no bad thing for this title.

[skund]

Yeah, with all the extreme close ups on faces and unusual angles I'm getting a bit of an 'Ultimates' vibe from this issue.

[jlroberson]

Eh. Too much bad modeling and airbrushiness in the coloring.

[jjgalahad]

When it comes to Wildstorm, I was only reading Welcome To Tranquility and Gail Simone's Gen 13, so this leaves me totally baffled. Assuming it's them, the Gen13 costumes are super ridiculous (although it's an interesting change to see Caitlin Fairchild not drawn super-busty and with apropos redhead-y freckles).

[404glitch]

Oh god, that is them. Make it stop!

[20thcenturyvole]

Christ, going from DnA to this shit. DO NOT WANT.

[darkblade]

Once Planetary finished I found myself completely not caring about Wildstorm at all anymore.