Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Why would the Earth just start killing people?",
By Steven Y. "Pop Culture Addict" (Marvel Universe 616) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Authority Vol. 3: Earth Inferno and Other Stories (Paperback)
The third reprint collection of "The Authority" arrives with the super-hero team fighting Earth itself. This collection features one extended storyline from "The Authority" comic series and three short stories from other sources.
The main storyline in the book is the "Earth Inferno" storyline from issues 17 to 20 of the ongoing series. Issues 17 and 18 are by writer Mark Millar and artist Chris Weston and issues 19 and 20 are by Millar and artist Frank Quitely. The story begins with the team's investigation of strange and devestating natural disasters worldwide. It turns out the Earth itself is wreaking havoc on its human population and the team must align themselves with a notorious super villian to stop the destruction. This story doesn't have the same type of frenzied outrageousness of the prior storylines and the writing is muddled at times. Still the appeal of the individual characters along with an intriguing evacuation plan for the Earth's population help turn the tale into one worth checking out. Quitely's work in particular is something to be admired. The other three stories are weak in comparison. "Devil's Night" from the 2000 Annual by writer Joe Casey and Artist Cully Hamner is a mess. It's just page after page of explosions and people punching each other with nothing of substance to bind everything together. "Isolation" by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Georges Jeanty and "Orbital" by writer Warren Ellis and artist Cully Hamner from the 2001 Wildstorm Summer Special fare better as character studies of the Engineer and Jack Hawksmoor respectively. "Isolation" is noteworthy in a wickedly fun way due to its exploration of a side of super heroines that you don't see much in mainstream comics. Yet, both stories feel like filler material. All in all, volume 3 is a mixed bag. Not as good as the prior two volumes but still an ok way to pass to time due to the strength of the "Earth Inferno" storyline.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Millar's run hits its middle period.,
By
This review is from: The Authority Vol. 3: Earth Inferno and Other Stories (Paperback)
After Warren Ellis left "The Authority", Mark Millar arrived 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 (though this is the story arc where it is least-apparent).
Millar's first arc on "The Authority" dealt with the fallout of the death of Jenny Sparks in Ellis' final arc, leaving the team to be led by Jack Hawksmoor (the "god of cities", a man modified by aliens to exist in an urban environment), the rest of the team being Swift (basically DC's Hawkgirl, though Asian), 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 gap in the roster was filled, in a sense, by the discovery of baby Jenny Quantum, the Spirit of the 21st Century, although it will be some time until she's old enough to take part in the group's adventures. Millar's second arc, "Earth Inferno", is also follow-up to Ellis' final arc, using "God"'s attempt to remake the Earth as its starting point: the Earth was frightened by this, and a rogue former Doctor who used his powers for evil takes advantage of this to convince the Earth to try and exterminate humanity. All this is part of his design to get out of prison, where, restored to his old powerset (which allows him to do essentially anything he can think of, including uncreating the universe), he faces off with the Authority in battle. The Evil Doctor is one of the series' best villains, a dry-humoured fat Englishman with a small penis who is aroused by destruction. There's nothing deep here, but then, if you're reading "The Authority", that isn't what you're looking for. Bundled in this collection (the "Other Stories" of the title) are some random Authority-related material from a couple of one-shots released around the same time, by different authors; the most substantial is a Joe Casey-written segment from "Authority Annual 2000" that is part of their participation in Wildstorm's "Devil's Night" crossover; without context, it's a decent, though unexplained (the characters even call attention to this), action story about the Authority fighting some undead warriors from the Cold War. There are also two stories from the "Wildstorm Summer Special", the first a Jack Hawksmoor-focussed story written by Warren Ellis; this is an effective character piece, as Ellis reflects through Hawksmoor on the events on his run on the title, and on what motivates Hawksmoor to work as a hero (also commenting on the frequently high body counts the series depicts even when the heroes win); the second, written by Paul Jenkins and focussed on the Engineer, is more middling. Angie has always been a favourite of mine, but Jenkins' core premise, that her post-human nature prevents her from having a satisfactory sex life, simply doesn't jibe with any other story ever told about the character (it's flatly contradicted by Millar's own story *in this volume*). The art, by Georges Jeanty, is lovely, though. Overall, recommended, for Millar's strong main story, though it is also nice to see Ellis return to the team, however briefly.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Thinking Man's Comic,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Authority Vol. 3: Earth Inferno and Other Stories (Paperback)
I am one of the newly-converted fans of THE AUTHORITY, having recently read Vols 1 & 2 of AUTHORITY along with the first two volumes of Warren Ellis' STORMWATCH, so I am still learning these characters. But based on what I've read so far, Vol. 3--Earth Inferno comes off as an okay book, but definitely not on the level of Vols 1 & 2. The main story by Millar is okay, and the climactic battle with the story's villian is exciting and very imaginative, but I feel it somehow lacks the power and majesty of the earlier AUTHORITY epics. The last three stories in this volume all had the feel of 'fillers.' The one focusing on Hawksmore was interesting, but way too short to really mean anything. Overall, this volume makes for mostly interesting reading, and is worth having for completists, but it did not make as much of an impression on me as the earlier Warren Ellis material.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
