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htmlerror · 3 months ago

Note

*crawling out of a collapsed mine shaft* thoughts on jack hawksmoor especially re the shift in his character during millar and how that changes his relationships with the authority

NOTE: I will be discussing sexual assault including CSA, bigotry, and Conservatism as they pertain to Millar and his writing. Spoilers for major Authority titles up to and including Revolution as well as The Saviour. I did not feel like spellchecking this. Any errors are my own.

Jack Hawksmoor is generally not the most enjoyable character for me to really get into the weeds of which I'm only now really questioning. That's not to say I don't like him. I find him interesting enough to keep my attention on his own and I do love a good negative arc. There's a lot of miscellaneous thoughts I have on him and I suppose this is as good a time as any to pull them together. Forgive the cut a few paragraphs down, this got away from me a bit.

Before getting really into my feelings on his development I want to lay a bit of groundwork to be sure everyone is on the same page, first on Hawksmoor and then on Millar himself. Jack Hawksmoor was first introduced in StormWatch (1993) #37 written by Warren Ellis with Tom Raney on pencils. Hawksmoor is introduced as an increasingly lone actor targeting criminal "parasites" that harm cities. Cities are repeatedly anthropomorphized as women and descriptions of his relationships to them veers into the sexual when it's not maternal, which I will touch on later.

StormWatch (1993) #37

Jack's abilities and the trauma he suffered as a child are at this stage integral to his character. Issue #39 sees him knocking out a super-powered cop for treating kids "like aliens." The whole of issue #43 is dedicated to him and his backstory. He's haunted by it. The narration reflects as he hunts through the morgue, "Jack's not good with death. [...] Every time they took him, he thought he was going to die. Every time."

A solid picture of the character comes together. Jack likes working on his own. He's a detective type, and a good one. His dedication to making cities "clean" is reiterated a few times and compared to a religious mission. He feels a protectiveness towards anyone he feels is being treated as subhuman. He hates killing. And then things begin to shift.

Characters changing under a single author is of course not unusual. The Authority (1999) #1 seems to mostly do away with Jack's aversion to killing (despite the details of his last appearance in StromWatch Vol. 1, and with an exception in issue #8), or perhaps he becomes more accustomed to it. While he had previously grown closer and more fond of Jenny and Shen, he's friendlier, in particular towards Angie. His lone wolf behavior is largely gone in Ellis's run on The Authority (with an exception I'll touch on later), presumably along with his mutilated genitals.

The Authority (1999) #1

The rest of the run is much the same. What doesn't change is his protection of cities. This is one of the points where I find the sexual undertones of his powers and his trauma to be most interesting. Calling Jack's relationship with cities anything short of "intimate" is selling it short. He's also, at this point, in a subservient, possibly submissive role in the dynamic. Much later, Jack recounts slipping away from a former girlfriend at night to be with the city. "One night, when the city called, I never went back" (The Authority (2003) #14).

What was done to Jack is clearly shown to be a violation. This is partly reflected in the language used to describe him and his experiences. Words like "victim" are used, but so are "disgusting." There is and/or was something repugnant inside him. As implied in Stormwatch #47, the surgeries performed on Jack heavily disfigured his genitals to the point of causing a woman to vomit. Though this is seemingly later retconed, it does further sexualize the surgeries.

With that context, Jack killing Regis is quite satisfying. The threat of rape is stressed over and over (Ellis's use of sexual assault is topic for another day). Regis threatens to rape our main cast. If he wins, he'll turn the world into a rape camp the same way he did to China on is Earth. And he will destroy and mutilate the cities. I might go as far as to say that Jack killing him in quite spectacular fashion could be read as adjacent to rape-revenge.

The Authority (1999) #8

I don't go out of my way to read Mark Millar's work. To get a better overview of his writing up to the early 2000s, I read "Shameless? The Superhero Comics of Mark Millar" (link) by Colin Smith. I'm also pulling from articles, interviews, and personal conversations I've had with people about his work on The Authority. I'm too young to remember his Authority run, so I am relying on a combination of first-hand accounts of the early 2000s and a modern understanding of the issues the come up in his writing.

"[...] Mark Millar had learned to associate the pleasures of the superhero comic with its potential for eye-catchingly transgressive content," Smith wrote. That this is evident in The Authority is an understatement. Following Ellis's departure from the series, Grant Morrison recommended Millar to take over as well as assisting with the first five issues and ghostwriting one. The tonal shift was immediate. The Authority becomes a much more gratuitously violent book. Four separate instances of sexual assault come to mind immediately and, were this more focused on the topic of sexual violence in Millar's run, I'm certain there would be more to discuss. The run is so antisemitic that the word "extreme" fails to covey it. Racial and homophobic slurs are thrown around. Millar's rewriting of the Authority as a team and as individuals is not my focus here, but in short the changes made were significant.

Millar's work is hugely influenced by the likes of Frank Miller and Alan Moore. He favored deconstructed superhero stories in his adolescence and his tastes seemed not to have changed over the years. Smith notes that "for influences from beyond the superhero genre, Millar has drawn from his apparently encyclopedic knowledge of modern-era popular film, as well as Catholicism, conspiracy theories, horror novels and religious-themed SF."

From a young age, Millar didn't put much weight in ideas like continuity to a nearly reactionary degree. He's invented his own version of "realism," better explained again by Smith than I feel I am able to:

"Though hardly what we know as “realism”, it is a process of ensuring that Millar’s work is kept as welcoming and entertaining as possible. If we take “realism” to mean “a fictional universe whose representation of reality is designed not to alienate”, then the term has consistently described a great deal of his work. In essence, Millar has often deconstructed the superhero comic and kept only what he considers to be its barest essentials." — (source)

Millar is a strange but not unusual figure politically. While I don't usually care much about a writers intentions, I do feel I would be remiss in this case to not give a quick overview of who he is. He's a difficult figure to track as he's proven to be an unreliable source on his own life, frequently rewriting past events or omitting details. Millar has historically described himself as "left of center" and in some limited capacities I might agree.

However, as countless people have pointed out, calling Millar a liberal by any metric but his own boarders on comical. He's had a long history on inciting controversy. In Fantasy Advertiser (a long-running British comic fanzine) #94, Millar described himself as "anti-female counterparts" in a rude response to a a Supergirl fan hoping to see her revived after her then-recent death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. A few corespondents called the comments offensive in the following issue, leading Millar to apologize and decry bigotry in issue #96. While this was his first major run with controversy, it would, obviously, not be his last.

Fantasy Advertiser #96 (link)

"[As] he so often does, Millar managed to reduce a complex political situation to a heartfelt and yet tactlessly over-simplified soundbite," Smith writes (link) on Millar's repeated recounts of the Thatcher era. "Millar’s tendency towards passionate, sweeping political generalization is something we’ll encounter again and again."

Millar's first comic book came in 1989. The Saviour garnered praise when it was published. Smith details the positive reception the book got in "Shameless?" Part 7 (link) along with how opinions on the book have shifted towards the negative. "The Saviour now reads almost as if it were a brochure designed to trail everything that Millar would attempt to achieve. [...] Beyond that, there’s not a single prominent, recurring feature of his later writing that’s absent." Millar himself described the book in 2012 as "the template for everything that was to come." Naturally, I had to crack it open.

Saviour (or at least 5 out of the 6 issues that were published before Trident Comics went bankrupt, the first 5 of which were collected and digitized) is an odd comic. The premise, for those unaware, is that Lucifer has been reborn and has branded himself a religious savior and superhero. Opposite to him (for a time at least) is the insane fallen angel Faeragle who believe himself to be Jesus. The world adores the Saviour, not knowing that he seeks to bring about the end of days. In most ways, it's a not-untypical Millar comic. Sexual assault is thrown around, a separate essay could be dedicated to the offensive parts, and it features his unsubtle fixation on urine.

It's also not the complete shlock I anticipated. Unpolished, yes, and I would not recommend it without an understanding of what the comic is, but readable nonetheless. That being said, Millar's fondness for certain tropes and motifs is evident. Describing it as a blueprint for his future work is perhaps the most useful way to understand it. Similar ideas come up again and again in his writing, The Authority very much included. While it's a blueprint for Millar's future writing, it's also an outline of his politics. Smith points out that "a few broad and often contradictory references to a small number of issues isn’t a coherent engagement in 'the world in which we live on a political level [...] the political content of Millar��s stories is notoriously confused and confusing, with its befuddling and often deliberately provocative mixture of working class radicalism and reactionism." (link)

"Reactionary" is, perhaps, the best way to conceptualize much of Millar's work, let alone the things he says and claims to believe. In the political sense, calling Millar right-wing reactionary will hardly get you much argument these days. But in the far more literal sense, Millar seems to lack anything of real substance to say on any of the issues he raises in his work. He is simply reacting to the world as he sees it through his own lens of self-described "hyper-violence."

Saviour is not all conservative prattling however. The implications of Lucifer himself advocating for privatized healthcare are hardly subtle. Police and clergymen are tools of the powers that be rather than public servants. In place of Millar's typical zeal in writing sexual assault, here its victims are sympathetic (though there is a limitation). That being said, and at risk of Millar-esque simplification, the bad outweighs the good. The state British working class as shown in the book is dismal. . At no point in Saviour is it challenged why the whole world falls in the titular character. "It’s as if Millar had taken it for granted that the appearance of an apparently-Catholic super-man would inevitably lead to the mass rejection of every other belief system," Smith observed (link). Millar's relationship to his Catholic faith is another topic worth its own exploration (though one I am certain I will not be writing), but crucial to understanding his work is that his experience of Catholicism is central to much of his work, which rather seamlessly brings me to the next problem in Saviour.

Anal rape happens a lot in Millar's writing. Though I, as Smith is, am disgusted by the idea that any rape is "worse" that another, sex crimes of which men are victims can carry different implications in fiction. That Mark Millar is homophobic shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, least of all coming from me, but it remains an especially contentious bit of his politics. Though he claims to harbor no ill will towards the LGBTQ+ community, it is difficult to read anything else into the Antichrist raping a priest. The Saviour's sexual advances towards Faeragle with the implication he has nothing left to lose are similar in their messaging. I, let alone Smith, are far from the first to take issue. As a reader said in the letters section of issue #4 of Saviour,

“Something I don’t feel comfortable with was … where The Saviour has clearly sodomised Father Cunningham. When using figures symbolically, as you do in The Saviour, you have to be careful what you show those characters doing. Readers may look back on this episode and say The Saviour represents evil therefore, in the creators’ eyes at least, this kind of behaviour is evil.” — (source)

Millar responded with his typical dismissive attitude that would be echoed years down the line (more on that later). Whether after all these years he still genuinely cannot grasp where the criticisms of his writing come from or if his chronic whataboutism betrays that he knows exactly the issue and simply won't speak to it is unknown and largely irrelevant. Regardless, "[...] Millar has often seemed hellbent on producing comics which appear to contradict the very values that he otherwise publicly endorses." (link) His non-existent track record on gay rights is nothing to dismiss outright. But I struggle to care when the Saviour reaching for his belt buckle triggers an uneasy feeling of deja vu.

I have no interest in covering Millar's work between Saviour and The Authority. It's widely available for anyone interested in reading it themselves. Rather, I want to look a bit more into Millar's politics and how he interacts with the world to contextualize his Authority.

Enter: Grant Morrison. I won't be recounting their history as Morrison and others have laid it out. That Morrison's work was a huge influence on Millar is no shock nor is it a secret. By 1990, the two seem to have been best friends. At the end of the Ellis/Hitch run on The Authority, Morrison and Ellis met to discuss what to do with the book. They chose Millar along with Frank Quitely to take over, and that was that. Morrison encouraged Millar to "play to his strengths with a punkier, funnier, and more shocking" (Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human) approach to the book. He certainly delivered. Ironically, The Authority seems to have been what tore their friendship apart.

The Saviour would enjoy a reboot of sorts in 2004 in Millar's American Jesus. Where Saviour was a superhero book only in name, Millar's later work would relish in the genre." “I just think that if you put a superhero in something and it instantly becomes more interesting," Millar said to Alex Fitch on an episode of Panel Borders (link). "If I can do a story about a guy going to the shops and buying a loaf of bread, it’s not that exciting. But a guy in a cape going and doing it? Then I’m immediately, like, why does he want bread? Because it’s interesting."

In the past decade Millar has shifted further right. He quite famously went on a tirade in late 2023 against "cancel pigs" after comic book store owner Glenn O'Leary uploaded a now-deleted YouTube video outlining what he saw as problems with the comic book industry.

(link)

Mark Millar originated the term "cancel pigs" on December 1, 2023. He next used the phrase a day before the above exchange (link). Despite claiming not to associate with Comicsgate, "cancel pigs" appeared on a now-deleted Comicsgate publication titles "Why Are SJW 'Cancel Pigs' Trying To Rebrand As Kooky Harmless Aunties?" on December 2, 2023. While the URL now leads to a 404 (link), a video version is still available (link to video). He used it again on December 10 in a tweet praising a YouTube video celebrating his writing (link).

This is worth discussion in my opinion, not to say that Millar always held these beliefs but rather to establish what was already evident: Mark Millar is not a thinker. This is, admittedly, partly a placeholder for "idiot," but I want to specifically highlight his unwillingness or inability to think beyond his own experiences and impulses. What is not good is evil and what is not bad is holy. Those north of the M25 were Thatcher's victims and those to the south were not. The comic book industry is not struggling due to problems in method, it's because of the cancel pigs. Grant Morrison recalls in Supergods that Millar didn't seem able to understand that Morrison had not attended a religious school. "When I tried to explain the Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Agnostics and Pagans I’d shared class space with, Mark was baffled, as if I’d told him the flat Earth was round." Years later, Millar would speak to The Gay Times (archived by Bleeding Cool) about his Wolverine run where Northstar, knowing for being Marvel's first openly gay superhero, was killed.

"I find the whole death of Northstar one of the oddest experiences of my professional career. I'd literally just won a couple of GLAAD awards for The Authority stuff and spoke out against Clause 29, a piece of homophobic legislation in the UK government (despite howls of fury from newspapers and politicians here in Scotland) and then I had these people writing a petition to have me fired for killing off a gay X-Man. It was insane. Enemy of the State had about 5000 people killed. Literally 5000 characters. It was a bloodbath. And one of them happened to be gay. The upset this caused was massively blown out of proportion and I was so incensed by the idiocy of the people carping about it and what they were accusing me of that I just dismissed the whole thing." — (source)

(Note: Millar did not win the GLAAD award for The Authority. More on this in the footnotes.)

Millar is not they type to deny he believes anything. Historically however, he's flip-flopped on how much he seems to think his beliefs inform his work. Trying to parse apart what Millar has at any point "really" thought is a bit of a J.J. Abrams-style mystery box. But that Millar injects his politics into his writing is not exactly a revelation to anyone paying an iota of attention.

It's important, I feel, to understand Millar's approach to writing and his history to understand both how The Authority happened and shifted under his tenure. The context is demystifying. And so, now under Millar's temperamental pen, Jack changes again.

Why Jack was chosen to lead the Authority is only alluded to in-text. Issue #13 features a magazine cover announcing a promise he made to Jenny, and that may have been in reference to her final monologue in issue #12. I'm forced to infer from that he was chosen because he was the only straight white guy on the roster despite Shen or even Apollo being more qualified to lead. Regardless, the cover of issue #13 has Jack standing with his arms crossed and a sea of heroes at his back.

Many things become clear when you understand that Millar is simultaneously writing to shock, perpetually rewriting his debut, and possibly oblivious to the messages he communicates. His first issue sees the Authority laying waste to and toppling and unspecified Southeast Asian regime and accepting tens of thousands of refugees onto the Carrier. From there, they become celebrities. It's impossible to say exactly what possessed Millar when the question of how to write Jack Hawksmoor entered his brain. Whether he was aiming for a personal power fantasy, a mouthpiece, or simply to say the most shocking things possible is a mystery. It doesn't really matter. His immediate revisionism sets Jack's voice and the tone for the rest of his run.

The Authority (1999) #13

Jack is quite adept at playing politics, or Millar's version of them for now. Every line from him is suddenly a quip, typically on political matters. Millar's disregard for continuity shows in nonsensical lines ("According to your FBI file, you haven't filed a tax return since 1987.") His empathetic link with cities is mentioned all of once. When he uses his powers, he commands cities to bend to his whims. Much in contrast to how he was introduced, Millar's first arc ends with Jack declaring "I'm not scared of anything or anyone, Angie. Isn't that the way life should be?" (The Authority (1999) #16).

We next see him in $200,000 sports car pulling up to a gated mansion in Beverly Hills. A cyclone hitting Rome seems of far less concern to him than arguing why he should enjoy the finer things in life. Jack (along with the rest of the cast) becomes grating. There's only so much use in pulling out a "he would not fucking say that" when Millar was purposefully writing every character to be as "shocking" as possible.

Needless to say, Doselle Young's single-issue interlude is a welcome break. Jack and Jackson King's argument provides a good benchmark. Jack has, at this point, earned his blind insistence that "[the Authority] can handle" the fear they insight. King, however, is right, if not in the moment then certainly in hindsight. Though this issue might have been better placed proceeding the arc previous to it, the monologue is right on both fronts. The Authority is eventually rejected in-universe just as Millar's interpretation of it is rejected by later creative teams.

The Authority (1999) #21

Millar's last arc on The Authority is difficult to describe, let alone talk about. Its politics are easier to pick apart that the absentee titular team. With the shock value dialed up to 11, there's really very little that can be said about Jack. There's never any consequence shown of him being functionally lobotomized. His last act when the multiverse is at stake in issue #29 is to do nothing.

The Authority (1999) #29

How exactly this is meant to be read is not abundantly clear. Perhaps Millar wanted to infuse a brief moment of optimism. Equally possible is him phoning in the ending. Humanity comes through for itself off-panel and then next you see of Jack is him celebrating the Authority's also off-panel accomplishments. Despite never seeing it, "even the people who disagreed with us have ended up just following out lead." It's up in the air whether Millar thinks this is a good thing. My instinct is to say "no," but Millar himself is certainly no help on the matter and I don't care enough to speculate further. Regardless of his feelings on the matter, this is where he leaves Jack.

Or it would be if not for 2000's Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of the Authority. I won't be looking too closely at this title for two reasons: firstly, no one remembers it. The first issue moved 31,000 copies and sales stagnated at 28-29,000 afterwards (source) while The Authority continued to outperform it and increase in popularity. While those are by no means meager numbers, publishing it alongside The Authority seems to have helped sales. Today, copies go on eBay for $3 or less. Its impact is negligible. Like a lot of the ugliness of Millar's Authority, Jenny Sparks would be brushed under the rug by later writers. There's nothing to say about Jack. He's a non-entity for the most part, save for Millar steamrolling his backstory which was later undone.

Robbie Morrison and Ed Burbaker, the primary Authority writers following Millar, did what I can only describe as the best they could with what they had to work with. That's not to diminish their efforts; quite the opposite. Coup d'Etat and The Authority: Revolution are my favorite Authority comics. Morrison's 2003 run immediately establishes a new status quo. "When did people get scared of us, Jack?" is a question first posted in issue #1. The Authority are declared a hostile power by the United States and spend the next arc saving the world.

I'm largely skipping over 2004's Coup d'Etat for the lack of individual character moments for Jack. The Authority makes the decisions they do as a whole. But two things here are of interest to me. First, Jack's insistence that taking over the United States is the only option available. Passivity is never presented as an option. I wold go as far as to argue that the comic presents it as the form of violence that it can be. Second, issue #4 allows Jack a brief moment of introspection where, before being cut off, he wonders out loud what Jenny Sparks would think of think of what they've done.

The last few issues of Morrison's run are a mixed bag. The Jenny Fractal plot is deeply stupid, the vaguely progressive politics The Authority operate on fall apart with the slightest understanding of how these systems work in real life, and there's little to be said in terms of character development for Jack. His matter-of-fact attitude at this point becomes almost reminiscent of how he was in Stormwatch, though criminal "parasites" have become lobbying groups and government officials. Jack isn't relishing in his control over the US, but he does think it's necessary. Similarly to the Millar run, he's very good at playing politics. For the first time, he starts to compromise.

We get the chance to touch base with Jack again in The Authority (2003) issue #14, his second solo adventure. Here he investigates the murder of Katherine Bradshaw, a former girlfriend who he identifies as his only "real relationship." Whilce Portacio's pencils etch out Jack's horror as he relives her final moments in New York City's memory. Jack has evolved as a character. He's more violent than he was, and far more vindictive. There is, perhaps, something that can be said about the cycle of violence. The message is clear: Jack has lost touch with who he was. Leaving the city under the stewardship of its citizens, he turns his back on the thing that defines him.

The Authority (2003) #14

From here, I'm going to shifts gears a bit to address the other portion of the question. Jack's relationships can be tricky to parse apart. His three strongest relationships (due largely to the development the characters are allowed) are with Jenny Sparks, Angie, and Midnighter. His dynamic with Jenny shifts of course after her death when she becomes (particularly in The Authority: Revolution) a kind of specter haunting the story. It's instead the idea of Jenny rather than Jenny herself that is present in Jack's life.

From Ellis's run forward, Jack and Midnighter strike up a friendship despite what is generally very casual homophobia being thrown Midnighter's way. I wouldn't say that it defines the relationship in any way, but it is present, particularly under Ellis (another topic for another day). I generally find it to be an odd direction to take Jack in as a character, though I feel the payoff in Revolution is worthwhile. Both characters enjoy relative stability under Millar compared to the rest of the team. They're cast as the two tough guys and I feel safe in saying are clearly Millar's favorites. As such, though sidelined, their relationship seems largely unaffected, and it's not until later that much shifts between them. Revolution introduced a level of frustration Midnighter feels towards Jack that is neither resolved nor really addressed before it becomes null in Worlds End.

Revolution is a sort of climax in my mind. The Authority sees the power they've built crumble beneath them in a very typical 3-act story structure where they come out triumphant but changed. Jenny Sparks is impossible to ignore, even before her inclusion in the story. It's her ideals that Jack is measured against, and her legacy that's used as a weapon to divide the team.

The Authority: Revolution #3

The events leading up to this were of course set into motion by Millar, though I feel it would be unfair to credit him completely for Morrison and Burbaker's work in creating a believable character and plot progression.

The most interesting of Jack's relationships to me is his relationship with Angie. From early in Ellis's Authority, the two develop a casual sexual and romantic relationship, heavy or light on the BDSM depending on who's writing. The relationship is never exclusive. Angie sleeps with who she wants and Jack maintains his complicated relation with cities. It's only fleetingly implied that either wants more from the other than what they have. I find the fleeting moments where Angie seems to want a more "traditional" relationship to be out of character for her. Getting really in depth on the 2008 run would give me more material, but in skimming plenty of comics I found there to be plenty to discuss. They have an understanding and respect of each other that's fleshed out in Morrison's run. They're cute together.

The Authority (2003) #6

Angie occupies an interesting place in the Authority already (a topic I will hopefully be diving into on its own soon-ish!) as the member of the team who exercised the most autonomy in getting her abilities. It puts her in strong contrast with Jack and possibly informs their dynamic, depending on your reading.

Revolution provides an interesting development for them. After the 3-year time skip, we see them alone on the Carrier. Angie spends her time exploring the planes of reality while Jack has taken up a role similar to the one he had before the Authority. He soars through the city stopping crime, all the while with Angie in his ear on radiotelepathy.

Jack willingly taking the backseat to Jenny Quantum is an interesting bit of characterization. Unlike the Millar run or like Coup d'Etat, Jack is somewhat directionless here. He has a mystery in front of him but no way to go about solving it beyond a vague promise to look into things. His previous ambitions have failed. Defeating Bendix is the return in the heroes journey. As Angie says, they're back where they started, but not unchanged.

Following Revolution there's a shakeup in the status quo in the form of Worldstorm. While I considered continuing to go through all majory Authority comics chronologically, this is already well over 4000 words (if not longer by the time you're reading it) and I frankly don't have much in the way of a unifying theory on it.

I do, however, want to take a look at Secret History of the Authority: Hawksmoor. It's a sort of spiritual companion to StormWatch #43 that sees Jack on another solo mission, but this time some of his trauma begins to heal. It's also incidentally from a plot and character perspective my favorite Authority character solo.

Mike Costa took the reigns for this 6-issue solo with Fiona Staples on art. The opening page is immediately reminiscent of how Jack's abilities were described back in his Stormwatch days. "I felt it in one of my extra-human organs a full ten seconds before the Carrier noticed" (Hawksmoor #1). Back in 1994 (before Stormwatch and everything else), Jack experiences the whole world and everything in it through his abilities in a genuine return to form. San Fransisco is his estranged lover and he carries his trauma in his body.

Secret History of the Authority: Hawksmoor #1

Jack is called to a house notable for what he doesn't know about it. There's another mystery before him: a dead body with no explanation. Once again, Jack is a detective. He's kind, when he wants to be, to the city and to Juliette, a part-Kherubim woman with the fresh corpse in her home.

Jack's solo is about trauma. His relationship with San Francisco is fraught. The city is distant, "an aloof dance-partner." His friend Sal describes the both of them as "stuck" there in issue #2. Frustrated with never finding the closure he wants, he plans to leave San Fransisco, the source of even more trauma. Jack is easy to anger and paranoid. It wouldn't be a stretch to call it PTSD. The main retcon in this comic is Jack's family's attitude towards the operations. Instead of being compliant or enabling them, his mother does her best to support him until the quake in 1989 orphans him. Unable to cry due to the operations, he returns to San Francisco year after year.

Giving Jack the chance to heal is an interesting angle. For a prologue, it works well, fleshing out who Jack was before he ever met Henry Bendix. While this version of Jack is more comfortable with violence than he initially was under Ellis, it's not distracting nor out of place. It's certainly a kinder place to leave the character than Millar did.

This has, as stated, not been a fully exhaustive look at the character. In the future I would like to take the time to look more at Jack post-Worldstorm, and perhaps from the N52 forward as well with special attention to Ram V's The Swamp Thing. Neither has it been a complete look at Mark Millar, whose contributions to the genre have been many and his influence on superhero media a challenge to overstate. Overall, I think of Millar's version of Jack Hawksmoor as a frustrating blip on the radar. While he certainly shaped what the character became, Jack never bore the brunt of Millar's reinvention. While I give Millar zero credit for my favorite stories about this team, he did set the stage for them. In the aftermath, I find what Jack became to be interesting and I'm glad for the excuse to get my thoughts in order.

Notes:

The Authority has been nominated for the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book 4 times in 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2004. It lost each time, in order, to Strangers in Paradise, Pedro and Me, Judd Winick's Green Lantern, and Ed Burbaker's Catwoman.

Special thanks to Morgan for helping me piece together the "cancel pigs" timeline and providing me with links and screenshots. You can find her on bluesky below.

#I DON'T KNOWWW I DON'T FEEL LIKE I HAVE SMART THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THIS. I THINK IM JUST REGURGITATING SHIT UGH #this is. well. this is perhaps not the best articulated thing #uhhhh sorry it got. long #thoughts on _ ask game #asks #authorityposting #jack hawksmoor #good time to quietly drop my intersex jack hc #as always i welcome any questions anyone has #i read bad comics for this. more comics should be good #comics meta #ig

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crownedinmarigolds · 4 months ago

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Do you and your love have a piece written of when Nathaniel first wakes? When Noa gets to rightfully throw herself a party for winning?

@thesixthplaneteer and I have some bits and pieces written and drawn out for the moment but just haven't fully tackled it yet! T_T I think because it's such a big pivotal moment of triumph and love you're almost afraid to touch it! I will link what we've done so far below if anyone is interested...! XXX has the links! The cliffnotes version of the chunk of story is: Nythanel - Noa's best friend who is a Thinblood - was shot through the head by the hunter, Raymond Mulder. XXX Noa and Nyth a long time ago were first brought to America after the Sabbat raid on her family compound through the Followers of Set that lived and smuggled on the US/Mexico border. Noa met Harrakhty Hamdi, who eventually moved to America himself to grow his following. XXX She later manages to schedule a meeting with him after Nyth's near-fatal wound to strike a deal: using Thinblood Alchemy and necromancy and Setite magics to grant Harri and his wife a legitimate child. XXX In return, Nyth's heart is removed so that he may be reborn through an Oblivion/Necromancy ritual through Harri's elder power, and Noa performs the ceremony to revitalize him. She has her elder brother Joaquin kill their long time ghoul Julian XXX to give Nyth a fresh and unmarred body to walk in, and then Joaquin was killed during a ritual so that for a day, Nyth and Noa live "alive." They enjoy a fun day of being together, walking around and eating and shopping... just like the very few days before their Embraces! They then get married so that Nythanel is a part of the Giovanni family and has full access to Noa's resources. Noa has everything PERFECTLY scheduled and planned out in her little pink planner. It's basically holy text. But to summarize (omg I'm sorry) - Nythanel is brought back to life through the Lazarus Ritual, putting his own Thinblood heart perfectly removed by the Setites into the strapping body of Julian the ghoul. He's mostly lifelike seeming, and is able to walk in sunlight through formulae. Noa kills Joaquin through a ritual (I believe it's a Cappadocian ritual she finds in a book she swipes from a Harbinger in Las Vegas) and is granted false life to be able to live like a mortal for a day and enjoy food and other things and sunlight. Then they begin wedding preparations when night falls. Oh also they will need to start the long process of creating a God-child for the Setites. A busy and loving week!! (We also get deep into how resurrection works... ESPECIALLY in a new body. We imagine it's a weird mix of science and magic where you're trying to still overtake the original brain and feelings... it's a soul trying to force a long established body to forget its habits and feelings and etc. Like Julian LOVED Noa, and Nyth is dealing with having to be bi for a bit... lmao!)

#GOT to get back to drawing and writing this ugh!!! THANK YOU FOR ASKING!!!!#sorry this took so long we were going to actually write more but got so busy and side-tracked #answered asks #wilted roses #vtm #vtm oc #nythanel #nyth #noa #vampire the masquerade #world of darkness

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yournormalidiot · 4 months ago

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one of my favorite headcanons is that Steve is secretly a book nerd, he just doesn’t say anything cuz he wants to look cool

every time Pony brings up a book he likes he has to physically restrain himself from ranting about it /silly

AHAHHHHHHHH OMFGGG!!!!!

That's is so cute!!! And funny omfgg!!!

Nah but I could actually see that, that Steve is definitely smart, mabye not superr smart but smart and he probably reads.

But oh my fucking god could you think about it, like pony's just yapping away and brings up a book that Steve LOVESSSSS and Steve just as to sit there and physical stop him self from interjecting with his opinions, like his fists are clenched snd he almost red face from holding his breath

Ugh it makes my giggle:>

Ok but what of one time after a rumble when there all exhausted, like half if the are already passed out across the sittingroom and its only ponyboy, Steve and darry awake. Darrys in the kitchen putting away all the medical supplies they used to patch themselves up, so pony and Steve are both on the sittingroom

Steve's on the couch, soda probably sprawled out across him, pony's on the floor beside Johnny. And pony reaches for a book he's reading and starts muttering about it to Johnny who's just barely conscious, then Steve overhears and its his favourite book of all time.

And everyone else is asleep, is really only pony and himself in the sittingroom. There both exhausted (and probably a little high from pain killers) so he starts adding his opinion. And pony, shocked but to tried to really register that, Steve fucking randle is chatting to him about books just goes along with it.

And they have a whole 10 minute conversation about it and like discuss everything in the book, before probably pony falls asleep while talking and Steve does like 5 secs later cause there's nothing to keep him awake.

And darry walked in half way through their conversation, but choose to ignorenit sens either didn't even notice. And he's the only one who rembers it, neither Steve or pony does and they don't find out about it till years later (probably at darrys wedding) when everyone's piss drunk and daryy starts recounting the story. (Steve and pony are friends again at that point so it's all a laugh:3)

#the Outsiders #answered asks #ask #anon ask #im so sorry this got so long #idk what happened😭🥲#ugh this is so silly tho #I LOVE IT!!

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kromaticglass · 2 years ago

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I've been sitting on this for a while because I'm not usually one for writing out my thoughts on characters in media that I like but honestly I need to yell about just how much I love Wriothesley as a character and how his story is written.

Don't get me wrong, I love Scaramouche, and I love his story arc, but there's something about this absolutely horrific past that Wriothesley grew up in and despite everything that should have made him a bitter person, he's so selfless. Selfless to the point of completely overturning a system that had been working in it's own horrific manner for hundreds of years as a teenager/young adult in order to make it better and actively work on fixing people, not just let them fall between the cracks of a society that sent them away to be forgotten.

Putting this under a read more because I'm going to yell about this a lot.

When we're first learning about Wriothesley we're introduced to the fact that he was an orphan. This brings up questions to start with; how was he first orphaned? By the sounds of things he wasn't willingly given away to the foster family that he ended up living with, he was on the streets or at the very least was on his own for a time before he ended up there. The first thing that my mind goes to is that this means either his parents abandoned him or they died/were killed, which may also be the reason he seemingly was desensitized to death as a kid - I'll get to that point later, it's important.

Just how long he was on the streets before he was taken in by his foster family isn't mentioned, but I'd expect it was at least a year or so, just from some context clues we got from both his story quest and his character stories that you unlock with friendship. When in his foster home, things were supposedly a picture perfect family, a dollhouse where people looking in would only see the perfect picture but as soon as curtains closed it was something very different.

Households like that are traumatising, it's no wonder that Wriothesley's ability to trust in people is shot. The people who were supposed to care for him after promising a good life were nothing but a front and in his eyes he once more was on his own. For a child to decide to willingly orphan themselves a second time is so taxing on the mind, I could only imagine the stress he would've been under.

But what really gets me is the fact that he eventually came to the conclusion that in order to stop the cycle of picking up kids and selling them off to the highest bidder and killing the ones that didn't sell, Wriothesley didn't think about contacting gardes, didn't go to anyone else about it, he took matters into his own hands.

Not just that, but that he had to kill them.

It takes a lot for someone to work themselves up into killing another person. If you've never taken a life before, most people will hesitate, they'll be sick, or they'll completely shut down and remove themselves mentally from the situation, there's a very visceral reaction that happens in the human brain when you're pushed so far into stress responses that you'll take another life, and this was a teenager. This is why I feel like he would've been desensitized to death or at the very least gruesome scenes like this from a much younger age.

One can only wonder just what was going through his mind during the time he was away, taking the odd jobs to create that first prototype of his gauntlets that he used to shoot nails at his parents. It may not be as personal as taking a knife to someone, but using a nailgun is a bloody affair, the wounds needed to make that fatal are grievous if done by an inexperienced hand. And from what we're told in the character story, it sounds like his parents fought back, hard enough that it very nearly killed Wriothesley as well.

It makes me wonder just what he was thinking, or feeling in that moment, was it fear? Anger? A mix of many things? Or was he simply numb to it until he woke up in the hospital bed later? From what we hear in his tone during the story quest, he sounds apathetic about retelling the story, but that could be a result of trying to compartmentalize the renewed trauma that was rekindled thanks to the gem he touched.

And the trial, lets not forget that. On the day he wakes up from his injuries, he's served papers to face in court, and given a timeline for his recovery. The character story says the trial went with little fanfare and that he accepted the charges with little to no protest, it makes me think about just what could've gone through his head during the time he was recovering.

Wriothesley states that he knew he was guilty in the eyes of the law, and that his methods were extreme and he knows that. Because he survived his injuries when he expected to die from them, it makes me think that he knew he would be going to the Fortress of Meropide once he got to the trial. Given how much of a lawless land the Fortress was back then, I wonder if this was Wriothesley's own way of putting himself back into the hands of fate again, or maybe in some way, taking it back into his own hands.

Character Story 2 and his Vision story tells us more about his time in Meropide before taking it over, and how chaotic it sounded. He arrived in the Fortress and found his Vision in his pockets when being processed, and the first thing he's told is "hide it well". This was the only warning he got from anyone about how life in the Fortress was at that time, and he took that to heart in order to not lose anything precious to him.

Meropide was a place you could pay for someone to die in back then, among other things like drugs and probably far more things that Hoyoverse wouldn't mention for the sake of keeping things PG. It certainly doesn't seem like a place a teenager would be safe in and yet despite all odds, Wriothesley thrived and amassed a massive collection of credit coupons in order to make his name known.

It doesn't say much about what a feat that is, especially the line where it mentions that he amassed more coupons than anyone else in the Fortress combined. He figured out how the place ticked and made it sing to his own tempo instead of simply falling in line, that's such an impressive feat for anyone to do, let alone someone who would've had to fight tooth and nail to even get the respect needed for people to see him with as much power as he seemed to gain by the time he took over.

When he challenged the former administrator to a duel, the story mentions how Wriothesley was saved from having to get another person’s blood on his hands because he fled from the Fortress instead of showing up. And sure we could gloss over this as he was glad about not needing to fight him in the end, but this also implies that if the fight had've gone on instead of what happened, Wriothesley would've either beaten that man within an inch of his life or taken it. He would've taken another life for the sake of other people, once again.

This is something I've noticed is a theme with Wriothesley. He has either little regard for or at the very least places his own safety below others, so long as it's doing what he thinks is right or protects other people. During his story quest when he's being shot at, Wriothesley does little to protect himself aside from some minimal protection with his cryo vision against the bullets shot at him, but the moment that the gun is turned to the Traveler, he spent absolutely no time in very nearly killing Dougier (if the Traveler hadn't been there, I think there would've been a 75%-85% chance that he would've killed Dougier) and putting him in his place.

We see this again with the Archon quest where Wriothesley and Clorinde fight back the Primordial Sea. He spend his own safety and energy icing over the doors in order to save people in the Fortress from the Primordial Sea until Neuvillette could get there, at the risk of his own safety and very nearly getting trapped and dissolved by the waters.

That's not even taking into consideration the work he did on the Wingalet. We saw so little of it in the 4.2 Archon Quest, I was almost disappointed, but the fact that instead of staying idle about the prophecy, he spent so much time and energy making a ship like that and keeping it a secret from most parties until the time came all for the reason of saving as many Fontainians as possible just kills me.

Wriothesley has been through so much, and instead of that horrible backstory and all that trauma turning him into a bitter and hateful person, he instead uses it to give others a better life than he had just crushes me. He took over Meropide and reformed it into a place where not only does it help people now, but is such a nice place to be that inmates want to stay afterwards warms my heart. Like, for sure there's the fact that people staying down there reintegrating into society would be a challenge but I love the fact that there's even the choice to stay down there after the term is over instead of simply turning people lose and risking them returning back down after repeating crimes.

Anyway what I'm trying to get at here is that Wriothesley is such a well written character and I want Hoyoverse to give us more characters like this. I'm rambling way too much and I'm sure like 80% is incoherent bullshit but I needed to get my feelings off my chest about this lol.

If you made it this far thanks for putting up with my rambling LMAO.

#genshin impact #wriothesley #i have so many feelings about this man #got me wanting to dust off my old fanfic bones to write something #but i havent written a fic in over 8 years and thats such a long time to get back into it #and i feel like i could not do it justice #but ugh #i have feelings #and none of them are okay #long post #im so sorry for anyone who is not in the genshin fandom getting subjected to my bullshit #if you see typos no you dont

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knifemartin · 1 year ago

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a choose your own adventure for REAL this time!!!

#sorry if you just got 27 emails ao3 posted one chapter instead of all chapters so i had to manually post each one and UGH #it's over now at least #anyway!!! enjoy!!!#rqg barnes #rqg carter #do i get points for originality?#please let me know if you spot a mistake i can only stare at it for so long before words mean nothing to me #christ i hope the chapters all line up

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uwucipher · 7 hours ago

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Doing a song yap once again

Yo te pido amor by Yuri sounds like Xochiquetzal

Por ese hombre by Pimpinela is Tlaloc/Tezcatlipoca and Xochiquetzal in the corporate au (The song has two parts, both are good but only the first one fits)

so this response was really long like mini essay long. afkdlsjfks;k. I MAY may have gotten lost in the sauce of analysis or being like OOO THIS LYRIC REMINDS ME OF. So imma be a read more so those who follow the blog can chose to read the long version.

The short version is for yo te pido yes 100% is an Xochiquetzal song. If you take it from the perspective of Tlaloc, it's a plea for more passion in their relationship. If you look at Tezcatlipoca, then it's a plea for passion that she isn't getting from Tlaloc. For Por Esa Hombre, also another 100% like actually I'm startled by how close it fits. If you just want to experience corporate au Tezcatlipoca gaslighting Tlaloc, just listen to the song.

yo te pido amor reaction

okay, intro pop off! I was listening to it and I was like okay okay. Honestly I was like hm I could see it being a Tlaloc sound for Chalchiuhtlicue. Then " La noche se convierte en día junto a ti" (Night turns into day when I'm with you!) happened and. Cut the cameras. Turn the song, in fact turn the moon and lights off cause a global outage, cause uh. oof. LIKE AAA. Tezcatlipoca being a previous sun but also being a representation of night and just UGH YOU MAKE ME SICK. HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS HE CAN'T.

BUT THEN AGAIN, LIKE I think it's the chorus, it's the part where it says "Corazón, corazón yo te pido amor Necesito sentir vibrar mi cuerpo" (Darling! Darling, I'm asking for your love! I need to feel how my whole body vibrates). Like that whole section could be directed at either or. For Tlaloc, it's a cry for their relationship to not fade out and to still maintain that passion. IF I WANTED TO USE MY PSYCHOLOGY DEGREE, I COULD BE LIKE WAITER WAITER STERNBER'S THEORY OF LOVE- (anyways the fact that their love was once consummate aka it had intimacy, passion, and commitment, but now it shifted to just empty love because it was only the commitment keeping them together.) but back to the point Xochiquetzal is begging to feel that passion but also the intimacy that would come from such an act. If we are viewing it as a call for Tezcatlipoca, then it's Xochiquetzal trying to find that passion and intimacy that she isn't getting in her relationship that she knows Tez is going to give her. One that she has felt before and that is eager to feel again because she does not want to be left alone like how she feels in her relationship with Tlaloc.

But yeah 😭

Por ese hombre reaction

I HAVE SEEN THIS COVER BEFORE. WAIT. OKAY. FUNNY ENOUGH I HAVE LISTENED TO A ESA AND HAVE IT AS TLALOC'S CRASHING OUT SONG TO FINDING OUT XOCHIQUETZAL'S AFFAIR WITH TEZCATLIPOCA. okay back to the song.

I WAS WAITING FOR THE SONG TO BE OVER TO BE LIKE OKAY LIKE YOU KNOW I'M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT FOR DYANGO IS GOING TO BE LIKE. Tezcatlipoca and Tlaloc are friends, and their friendship is very close until Tezcatlipoca betrays him. So I'm like, well, I know Tlaloc would have another friendship 1. because he needs an identity outside of Tez, and 2. I think he would have another one almost to spite him in a way of like when you break up with someone. Like, oh, I'm with someone better who would never do this to me. So I'm like going through mythologies rn being like who could you now replace Tez but still fit to balance out Tlaloc because he has a strong character and i'm also like DAMN THIS SONG IS FIRE AND THEN THE ENDING LIKE HELLO???? I DIDN'T NEED TO FIND OUT WHO WOULD BE DYANGO BECAUSE DYANGO WAS THE GUY.

THIS WAS LIKE FINDING OUT THE ELLA Y YO TWIST WHERE DON OMAR WAS SLEEPING WITH ROMEO SANTOS' WIFE. LIKE WHAT. I LITERALLY SCREAMED OUT LIKE LIKE. I HAD TO PAUSE THE SONG AND WRITE THIS BEFORE WRITING ANALYSIS BECAUSE THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING NOW. because like before I was like yeah it does fit especially the chorus and someone talking about Tez's action BUT NO THE FACT THAT IT WOULD TEZ TRYING TO JUSTIFY HIMSELF TO TLALOC. I'M SCREAMING, SHAKING, CRYING.

...So Anyways the actual song analysis um. YEAH I MEAN YEAH BAR FOR BAR WORD FOR WORD. HEY OP HOW DID YOU GET INTO MY HEAD. Are you in my walls, like how did you figure out the fight scene and Tez trying to get Tlaloc to feel better about the situation while not telling him.

But, the biggest thing in corporate au is that this is Tez's first time of the reincarnation cycle, where at first, he doesn't remember being a god. He remembers after, but the bonds he has made were already set. So what is he supposed to do if he already knows that he is going to end up hurting Tlaloc like that? That he and Xochiquetzal are going to at least sleep together if not have a whole affair. On top of that, Xochiquetzal was his wife before the empire fell. He can't just ignore that and ignore the feelings that come up with that. Just like the lyrics of the song implies, Tlaloc makes the same mistakes, he ends up being neglectful in the relationship. You can love someone with everything you have but if you never show it or you fail to maintain it then it does not matter. Tez not wanting to see Tlaloc be hurt because he does care about him and doesn't want to lose it tries to have his cake and eat it too. He tries to reinforce in Tlaloc a mindset of moving on, but Tlaloc just can't.

Xochi, is happy to have someone to is willing to love her again. Happy to have someone to put her first all the time. Yeah, when she was with Tlaloc, it wasn't bad, but she wasn't first. There was always something else, and when you aren't first in a relationship, it can feel isolating. Even if Tez's and Xochi's relationship did not work out in the long run, they still were able to maintain that intimacy and closeness. They know that if one or the other closes the other for something or if they need each other, they are going to be put first. They are each other's person. Xochi needs someone to bring her fabric for a project she's working on, and she's so busy because it's fashion week, she can't leave the house. Even if Tez has 1000 meetings, he will get her that fabric. Tez can't move out of bed because the pain from his leg is acting up, Xochi can manage his task for a day and give him updates. Like Tlaloc was able to learn that with Chalchiuhtlicue 100% but he could not learn that with Xochi, and what happened with Xochi and Tez showed that.

But 100% this song is like the closest thing I could think of in song form to what I think Tez would have sounded like trying to justify Xochi's new relationship to Tlaloc if Tlaloc and Xochi had broken up first. I think Tlaloc knew something had happened I think Tlaloc thought it had to do with something outside of romance and the relationship rather than someone.

THIS TRIO DRIVES ME MAD UGH.

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