Customer Reviews

The Authority Vol. 1: Relentless

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In the '70's comic book writers began to add greater depth of characterization and take on adult themes, and for the most part this was a welcome change. Books like Alan Moore's Miracleman and V for Vendetta; Los Bros Hernandez' Love & Rockets; Garth Ennis work on Hellblazer and Preacher; (and so many others) did more than entertain, they actually enriched my life. It was (and still is) a great time to be reading comics.

Yet the attempt to add meaning can become portentious or simply pretentious. Over-complex characterization can result in intermindable soap operas that go nowhere. And sometimes, you just want to "kick it" (in both senses of the phrase). In this sense, Warren Ellis & Bryan Hitch's twelve issue run on The Authority (the first 8 of which are reprinted here) represents a breath of fresh air. Yes, it helps to have read Stormwatch, but then it helps to have read Batman before reading JLA. Ellis does introduce interesting ideas & character development; but he does so in a piecemeal fashion the better to keep the emphasis on the action. And for once it's worth it.

People called The Authority, "the JLA (or the Avengers) finally done right," and I have to agree. Ellis & Hitch do it so well! Realistic cinematic art with a touch of grandeur, incredible world-shattering threats, Jenny Sparks "appallingly bad attitude," and a group willing and able to force change on a global scale, not just to neutralize the enemy but to build "a finer world" whatever the vested interests arrayed against them. It's been a wild ride and great fun to boot: the comic book equivalent of a really well made summer blockbuster action movie. Turn off your brain and give it a try. (Again) for once, it's worth it.

The Authority is a secret global-protection group ('superheroes') who protects the earth from things 'normal' human agencies can't handle. Things that aren't known to the general public. With a wide variety of superpowered 'humans' they are pretty well equiped in every situation.
Although this series spawned off the earlier 'Stormwatch' title, you needn't be too familiair with it. Knowledge about what happened in Stormwatch is a pre, not a must. It's not like you'll miss out on anytthing vital in here if you haven't read it, only you'll know some more on the back-ground of SOME characters if you have (not all).
This first collection collects #1-8 of the series, which are basically divided in two four-part sub-plots (the complete Warren Ellis run/storyline goes on for another four issues in the second volume, along with the first four Mark Millar-written issues).

Storywise intro:
The first sub-arc is called "The Circle". A dictator/tyrant ruler of the island called 'Gamorra' is trying to put his mark on the rest of the world in a rather brutal, unconventional way. It's up to the top-secret global defensive group "Authority" to put him to a stop. In this arc the group is forming and deciding who it's members are gonna be. It's mostly used as an explanation to the reader who the characters, led by Jenny Sparks, are and what they are about (powers, a little background and such).
The second story-arc is called "Shiftships". Earth is under attack by creatures from an alternative earth. Jenny Sparks knows these creatures (half humans) from her past, but she was convinced they were long dead. The question is how to stop them, but luckily Jenny has an ace up her sleeve which should give her group a fair chance. The intentions of the invaders get revealed to be even worse than first pressumed though.
In here you learn more about the ways of the Authority. It's wise to pay good attention here on subjects as 'the bleed' (in which they travel) because it is pretty vague at first but important in the long haul.

Overall my conclussion is that this is a pretty nice title. It's not ALL that but it's certainly above average and won't be a waste of your money (which is a good thing in this day and age of comicdom). Compared to the other Warren Ellis Wildstorm title (Planetary) this one is artwise a little better. Having said that I'll be quick to add that storywise Planetary is better by far. The biggest problem with Authority is lack of debt character-wise. These people do the things they do but miss an explained motivation. Were Planetary is very slow in revealing it's characters fully, it has a certain thing that makes you curious about them, making every revelation anticipated and welcome. It keeps you wanting to read on. That doesn't happen at all here and curiousness isn't sparked. That's a shame because otherwise it could have been great I think. But still, worthy of 4 outta 5 stars.

Make no mistake about it, boys and girls: The Authority is the promise of superhero comics fulfilled at long last.

"Relentless" collects the first eight issues of Warren Ellis' run on The Authority, along with the efforts of his visual collaborators Bryan Hitch (who has come a long way since his uuuugly fill-in days on Uncanny X-Men), Paul Neary and Laura DePuy. Warren said it: "for twelve issues, we were the f***ing Beatles". That they were. Hitch's exquisite detail in each and every splash page is simultaneously epic and romantic, but also in-your-face visceral. But it'd all amount to nothing if not for the beautiful color job by DePuy, who has turned computer coloring into an essential element of the storytelling.

There are those who criticize that Authority lacks in characterization and while these arguments do carry weight, these people plainly fail to realize one thing: superhero comics are not soap operas. This is a fact that seems to have been forgotten so much over the years of superhero comics, that the original intent of the genre has been lost: these are meant to be stories of action and wonder. If you're looking for Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns or any kind of deep, subtle, literary masterpiece ... look elsewhere (like Ellis' Planetary). If you want to see a 70-foot-tall woman made of electricity destroy a fleet of fighter jets from a parallel Britain... come on in.

Besides, these heroes' personalities are so potent that, when they get a good one-liner in, it counts for so much more than balloons of pedantic dialogue in another title. The words are sharp, and so are these heroes. The sarcastic, world-weary leader, Jenny Sparks; the aloof drug-addict/shaman, The Doctor; and The Engineer, a woman with nine pints of micro-robots for blood, who is awed by the things she sees in a typical work day with The Authority ("Worth giving up a life for."). There's also Apollo and The Midnighter, fast becoming comics' most famous couple; Jack Hawksmoor and Shen Li-Min of StormWatch Black.

"The Circle" is the story of The Authority facing their first global threat: thousands of superhumans, at the command of a mad terrorist, intent on annihilating three of Earth's major cities. The only thing that stands between them and their goal? The ex-members of StormWatch Black, two tremendously powerful rookies, and a pair of semi-retirees.

"Shiftships" deals with a threat from Jenny Sparks' past that comes screaming into the skies over present-day Los Angeles. A stagnant, parallel Britain invades Earth, with a motive that is, sadly, all too realistic in this day and age. This forces The Authority to a solution that will forever change the scales of global political power if successful.

Fans of intelligent, big-budget science-fiction will absolutely fall head-over-heels in love with The Authority. If you liked The Matrix, Aliens, Star Wars, The Terminator movies... heck, even Independence Day... you will not be disappointed by The Authority.

Finally, this TPB edition of these stories is a godsend. Imagine an ad for a Sony Playstation popping up in at the climax of Star Wars. Maddening. These are the only comic books where I've been inclined to rip out each and every ad, and scotch-tape the double-spread ads together. It's a pain, but these are comics where you want nothing to affect the reading experience --- and now, thanks to this edition --- nothing does. So buy The Authority: Relentless TPB --- and feel your head get kicked in.

A good collection of comics by Warren Ellis. The former members of Stormwatch are now the Authority. A team of super beings that want to change the world for the better. They aren't afraid to get down and dirty to do it. These comics are written well, though not the best Ellis work. The characters and situations are a little more adult than you average Superman comics, and the action is a bit more graphic, so any real young readers might want to stay away. I would recommend this however to anyone else. But I would start with a few Stormwatch collections first. Force of Nature, Lightning Strikes, Change or Die, A Finer World, and Final Orbit--all by Ellis. If you enjoy them, then read this collection followed by Under New Management(which is the start of the Millar run), Transfer of Power, Earth, Inferno and other Stories, and Jenny Sparks. Those would be the core classics with the best writing.

Almost 20 years ago, Alan Moore created Marvelman, which came to be known as Miracleman in the US. It was a startlingly deep and original superhero story -- the story of a superpowered being who, among other things, struggles to remain human, wrestles with the need to kill even when the need is all-important, and, eventually shedding his human trappings, embraces his godlike stature and remakes the world as he sees fit.

The Authority is Miracleman without the subtlety, complexity, character development, or moral ambiguity.

TA:Relentless, a collection of 8 issues from the series, is the story of 7 superpowered beings who use extreme violence as the first resort, not the last, who, indeed, revel in violence. "I've been waiting to punch someone in the brains all goddamn day," says one, and literally punching someone in the brains is only one of the many gruesome murders he commits in the name of justice. Another character, the Engineer, can create any mechanical device in the blink of an eye; when confronted with soldiers on horseback, despite her many, many options, she merely creates a bigass gun and perforates the soldiers, as well as all of the horses.

At the end of the collection, after countless brutal and, considering the powers these 7 wield, often unnecessary killings, they congratulate one another on changing the world for the better, and imply they will take even greater control. There is no irony, no suggestion that these people are as bad as those they fight; the clear implication is that the world would be better with these people in charge.

There is zero character development, zero self-examination; one character says that changing a world is "really frightening... we changed things to the way we thought they should be," but that is the full extent of questioning the righteousness of their actions. TA:R merely leaps from one full-out blood-soaked battle to the next, without pausing to understand the characters and their motivations, nor to examine the implications and consequences of their actions.

On the other hand, if you want nothing more, if you're not looking for the next Alan Moore, if you just want to see someone get punched in the brains without having to think about it too much, it's a quick, mostly fun, action-packed read, with above average artwork and a few decent one-liners.

Let me start by saying that as a diehard fan of superhero comics, I found the Authority to be a wonderful read. The characters, especially Jenny Sparks, are interesting and the variety of powers in the group is good.

However, that said, let me turn to what I didn't like. As intriguing as the characters are, they suffer from a lack of depth. Apart from a few tantalizing scenes, we get almost nothing of their personal lives. The Doctor in particular is a total enigma. Each of the two story arcs in this collection present the team with a massive threat to defeat, which they of course do. But what else if there? Warren Ellis is a fine writer, but here I think he allows the concept to take precedence over the characters.

I would suggest to anyone who buys this volume that they continue with the ongoing series. Even though Ellis left four issues after the stories presented here, it continues to develop and even improve on what you get in Relentless.

In conclusion, if you can only buy one collection, pick up Ellis' Planetary: Around the World instead and then start getting the ongoing monthly Authority series.

"Volume 1: Relentless"

When Grant Morrison and Howard Porter relaunched DC Comics' "Justice League" title in the mid-90s, they envisioned it as a non-stop action story pitting DC's biggest guns against the vast array of inventive threats that sprang forth from Grant Morrison's demented mind. The result was very popular, though I'm rather ambivalent on how well most of it was conveyed; Morrison writes the introduction to this trade paperback, where he calls Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch's "The Authority" the first great superhero comic of the 21st century; Ellis and Hitch take a similar idea to that Morrison and Porter use, but they do it a lot better. Hitch's art is much stronger than Porter's, and Ellis incorporates his imaginative technology into the story much more cleanly and coherently than Morrison's often frenetically incoherent pacing.

There are two story arcs collected here; the first sees the new team assembled, from the ashes of Ellis' previous "Stormwatch" series, employing several of the characters from said run. Jenny Sparks (a 99-year-old woman, one of the "century babies" (see Ellis' "Planetary"), with electric powers), Jack Hawksmoor (poorly-defined powers relating to cities), Swift (basically DC's Hawkgirl, though Asia), Apollo (Superman analogue), and Midnighter (Batman analogue) (the two are also gay, which is handled as a background detail), members of previous groups, return; they are joined by two new characters, the Doctor (an incredibly powerful magician) and the Engineer (a woman with nine pints of nanotechnology in lieu of blood, which she extends over her nude body to form a metal skin and weaponry in battle). The villain of the first story, Kaizen Gamorra, is a blend of Fu Manchu and Marvel Comics' Doctor Doom; he's basically evil for the sake of being evil, and to give the team someone to fight; indeed, his final exclamation is that he just wanted to have "some fun" by causing massive death and destruction. The second story arc pits the team against invaders from an alternate Earth, and features a conclusion where we see just how far the Authority will go in order to change the world (even one that isn't their own); this is a major theme (and a heavily politicized one) in runs by future writers such as Mark Millar and Ed Brubaker.

"The Authority" is generally recognized as an incredibly influential piece of writing, introducing the widescreen style of storytelling that both Ellis and Hitch would take with them to future projects, such as Hitch's "The Ultimates" at Marvel Comics. Ellis is a versatile writer, and is capable of producing works of great depth and spectacular style; "The Authority" consciously skews toward the latter. There are little touches of character here and there (I particularly like some moments with Angie/the Engineer), but it is mostly about pure, ultraviolent action and cynical humour, without pretence to anything more; Ellis' "Nextwave", over at Marvel, would later take a similarly stripped-down approach to superhero comics, but from a much more humourous and satirical angle. If you're looking for some good old-fashioned action, rendering impeccably and laced with fun dialogue, look no further than "The Authority".

"Volume 2: Under New Management"

Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch's famed 12-issue run on "The Authority" concludes here, and Mark Millar's succeeding run (with initial art by Frank Quitely) begins, thanks to DC/Wildstorm's somewhat strange decision in terms of packaging; this sort of mixing of distinct bodies of work is generally not seen in trades, particularly when the two runs are themselves distinct; it would really have made more sense to release Ellis' last four issues as a trade, and then group Millar's first eight issues together (instead of this and the slimmer "Earth Inferno and Other Stories"). Regardless, marketing nit, and it reflects not in the least on the stories contained here.

As Ellis' run concludes, we've followed the Authority as they battle a pseudo-Fu Manchu and an alternate reality United Kingdom, and now, for his grand finale, Ellis pits the team against "God" (thus allowing Jenny Sparks to comment on their need to find a way to kill Him), who is actually a giant space creature who created as a retirement home and wants to empty it out. Ellis opts to take Jenny Sparks, the Spirit of the 20th Century, with him on the way out; this makes sense both in-universe, since the 20th century was ending as he wrote the story, and metatextually, since the chain-smoking blonde was another of Ellis' signature mouthpiece characters based on his own assumed personality (see also: Jerusalem, Spider; Wisdom, Pete; Snow, Elijah). Ellis and Hitch's run emphasized pure action plots with inventive sci-fi concepts, for the most part, though they include some character stuff around the edges, such as Sparks' approaching demise, and one of my favourite scenes in the series, Angie/The Engineer's first trip into Outer Space, which effectively captures the fun and wonder of the situation.

After Ellis departs, Mark Millar arrives on the scene. Millar was the batman of his friend Grant Morrison throughout the 90s, working with him on such properties as Marvel's cult "Skrull Kill Krew" and DC's "JLA" and "Aztek: The Ultimate Man"; being exposed to Morrison's brand of high-octane weirdness is certainly a winning apprenticeship for following Ellis, and Millar gets his shot at the big-time here. For fans of his future Marvel work, the political themes and satirical characterization that would later mark "The Ultimates" and the like can clearly be seen. Ellis mostly left the characters' politics unsaid, but Millar puts it centre-stage through the course of his run; indeed, his first arc begins with the Authority slaughtering the leadership of a Southeast Asian military junta and liberating thousands of refugees. Likewise, the Authority's media profile is brought into sharper focus (also like "The Ultimates"). The main story pits the Authority against the Americans, a secret US government team (whose membership parody Marvel's "The Avengers"; the idea of the Avengers, particularly Captain America, as jingoistic thugs, is one Millar would revisit on "The Ultimates"), over the possession of baby Jenny Quantum, the new Spirit of the 21st Century. Millar's work is a worthy follower of Ellis' stories, albeit, as stated, more overtly political. Frank Quitely on art means the book becomes 100% uglier, but I can overlook that, though one would much rather if Hitch had stuck around; Quitely is an artist whose appeal I've never really understood.

Recommended for people looking for some simple punch-up heroics (with a dose of political satire).

For those of us who grew up on Marvel comics and switched to Vertigo when we hit adulthood, the Authority is a great compromise between the joy of a good fight scene and the subtlety and themes more often found in Sandman or Transmetropolitan. The characters are almost frighteningly powerful and unrepentant, there is no angst and few if any thought bubbles, though the brilliant, cutting dialogue more than makes up for the lack of introspection. An earlier reviewer complained that not enough was made of the gay couple, but I think the portrayal was just right: there were no endless defenses of gay lifestyle, no questioning, no "I say I'm gay but really I'm just confused and waiting for the right heterosexual partner". Instead, a couple of tough guys, clearly in love, are shown in the same matter-of-fact light as any heterosexual comic book couple. About bloody time.

I am a huge JLA fan, and it took me a while to pick up this trade based on the descrpition of "It's like JLA without morals." Yes, the members of The Authority do take lethal measures, but I think to harp on that fact REALLY misses the point of the book. The concept lies in the thought of "What kind of super hero team would you be on?" Yes, the situations the characters are put in are so over the top that's it is insane, but the middle ground that Ellis achieves with characters that seem like they're not larger than life doing larger than life things is a lot of fun. This book truly captures the sense of wonder that people probably had when the Avengers came around. It's that good. Like anything else that Ellis does, the book does have a lot of dark humour and bizzare characters. It should also be noted that Hitch's art on this book is outstanding, and it's probably his best work. (Which is saying something.) Sadly, some of the characters are a little thin, and this book is nothing like Sandman or Watchmen. It's just the best superhero team book out there, which is really saying something considering Morrison's JLA and Busiek's Avengers. If you're looking for a deep, metaphorical graphic novel, stay away. It's not a dumb book by any stretch, but there's no mistaking what it is: a fast paced, over the top, satirical, and ulitmately very satisfying team book.

I am a diehard Warren Ellis fan so it must come as no shock to you that I rate this book so high, however I feel that it really deserves this rating. This is the first realisitic superhero book I have ever read as we see characters make mistakes, act human, and make moral descisions, but also act as a team with realistic team dyanmics. (None of that X-Men esque crap). After first seeing Mr. Hitch's pencils in this book I have become a diehard Brian Hitch fan as well as a diehard Warren Ellis fan.