A b o u t - T h e - A u t h o r i t y

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Stormwatch: The Conclusion - From Stormwatch Vol. 2 #11

I've finished STORMWATCH. Buried it for the second time. All my fault too.

My first run on the book was completely structured. I took STORMWATCH over with #37 of Volume One, and everything I wrote was aimed directly at #50. It's one long story, a 14-issue series. I got #50 done and was told the book was being shut down and relaunched, with a new #1. I went into Volume Two less organized. I came up with a new version of Stormwatch and three new stories that I really wanted to tell. But no real structure. After I finished writing #3, I phoned Scott Dunbier and quit. I wanted to take it up to #9 -- the conclusion of "Bleed" -- and walk. He told me that if I quit, he'd cancel STORMWATCH at that time. Which I thought was sad, but, you know, whatever. The energy imparted by my collaboration with the illustrator of my Volume One run, Tom Raney, had not really been matched by my time with the otherwise excellent Volume Two illustrator, Oscar Jiminez. Oscar did exquisite work but the chemistry and madness wasn't there the way it was with Tom (whom I fully intend to work with again one day). And, most of all, I was sick of the sight of these superhero characters I'd already lived with for over a year. I was bored.

Something always happens to bugger you right up, doesn't it?

Oscar departed for greener pastures, and Brian Hitch came aboard. And STORMWATCH immediately came alive with possibility for me again. As you all know just as well as I do, his fluid, detailed art conveys reality and wonder with equal shining skill. It lends itself to stories of scale and sweep, epic stuff. I wanted to keep working with Bryan past the end of STORMWATCH -- Hell, I could have made a case for staying on Stormwatch with him. But the more I stared at it, the more I realized that the stories on the scale and of the type that Bryan's images suggested simply didn't fit inside small, bitter old STORMWATCH.

STORMWATCH began changing to reflect Bryan's art -- A Finer World and BLEED had already been laid out, but I wrote them in new ways to accomodate his style -- but it wasn't enough. Worse, I found myself mutating STORMWATCH itself. The world within the book was changing, too. And, inside there, they weren't coping very well with it. As you've seen, the stakes STORMWATCH were playing for got higher -- and they got sloppy. They tried their best -- they remained the noble troubled soldiers I've been writing for two years -- but, in the end, their best wasn't good enough.

What we needed was a new book. And a new team to reflect all the changes that were happening within and within our corner of the WildStorm Universe. Those concepts and that team became THE AUTHORITY.

These last two years have been a hell of a run, and I'm glad you ran some of it with me. We're all taking a well-deserved few months off, and are returning in February 1999 with what we intend to be the largest-scale, most berserk idea-sodden hugest goddamn widescreen superhero comic you've ever seen. STORMWATCH to the Nth degree. Come back in February and pay allegiance to THE AUTHORITY. Or get your head kicked in.

Warren's Pitch - From Warren Ellis.COM

the front line
the last chance
the final defense
the only hope

The Authority.

STORMWATCH has collapsed; the Skywatch station destroyed, the United Nation coffers effectively empty. The UN simply cannot support another undertaking like Stormwatch. For the first time in ten years, there is not a powerful neutral defensive force of superhumans watching over the planet. No-one to protect the Earth from threats from outside. No-one to protect the Earth from itself.

Earth is suddenly a more dangerous place than it’s ever been.

Down in the dark, Stormwatch Black have been cut loose. Officially, they never existed anyway; three superhumans who performed covert Stormwatch missions under complete deniability. However, unknown to their paymasters, they’ve been using their downtime between missions to make connections of their own. When Stormwatch goes, they see it’s time to make their own move. JENNY SPARKS, the electric woman, the spirit of the 20th Century: JACK HAWKSMOOR, designed by aliens as the king of cities: SHEN LI-MIN, swift and predatory winged woman; These three have always wanted to make the world a better place. Now’s their chance; also, Earth’s last chance of any real defence.

Jenny Sparks, Jack Hawksmoor and Swift form THE AUTHORITY; a replacement force that answers to nobody.

Joining them are; APOLLO and THE MIDNIGHTER, soldiers remade by mad covert science into the sun king and the bringer of war; THE ENGINEER, the woman who exchanged her blood for nine pints of living liquid machinery; and THE DOCTOR, urban shaman, a mystic for the new millennium.

These seven, based in a fifty-mile-wide alien vessel existing outside space and time, provide Earth’s ultimate defence, dealing with threats on the vastest possible scale. Invasions from beyond space and time, the return of insane and ancient deities, the advance of huge and pitiless assassination squads trained to kill countries... in such matters, they are the final authority. GENERAL NOTES;

The intention of THE AUTHORITY, from the perspective of Bryan and myself, is to go utterly nuts. To do all the huge-scale insane concepts that’d’ve never have fitted in STORMWATCH. To, in the parlance, turn the volume up to eleven.

We’re going to take a crack at redefining the large-scale superhero book. We’re going to see just how vast and cosmic and crazed we can get. In many ways, this sounds like the utter antithesis of STORMWATCH, I know, and, yes, THE AUTHORITY will be very different... but it will retain some key concepts of my STORMWATCH run. Chiefly its attention to nasty little details, its appalling bad attitude, and the utter carnage the cast are capable of creating when they work together -- Wizard called attention to this, and likened their exact and violent teamwork to the Green Berets. This is what people liked; the mad little ideas, the edge and the kicking of arse. And Bryan Hitch. That’s what we’ll keep for THE AUTHORITY.

What we’ll add is stories on the biggest scale we can imagine.