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A review by dantastic
The Authority Book One by Warren Ellis
4.0
The Authority Book One collects The Authority #1-12 plus some other stuff.
So I've had this for ages but held off on reading it because Warren Ellis turned out to be kind of a douche by many accounts. Anyway, I'm treading water and reading super hero books for the next few days and decided to knock this out.
I read a big chunk of this back in antiquity but it must have been pre-Goodreads or before I started reviewing things. It was like all new material for the most part.
The Authority's deal is that they'll actually change the world instead of perpetuating the cops and robbers cycle of most super hero comics. They face planetary scale threats on a regular basis. In this volume, they take on an army of flying super humans, an invasion from a parallel universe, and a planet sized organism that may in fact be God.
"Turning the volume up to 11" is a tremendous cliche but The Authority does just that. Everything is on a massive scale. Their ship/headquarters is a fifty mile long, thirty five mile high ship powered by a captured baby universe, FFS.
Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary manage to give everything an epic feel but still give it a human touch. The coloring is subdued compared to a lot of comics from the same time period. Warren Ellis is adept at coming up with capable threats, which is no mean feat considering The Authority has a Superman level being called Apollo on the team. Heck, most of The Authority are heavy hitters.
The weakness of the book is probably that the characters aren't super interesting. Apollo and Midnighter are interesting in a "What if Superman and Batman were definitely gay" kind of way, and The Engineer is actually likeable. I wouldn't care if any of the rest were KIA, though.
The Authority is also diminished a bit because it was so influential at the time with it's summer blockbuster scope every issue. Now a lot of books ride the Authority wave without even knowing it.
The Authority may have lost half a step in the last twenty years but it's still a crazy fun super hero book in a planet wrecking sort of way. Four out of five stars.
So I've had this for ages but held off on reading it because Warren Ellis turned out to be kind of a douche by many accounts. Anyway, I'm treading water and reading super hero books for the next few days and decided to knock this out.
I read a big chunk of this back in antiquity but it must have been pre-Goodreads or before I started reviewing things. It was like all new material for the most part.
The Authority's deal is that they'll actually change the world instead of perpetuating the cops and robbers cycle of most super hero comics. They face planetary scale threats on a regular basis. In this volume, they take on an army of flying super humans, an invasion from a parallel universe, and a planet sized organism that may in fact be God.
"Turning the volume up to 11" is a tremendous cliche but The Authority does just that. Everything is on a massive scale. Their ship/headquarters is a fifty mile long, thirty five mile high ship powered by a captured baby universe, FFS.
Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary manage to give everything an epic feel but still give it a human touch. The coloring is subdued compared to a lot of comics from the same time period. Warren Ellis is adept at coming up with capable threats, which is no mean feat considering The Authority has a Superman level being called Apollo on the team. Heck, most of The Authority are heavy hitters.
The weakness of the book is probably that the characters aren't super interesting. Apollo and Midnighter are interesting in a "What if Superman and Batman were definitely gay" kind of way, and The Engineer is actually likeable. I wouldn't care if any of the rest were KIA, though.
The Authority is also diminished a bit because it was so influential at the time with it's summer blockbuster scope every issue. Now a lot of books ride the Authority wave without even knowing it.
The Authority may have lost half a step in the last twenty years but it's still a crazy fun super hero book in a planet wrecking sort of way. Four out of five stars.