Issues Reviewed: #1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10

Ever since Transmetropolitan #1, most of us have known that Warren Ellis is a writer of rare vision, a person able to cram more provocative ideas into a single page than most people manage in a year's worth of books.  But who knew that he could manage the same feat on a mainstream superhero comic?  Certainly not I.

The book features the (very few) survivors of Stormwatch Black, most of whom died in Ellis' "Change or Die" storyline and the later "WildCATS/Aliens" (as in the movie) crossover.  All the main characters are drawn in broad, bold strokes: Jenny Sparks, "the spirit of the twentieth century," a woman who was born on January 1, 1901, and has total control over electricity and magnetism;  The Doctor, a modern-day urban shaman and mystic; The Engineer, who controls nanotechnology; Apollo, a solar-powered savior; The Midnighter, a masked and cowled avenger; Swift, the ultimate assassin; and Jack Hawksmoor, a man built by aliens to be the perfect city-dweller.  All these characters are possessed of almost Godlike power, which they never hesitate to use to reshape the world according to their whims.

As the characters are upscaled, so are the stories: the first eight issues pit the Authority against an army of hundreds of superpowered assassins, only to follow up with a massive invasion from an alternate history bent on turning the Authority's Earth into a giant alien rape camp.

I had my doubts about this book from the beginning.  Not only is it being published by Jim Lee's imprint, Wildstorm--a company not known for its great innovations in the field of comics writing--but it actually takes place in the Wildstorm universe, a comics universe populated by characters who are all derivative in the extreme: I've always seen WildCATS, StormWatch, and Gen13 as second-rate xeroxes of various X-Men characters, handled in a pretty inept fashion.  Would Ellis be able to tackle this project with his usual incandescent intelligence?

Short answer: yes.

The Authority is Ellis' stab at delivering manic, larger-than-life orgies of superscience and ultraviolence; a big, loud, pounding death- machine of a funnybook.  Ellis is writing twelve issues divided into three four-issue blockbusters, each taking place on a bigger scale than the last.  In this regard, he succeeds admirably.  I haven't read stories this insanely, bloodily invigorating since Grant Morrison's first two years on JLA.  Certain Ellisisms carry over from his other work, especially as regards the overuse of the word "bastard."  His dialog, though there isn't as much of it as in Transmetropolitan, retains its black British edge: one of my favorite lines from issue eight comes from Jack Hawksmoor, who tells the ruler of Sliding Albion to "please accept this renovation of your palace and your forthcoming horrible beating with the compliments of Jenny Sparks."

The subtext is almost nonexistent.  Is anyone surprised by this?  I wasn't.  Certainly Ellis' disdain for the superhero genre is no great secret, and it obviously informs the senseless mass carnage perpetrated across page after page of the book.  Jenny's frying of Regis' palace in issue 8 is a blatant riff on the destruction of the White House in "Independence Day," and stuff like The Midnighter kicking off Albion horsemen's heads is obviously meant to appeal to what Ellis must think of as superhero readers' baser instincts.  That's not to say, though, that there's nothing lasting or worthwhile in the book--the characters, though necessarily spread thin, are good, and there are plenty of nifty little touches.  (For instance, Apollo and The Midnighter are the best gay couple I've ever seen in a superhero book--they really act like real people, something not even a lot of indie books can lay claim to.)

In short, The Authority is the kind of book you read purely to find out what happens next.  There's no hidden meaning, no secret message for the devoted reader.  However, what is actually on the page, in terms of sheer scale, intensity, and imagination, is excellent.