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My gosh they're so good though. Walking out of a team book with a really strong love for most of the characters is pretty rare for me and The Authority knocked it out of the park.

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big midpollo dump.. someday this blog will return to its normal content i swear

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various @dcforgaza pieces. there's a fun one under the cut, it's just. very long, lol.

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I need to go back and read Stormwatch Vol. 1 because. Jenny. TT

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The power boost Midnighter gets once Millar takes over is hilarious, though.

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Like—Millar's writing is cynical enough that you can tell it's not a problem for him specifically because no one on The Authority in his run is meant to be a good person. They're all taking advantage of their power, they're reaping personal rewards, they're in that superhero-antihero-celebrity space. In Ellis' run they're very firmly superheroes, and his line of questioning is more about good intentions than abuse of authority, so it feels more like he's making a deliberate queer rights statement.

I am also just. frankly. completely perplexed by what Ellis wanted to do re: Apollo and Midnighter. He starts in a pretty ambiguous place, where he could have gone either direction depending on editorial ("dynamic duo"), and then he nudges them very firmly into couple territory by issue twelve, and it is, honestly, like...better writing for gay couples than most of what's in current DC at the moment? In that it's just treated as unremarkable and part of the character backstory in a very plot-focused run.

Millar shifts towards a more character-focused throughline and leans more heavily on their relationship, but he also is just way more homophobic about it. I jumped ahead and read the Dixon Grifter/Midnighter story, and it's got the same vibe, where it feels like the writer is keeping the anger clenched between their teeth while grudgingly cranking out plots about him. Very, very weird.

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I am also just. frankly. completely perplexed by what Ellis wanted to do re: Apollo and Midnighter. He starts in a pretty ambiguous place, where he could have gone either direction depending on editorial ("dynamic duo"), and then he nudges them very firmly into couple territory by issue twelve, and it is, honestly, like...better writing for gay couples than most of what's in current DC at the moment? In that it's just treated as unremarkable and part of the character backstory in a very plot-focused run.

Millar shifts towards a more character-focused throughline and leans more heavily on their relationship, but he also is just way more homophobic about it. I jumped ahead and read the Dixon Grifter/Midnighter story, and it's got the same vibe, where it feels like the writer is keeping the anger clenched between their teeth while grudgingly cranking out plots about him. Very, very weird.

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Fascinating switch between Ellis and Millar in The Authority Vol. 1, because Ellis' run was definitely questioning authority and power and responsibility, but seemed foundationally hopeful, whereas Millar's is almost intensely cynical, and seems to view our protagonists in a much more critical light—which isn't helped by the characterization immediately collapsing into a shallower reading that seems to borrow stereotypes for whichever of gay man/nerd/woman that he's writing at the moment.

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Okay, every time she says, "This is Jenny Sparks for The Authority"—that gets me.

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this image of tim lives in my head rent free.

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hello there noble tumblr artist !!! your art (specifically the gorgeous silver woman and midpollo) has bewitched me and i am here to humbly request comic recommendations

ill talk normally now- uhm yeah ive NEVER read anything about any of them and i know nobody that reads about the authority so anything would help 🙏

Hey how you doing. I'm so sorry for the super late reply— school's been kicking my balls for the past 3 months.

About the Authority, unfortunately, I can't in good coincidence recommend Wildstorm comics without a disclaimer. A lot of WS media is really, really, REALLY dated and I don't want to set the wrong expectations going in.

If you find yourself stuck, treat the process like it's media archaeology.

I love Wildstorm is because it the perfect time capsule of the 90s- 00s. You can see the birth of the modern culture war, the death of class analysis, and the consequences of Reagan-era policies. It's really fascinating.

Oh and the silver woman is the Engineer aka Angela Spica. She shows up in Authority 1, 1999.

And heads up, the main architect of the Authority is Warren Ellis, a man accused of and admitted to sexually coercing multiple people.

Reading order—Ill do my best:

Stormwatch:

tbh you can skip most of this. Stormwatch is an Image comics property that didn't sell well. It's a UN sponsored super human team. Stormwatch Jul #37, Warren Ellis was brought onboard to turn the ship around.

Stormwatch #37-#50: Jenny, Swift, Jack introduced to Stormwatch. If you don't read it, it's fine dw. Although, check out issue #44— really, really cool homage to comics. SW ends with everyone dead in an Aliens crossover event.

Authority 1999/Warren Ellis, Bryan Hitch 1-12: Jenny's arc begins in Stormwatch #37, and ends in Authority #12.

#1-12 reads as a stand alone as a y2k disaster story, end of the world etc. etc. The engineer is introduced issue one without much explanation— basically, she's a scientist who gained access to Stormwatch tech and becomes superhuman.

Authority #13-29/ Millar, Quitely: It's a hard read... Very controversial but series/genre defining run. To put it succinctly, it is the spiritual precursor to the Boys. To make reading more bearable, look at the date of publication and try to recall what happened that year (9-11, George Bush election upset, war on terror). If you read the Ultimates (Marvel), a lot of its... quirks? Were tested here

IMO, there is one line in the final arc that makes this worth it.

Authority 2003-2004/ (Grant) Robbie Morrison: A lot of people don't like this run, I thought it was fine. It's introduced a lot of cool high scifi concepts but didn't do too much with them. Dunks on scientology before dunking on scientology was cool.

the Authority Coup d'etat—>Revolution/ Ed Brubarker, Dustin Nguyen: Another series defining run— btw Henry Bendix, if you skipped Stormwatch, is the old leader of the organization. This pre-dates Marvel's Civil War (written by Mark Millar).

Authority Lost Year, Grant Morrison: Things happen. the team gets trapped in space. Wrestle with the consequences of Revolution.

Authority World's End 2008-2011: ill keep it 100 with you, I don't remember why the world ended. This was a big Wildstorm comic crossover event and sets up the N-52 merge.

Dog, I'm gonna sound like a dick.

Heres a pretentious tangent:

I've been trying figure out what this story intends to say since reading it 7 years ago. IMO, Stormwatch #37–The Authority #12 functions as an accidental rejection of Francis Fukuyama’s End of History—the idea that humanity has reached the endpoint of political evolution. All forms of governance inevitably will converge toward neoliberal democracy. Jenny Sparks embodies the listless final years of the 20th century: her life was marred by unimaginable suffering, insurmountable geopolitical conflict, and the ideological drift into neoconservatism and neoliberalism. I thought Jenny Sparks' last hurrah reads as a dying struggle against the void—a desperate struggle against comfortable complacency. She sober up (slightly) from her consumerist slumber to see there is no rapture. There is no revolution. To wait for John Cumberland is akin to waiting for Godot.

Hindsight 2025, we look back at Fukuyama and scoff but, in 1999, a lot of people genuinely thought that Clintonomics, neoliberal democracy was it. And I say accidental refutation because I'd argue Ellis, in 1999, was squarely a liberal. I'd point to Transmetropolitan as evidence of his then politics. Transmet contained the underlying belief that the truth mattered. That we live in a system where justice will prevail when bad apples are exposed as frauds, cheater, liars, fascists.

20th century end on a triumphant note, but not without with a warning: Change is inevitable, progress is not.

There is a lot more I can say about this series. I got 7 years worth of showers monologues to pen on paper.

I'm so sorry for dumping this on you. IDK ab N-52 very much. The DC merge is not for me so idk the deets.

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cause some of my mutuals have been interested in reading about midpollo, here's my reading order for them:

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Did he just rob everyone or

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Times are tough; Have a Bat

/|\ ^._.^ /|\

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panel redraw <3 im soo normal about absolute flash

(og under the cut)

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i am still just a rat in a cage bullet with butterfly wings by the smashing pumpkins