The Authority:What the heck?

[nexus]

I'm not sure this is the place for it, but I stopped by the comic shop for the first time in months and picked up a copy of "The Authority" just out of curiosity. What the heck happened? When did they take over the United States?

[freakboy6117]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

last month there was a big crossover between all the main titles in the wildstorm run(except planetary). basically they took over america because the government almost caused a interdimensional war due to dangerous secret scientific research.

[nexus]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

last month there was a big crossover between all the main titles in the wildstorm run(except planetary). basically they took over america because the government almost caused a interdimensional war due to dangerous secret scientific research.

 

Whoa

 

Wanderer's world came true. In a sense.

[Wanderer]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Whoa

 

Wanderer's world came true. In a sense.

 

As a matter of fact, after I got to read Authority V2 #10, I felt a bit vindicated about our recent debate

 

Points I especially appreciated about the issue:

 

The Authority takes over as a provisional government when the elected amidnistration proves too corrupt and dangerous for world survival (causing two million deaths and threatening to plunge earth into interdimensional war). Too bad the constraints of the comic book medium prevented the authors from giving additional details over the legal structure of the takeover (it seems the supergroup has assumed full legislative and executive powers for a limited timespan: maybe a full presidential term, or the remaining of the ousted president's term?)

 

They implement a far sweeping program of internal reform: retroactively abolishing tax cuts for the rich, universal health coverage plan, redirecting the full production of hard drugs to an alternate Earth where they work as antibiotics, bullying the oil cartels into giving 17.5% of gross profits into R&D for environmentally-friendly energy sources, outlawing automatic weapons.

 

The issue highlights that taking over as heads of state is a thankless, exausting job they take up out of sense of duty "Who'd ever want to rule the world ?" (jack hawksmoor, after dealing with the typical bureaucrats deluging him with paperwork)

 

With all their godlike, world-restructuring power, the superheroes recognize there is no easy solution for the touching issue of Jenny Quantum's biological mother claiming visitation rights "The problem is, sometimes there's nothing to hit". (even if I fail to see where the true drama is: surely a compromise about reasonable visitation rights for the mother can be reached; OTOH, given Jenny's budding cosmic-level superpowers, and her destiny as the guardian of 21st Century, and the fact unscrupuolous super-villains already tried to kidnap her, it is likely safer and more reasonable for the child and the world if the Authority keep custody; they raised her adequately and affectionately so far).

 

But the point I appreciate more about Authority was made in the last page of the first run (Engineer and Jack Hawksmoor, discussing the lasting impact of the Authority on the world):

 

"Guys who can hear atoms whizzing around just can't get away with ignoring screams for help from third world concentration camps anymore".

 

That summarizes the reasons why I cherish this comic so much

[Hawksmoor]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

I used a line that Jenny Sparks used in V1 all the time.

 

Someone has to be there to save the world...and someone has to be there to change it!

 

Hawksmoor

-Tell I like Authority?

[nexus]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Oh yeah, its a wet dream with the nasty EEEEEEVIIIIIL US government and the EEEEEVIL corporations put in their place.

 

Frankly, I found it a little laughable but to each their own.

[nexus]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

I used a line that Jenny Sparks used in V1 all the time.

 

Someone has to be there to save the world...and someone has to be there to change it!

 

Hawksmoor

-Tell I like Authority?

 

Actually, I used to enjoy the Authority myself. Then it got kind of old and I realized most of them where nothing more than a bunch of self righteous murderers and borderline psychos that were only "better" than the people they fought by a slim margin. A margin created by the fact it was "their" book and the Wildstorm Universe is dark in and of itself.

 

The part I always found ironic is that in many ways such Universes are as black and white as any Silver or Golden Age setting, just with different villians to demonize, more blood and more T and A. I mean really they're already playing fast and loose with civil rights, free speech and threats of dire violence against those that disagree with them. Hawksmoor pretty much gives the "F you" to the legal matter in his "State of the Union" address, depite the claims.

 

So how, exactly, do you feel "vindicated", Wanderer? Because some people with similar political views to your own wrote a story that caters to them?

 

*climbs down off soapbox*

[Chuckg]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

[snip]

> I felt a bit vindicated about our recent debate

 

Can't imagine why anybody with even half of a sense of proportion would feel vindicated by this...

 

> The Authority takes over as a provisional government when the elected

> administration(sp) proves too corrupt and dangerous for world survival [snip]

 

Because, you see, here's the problem.

 

The writers and editors, being on the Authority's side of the argument, have systematically rigged the terms. Over the course of years of Wildstorm comics they have has taken the US government and methodically stripped it of anything remotely resembling brains, sense, restraint, morals, delicacy, or even simple basic tact, fer Gossake. They've artificially exaggerated and inflated its flaws, while simultaneously stripping away any merits, to the point where nothing short of actually eating babies could possibly forfeit your claim to being morally superior to the US government of Earth-Wildstorm. Hell, ordinary pedophiliacs would be morally superior to the same people who not only built and turned loose Seth, but then deliberately pampered his appetites.

 

And then, after setting up their caricatured tackling dummies, they then turn loose the Authority upon them and expect us to applaud, because however horridly flawed, violent, impulsive, selfish, and just plain insane the Authority is, the even more hideously caricatured grand guignol straw men they're knocking down are even worse.

 

However, while that might be nice for a few hours' worth of entertainment, it's got as much relevance to our prior debate as chalk does to cheese. You see, our debate was assuming that the world your own "Pantheon" or whoever was about to grant the dubious gift of their interference was something more like the real world, or the default campaign world of Earth-Champions... as opposed to the dystopia that is Earth-Wildstorm.

 

Dystopias are dystopias, you see, because they're unrealistic. They assume that everything that could possibly go wrong has already gone wrong. They exemplify and obsess over the base while simultaneously denying any possibility of the noble. Dystopias are fully as unrealistic as Utopias, and for the same reason.

 

And yes, going Authority might look good compared to this. But the problem is -- a bag full of ordinary shit might look good compared to a leaking drum full of radioactive toxic waste, but that doesn't change the fact that it still smells like shit.

 

So by all means, feel 'vindicated' if you want -- but don't expect too many people to feel it along with you. It's perfectly transparent to us how Wildstorm Comics is unfairly stacking their rhetorical decks, even if it's not transparent to you.

 

[snip the rest, as that would require debating details of political platforms to refute, which is off-topic for here]

[Hawksmoor]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

I admit the "Iron Age" Heros kill and stuff is not to my taste. I remember laughing at Jack Hawksmoor saying he "hadn't punched somebody in the brain all day." Then feeling sick about the thought. But, despite everything I look at The Authority #1 and see a bunch of Superpowered goons destroying cities and The Authority stepping up and matching them and winning.

 

No, in my book Heroes do not kill.

 

The Authority are not heroes, they are warriors. Authority/Wildstorm world is at war. Their tactics are appropriate.

 

Hawksmoor

[Guest Witch Doctor]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Their tactics are appropriate??

 

This, the group which includes a man who once violently applied a diesel powered dildo to another man's ass for revenge?

 

No, even in war there are codes of conduct.

 

The Authority are evil.

[Hawksmoor]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Was that what Midnighter did?

 

Ahem!!

 

I was actually refering to issues 1-12. The Authority went on a rollercoaster to hell after that.

 

Remember I think Heroes do not kill or maim. Villians do that!

 

Hawksmoor

[Chuckg]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Yes, there are two eras of Authority comics.

 

The first era is when they were lethal-force using warriors saving Earth from unspeakable horrors and invasions and disasters, but were *not* self-aggrandizing would-be god kings. I enjoyed reading that era.

 

Then Jenny Sparks died, and after that... well, like the man said, cue roller-coaster ride straight to Hell.

[2gunkid]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

One of the reasons I'm enjoying the current Authority run is because I do disagree with a lot of what they're doing. I think they've taken on too much, that they've lost their moral Authority, which in the first run was what made them so special.

 

I think this is demonstrated excellently when Swift asks about the manufactured evidence against the deposed President.

 

"We lied," Swift said.

 

"We compromised," Midnigter returns.

 

"Since when did we become about compromise?"

 

Since the first time Swift killed for expediency's sake, I'd say.

 

James

Two-Gun Kid

[Blue]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Their tactics are appropriate??

 

This, the group which includes a man who once violently applied a diesel powered dildo to another man's ass for revenge?

 

No, even in war there are codes of conduct.

 

The Authority are evil.

This book written by 10 year olds?

[Eyendasky80]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Just for fun, I'm going to throw this one out there. What if your significant other was brutally beat and then tag teamed(sexually) by two goons while your SO was trying to defend innocent people? Perhaps, in your wildest fantasies, you might take a gas powered dildo to their hind quarters. This is what's wrong and right about the Authority. They're a power fantasy gone horribly awry. I like the Authority, I enjoyed Millar's run as well as Hitch's. After that I stopped picking the book up.

Some of the places Millar went were icky.

[Powerhouse]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

This is just sad...

 

The Authority was great when it first came out but it degenerated to a terrible level since to become a parody of itself. Under Jenny (it always comes back to that), the Authority was hard edged but had a moral center. We're the good guys. There are lines we'll cross and lines we won't cross.

 

Then again, they also dumped an alt world Italy into the ocean. Was it ever established that only EVIL people were there? Seriously. I mean I can't see how under Jenny when they were at least trying to do the right thing that they would commit genocide.

 

Anyway, these guys are WORSE than most villains. Heck how many villains in the 5E books would sexually assault an opponent? Midnighter did it with relish. Even given the provocation of what happened to Apollo (and I don't know if it was even established that it happened but its been a while since I read it), I can't see it justified. With a "real" team of superheroes I could see the significant other possible killing in a rage (or pulled off by the others just prior to killing), bit Midnighter's act require a certain cold calculation that I find disturbing to say the least.

 

Anyway, the whole book now leaves a terrible taste in my mind. What were once a group of the ultimate freedom fighters are now facists themselves, the enemy they were supposed to fight. Maybe it's supposed to be ironic.

[Rene]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Oh yeah, its a wet dream with the nasty EEEEEEVIIIIIL US government and the EEEEEVIL corporations put in their place.

 

Frankly, I found it a little laughable but to each their own.

 

For good or for evil, I'm not sure I'd classify Mark Millar as a political propaganda agent. The guy just likes to write stories that (to his fans) pack "punch" or (to his haters) are all about cheap shock.

 

In his "Ultimates", several of the good guys are American agents. And several of them are really good guys by my book (Cap America, Iron Man, Nick Fury...). In his "Ultimate Fantastic Four", likewise the government is involved with benign scientific research.

[Chuckg]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Well, Millar didn't create 'The US government of Earth-Wildstorm is irredeemably eeeeeeeeeeee-vil!' -- Warren Ellis started that off in STORMWATCH, if not earlier.

 

OTOH, while Millar didn't put that particular ball on the field, he durn sure had fun picking it up and running with it.

[Blue]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Just for fun, I'm going to throw this one out there. What if your significant other was brutally beat and then tag teamed(sexually) by two goons while your SO was trying to defend innocent people? Perhaps, in your wildest fantasies, you might take a gas powered dildo to their hind quarters. This is what's wrong and right about the Authority. They're a power fantasy gone horribly awry. I like the Authority, I enjoyed Millar's run as well as Hitch's. After that I stopped picking the book up.

Some of the places Millar went were icky.

No, can't really say that's what I'd do. I'd get even, but that's more repugnant than even. Violence would definitely enter into it though.

[Blue]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Again, not familiar with the team: Everyone keeps mentioning when Jenny Sparks died. How did she die?

[Chuckg]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Jenny Sparks, as the Spirit of the Twentieth Century, was born on the first minute of January 1, 2000 (presumably for the Greenwich time zone), and died on the last minute of December 31st, 1999.(*) She was succeeded by the Spirit of the Twenty-First Century, aka Jenny Quantum... who, last I checked, was still in infancy.

 

(Granted, an infant that has a tendency to occasionally throw Havok-level nuclear explosions...)

 

The last act of Jenny's life was to expend all of her (nigh-godlike) electrokinetic power frying the brain of a planet-sized Ctulhoid entity that had arrived to terraform the Earth. The Authority called it 'God', although it's proper name was actually The Owner Of The World. (It had originally created Earth's biosphere, you see -- humanity was squatting on its turf.)

 

It's been a matter of fan debate as to what really killed Jenny Sparks... her pushing her powers like that, or the fact that the clock had hit midnight for the new year, at the end of her allotted century. Personally, seeing as how the death of the Owner occurred a minute before midnight, and she had time to say a quiet good-bye, I lean towards "allotted century."

 

In any event, Jenny Sparks went out like a hero, saving the world.

 

 

 

 

 

(*) Yes, technically, it shouldn't have happened until 12/31/2000 -- but as Jenny put it, if the collective unconscious of too much of Earth's population believed that the millennium would start at the beginning of the year 2000 and not 2001, then that's how it would work from then on re: the metaphysics of her being.

[Rene]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

I'm not so sure heroes "never kill" or "never maim". I sincerely believe that in some occasions the most heroic solution is to kill (no, I'll never forgive Batman for letting a monster like the Joker to live to kill hundreds of innocents next month in the same Bat-Channel, same Bat-Time, that is just plain immoral).

 

What sometimes disturbed me about the Authority wasn't the fact that they killed to stop ruthless conquerors, but the fact that they seemed to enjoy doing so and even cracked jokes while doing it. For me, that crosses the line from regrettable but "necessary" killing to psychopathic tendencies.

 

But I never got past Ellis's run.

[Eyendasky80]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Blue: Of course you wouldn't, you're a human being. I just meant in our darkest fantasies, we may dream of performing brutal acts of violence on people who did brutal violence on us or our loved ones. And that the Authority is an over the top perversion of those fantasies. There's no consequence to their actions or moral conflict. They hardly even question themselves.

The Crow was brutal and violent. He was sure of himself and his course as well. But there was a level of internal conflict and pain that made it beautiful.

[Enforcer84]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Ellis's run was interesting but the combination of Millar's retarded stories and Quietly's horrible art made me wonder what my money was going to. By the time Seth arrived I was done. Then I read about the Doctor gone bad and it was filled with so many plot holes I couldn't see straight for a fortnight.

[Metaphysician]

Re: The Authority:What the heck?

 

Whenever I read Ultimates, I'm amazed its by the same guy as the crappy post-Jenny Authority. For that matter, I find it astounding that Millar is the guy writing a Captain America who is actually, you know, patriotic.